Hi, my name is Barrett.
My wife and I were living in Ethiopia in 2008 and for the first time in our life, we were exposed to the commercial sex / forced sex work industry and it was deeply angering and unsettling to witness, to say the very least. As we met with some of these women to see how we could help, we heard from them “we don’t need charity, we need jobs.” They were extraordinarily hard workers that just needed an opportunity. They said they wanted to weave scarves, so we figured out how to sell scarves. We launched, and it blew up.
We quickly learned that customers wanted to make their purchases matter, and they loved empowering women with dignified work through their purchase. That is how we started, and we have evolved the core of that mission a lot - we now work with women all around the world, including our backyard of Nashville, TN, who have overcome some extraordinary circumstances… everything from the commercial sex industry, to addiction, to even overcoming the often overwhelming impact of generational poverty.
The crazy thing is, now we’re a real life fashion company. We make beautiful apparel, shoes, and accessories, all with the goal of creating great jobs for women, who have proven over and over again that the fastest way to lift an entire community out of poverty is to pay the women. The testimonial I’m most grateful to hear from our customer is “I love owning fashion that I feel great about wearing.”
I’d love you to dig deeper and learn what makes ABLE pretty special (in my opinion, at least). This is a 90% women- run company, we publish our lowest wages, ask other companies to do the same, and work to empower our consumers to ask the right questions of brands (you’ll start hearing from those women soon, now that I got the “how we began” out of the way).
If you ever need anything, please reach out to us at [email protected] with any questions, concerns or comments on our product - or how we achieve our mission - because we are listening. We want to keep growing, that’s why we are in this.
Have a lovely day.
Barrett |
