Hi Pamela,
Made it at last!! Rx

Hi,
Would be happy to meet up if your in Florence, yes I should be in town while your here, although I leave just after to Milan for fashion week. Drop me an email and we can set something up. Looking forward to it.
Sass

hey Pamela

You have an awesome background! I hope to connect more with you whilst I intern with the EFF.

jacqueline

HI Pamela, I am happy to add you as a friend. I had a quick look at your wesbite link, but haven't had the time to really review it, but it looks like something I might want to add to my resource list on by website www.ecofashiontalk.com.
Sass Brown

ya ,everything is going well .i am new here ,hoping for some friends and contacts in fashion industry.
how was your birthday ?

hey happy birthday...

hi Pamela,

Thanks for your interest in what Sawang Boran is doing!
Here's a summary of this is as a business.

It started just over 3 years ago as an experimental project - could fair trade prices + a policy of returning to natural dyes revitalise traditional silk weavers' sense of excellence and ownership, and could the latter in turn generate a sustainable flow of income?
Once the pilot phase had proven that the project was indeed viable I set about registering a company here, which took a long long time. Nobody seemed to understand that I wanted a company for non-monetary profit-making - in Thailand as in many other places, this is supposed to be 'charity', but the point is that charity cannot put traditional weaving sustainably on the market.
So as I fumble along I suppose I am trying to invent another sort of business model, where 'business' serves higher purposes.
Profits? Not yet! The profits are of another sort - the profit of regenerated local knowledge and local ecosystems, of reawakened cultural excellence, and they are indeed happening, which is what keeps me going.
I can't begin to think in terms of financial profits - with a policy of fair prices to producers AND to clients, I am hoping to be able to get Sawang Boran on a sustainable business track by end of this year, using an e-commerce website that is alas very slow in the making. For the time being, I sell informally to a growing network of fans chiefly in Europe - during trips to Europe and elsewhere, or via internet with the help of photos.
I am training an assistant in the village (I want the whole operation to be handled there to maximise the income to the village), who can eventually take care of much of the day-to-day management work and quality control among the weavers.

I'll be in Europe end May-early June. Any chance we might meet?

Let me know what else you'd like to find out (messages on this site have to be short). I'll respond as soon as I can!

best wishes for the Thai New Year!