Jewelry company empowers women in P.A. and around the world

A jewelry company in the U.S., which started up two years ago, made its way to Canada last August and with it brought the motto “look good, feel good, do good.”

Gayle Knudsen is a stylist for Color By Amber in Prince Albert. She said the owner, Talley Goodson, lives in Salt Lake City Utah but is inspired by watching women in impoverished countries create the unique designs in his jewelry.

“The owner of the company [is] an avid traveler and so he travels along with the head designer and they go all over just looking for new things every year for the new catalogues,” she said. “They use a lot of the same women over and over and then they just get them to then craft something new.”

Color By Amber empowers women like Knudsen in North America but also women in places like Mexico, Columbia, South Africa, Nepal, China and Indonesia.

“There’s this one place where they live in this village that’s so far from everything and so there’s not enough work in that village. The men are gone most of the year and they go to the city wherever there’s work,” she said. “The women are just kind of stuck there and they often run out of money and if the men come home they often steal what money these women have made, and they take it with them and then these women are left with nothing.”

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Through the sale of the jewelry Knudsen said the women in countries around the world can put their money into lock boxes and take out loans, which the men in their life can’t access.

“They’re paid fair trade wages for their product that they make and then at the end of the year all of the ladies and their villages will receive 10 per cent of the net profits…of the whole catalogue,” she said. “They get things like education, they get new looms to do their weaving on, they get teachers brought in, they get things for their water supply… [and] micro-savings accounts.”

The interlayer or design of the jewelry is made from things like organic cotton, banana fiber and silk, which is all gathered and made in impoverished countries and then put in between Ecoresin which is made in Utah.

“The Ecoresin is resin which is a plant based material and they call it Ecoresin because its 40 per cent recycled. What they do is they actually take two layers of the Ecoresin and they put an interlayer which is the design that you see in between…and it gets molded together,” she said. “For instance on my bracelet they have this fabric that they’ve actually laser cut and put it between the layers of the Ecoresin.”

Goodson also owns 3form which uses Ecoresin in making commercial buildings and signs.

Knudsen said this material is beautiful, durable and safe for the environment.

“They send, what is considered, zero per cent to landfills, everything’s recycled from their facilities,” she said. “I know the owner has actually said too that if he’s made these signs and dividers and that kind of thing that he doesn’t want anybody to throw them out, so if there’s a remodel and they’re getting rid of it send it back to him and they will recycle it.”

kbruch@panow.com

On Twitter:@KaylaBruch1