Nest Building

If you take a trip to www.citaras.com, what you notice on the home page is this note:

We’ve joined our expertise with Intarsia Concept to make these unique handmade items available through Nest, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting women in craft-based businesses through the provision of micro-loans. Shop here for these beautiful handmade products and 30% of your purchase goes toward raising more money for Nest microloans.

With this post, I wanted to describe these relationships in more detail.

It was not long after moving to Turkey that I noticed the abundance of handmade items and the ability of Turkish women to make just about anything. That's when eBay was becoming a household name so I began exploring ways to sell product online. This is the short story of how Citara's was born.

Through Citara's I developed experience working locally with artisans, developed an eye for design and craftsmanship, and began to learn about Turkish culture and history. Since I was not a business student, I found myself scouring the Internet for topics like marketing, branding, and sales.

Little did I know that my future friend and business partner Figen Cakir was doing the same thing.

It was natural for us to form Intarsia Concept, a site and service that gathers and shares resources people can use to develop their creative businesses. As staunch believers in social responsibility, we have donated many hours volunteering with local artisans to share our experience so that they can also build their own creative businesses.

One result of our work in this area is that we have curated a collection of handmade Turkish products that we've put up for sale on the Nest website.

Nest is a nonprofit organization that empowers female artists and artisans around the world through a unique combination of interest-free microfinance loans, mentoring from established designers, as well as a market in which to sell their crafts.

We've found this relationship to be mutually beneficial in that we can sell local handmade products and 30% of the sale of the products goes back to Nest to be distributed as more microloans.

Shop here for handmade Turkish products that support the cycle of women's creative entrepreneurship.

Everyone wins.