Case Study | Smateria

“Smateria is not only about recycling, it is also about creating usefull, attractive and innovative items from the most mundane materials” With this line Smateria welcomes us to their home page. Opened in 2006 in Phnom Penh Cambodia, Smateria is a small handicraft workshop and shop wich designs and sells costume jewellery, fashion accerssories and home decorations. “Smateria is all about transformation. A used milk carton becomes a diary or maybe a handbag. Creative thinking adds value to an object, regardless of its orginal worth” All of their products are made from basic materials, in the workshop, where everyday, local people shape tham into new forms and ideas. The company has forty craftsmen and women, and even though they came from different backgrounds, still “their hands and minds work together with a common purpose: to create and improve, to learn and teach, day after day after day...”

Smateria is not an NGO. It is a commercial enterprise set up by two partners who are trying to make a sustainable living from selling products. They respect international labour rules and train and develop employees, in a non-exploitative manner. Most bussines in Cambodia are family-based. Smateria supports this approach, by employing other members f the same family. With that the idea of community gets reinforced.Smateria purchases the necessary equipment, and this is repaid by emloyees wanting to take ownership, via an interest-free micro –credit scheme. Mind shift is already done.

The products are sended world wide, having the distrtibution points in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and UK.

Though Smateria is still owned mostly by non locals, most of the craftsmen are directly implicated on the company, and not only getting the trainning experience, but the will of being part of a greater community. Still might not be perfect, but is a great example of locals taking part in enterprenuership.

–Reference

Smateria. [http://www.smateria.com], retrieved Apr 18, 2010.