Progress Report On Elhadji Koumama’s Business

Elhadji Koumama has been marketing high quality jewelry for about 20 years. He has gone from frightening journeys to Lagos to trips to Europe and, in the last eight years, annual visits to the United States.

Elhadji’s first venture outside of Agadez was in the early 1990s during the first Tuareg rebellion. There were no tourists in town to buy his family’s jewelry and everyone was hungry, really hungry. Adults ate a few mouthfuls of pounded millet cooked in water each day. Children ate more often, but the same food which has little nutritional value. They could not afford goat cheese or powdered milk and certainly not meat. Elhadji proposed to his family that he take the jewelry they had made to Lagos, Nigeria and search for his father’s European customers. His older brothers opposed the idea because it meant giving him all the money that the entire extended family had, the equivalent of about $30. However, his older sisters supported him. As is typical in Inadin Tuareg families, if a consensus cannot be reached the women make the decision. Elhadji’s mother was dead so his older sisters decided that Elhadji should go. Before he left he borrowed a little money from a rich man so that the family would have some food while he was gone.

He traveled for three days each way in a dangerously packed minibus. He didn’t know anyone in Lagos so at first he slept on the street, barely closing his eyes for fear that he would be robbed. After asking everyone he saw he found customers and sold all of the jewelry. His family was amazed when he returned with the money, as was the man who loaned him money which Elhadji repaid the day he arrived in Agadez. Elhadji and his family made jewelry again, this time a little more than for the first trip. Each time he sold the jewelry and brought back more money. He made seven trips between Agadez and Lagos before the crisis eased and they had enough food to eat and money to buy silver.

After the rebellion ended in 1995 the European customers returned to Agadez. In 1997 Elhadji was invited to go to Germany to do demonstrations and sell jewelry. He has made many trips to Europe since then.

My husband, Larry Lossing, met Elhadji in 1999 during his first trip to Niger. Larry purchased a beautiful pendant and then asked to meet the artisan who made it. Larry and Elhadji quickly became friends and Elhadji invited Larry to have dinner with him and his family. In the days before internet and cell phones it was difficult to stay in contact. There were the occasional very difficult landline telephone calls and messages passed from people traveling through Agadez.

Elhadji’s came to San Francisco in May 2001 for a three week visit. He had a small backpack with jewelry and a change of clothes. The morning after he arrived Larry gave him some money as he knew that he would not have had a chance to get dollars. Several years later Elhadji confessed that he had borrowed the money for the plane ticket and had absolutely no money in any currency. He came trusting Allah and Larry.

In 2001 Larry and I were both busy full-time attorneys. We knew nothing about selling jewelry but I offered to try to help Elhadji. Some was sold to friends, a little to a San Francisco shop and most of the rest to a freelance trader who waited until the afternoon his flight left to bargain hard for what she knew were desperation prices. Elhadji left the rest of the jewelry with me.

TuaregJewelry.com, a sole proprietorship was formed in the summer of 2001. I legally own the business but share decisions with Elhadji. It is not a non-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation because all of the profits go to Elhadji who runs the business in Niger for the benefit of all of the artisans. All time, including mine, is volunteered. No salaries are paid to anyone.

In the fall of 2001 we launched the first version of www.TuaregJewelry.com. It was a basic off the shelf website that didn’t work well but at least we had a way to sell on the internet. The website was entirely redone in 2006 and now serves as both a wholesale reference and a retail online store.

Retail sales continued on an ad hoc basis until 2006. We participated in street fairs, juried art festivals, trunk shows, open houses, “Tuareg jewelry Tupperware parties,” private sales through word of mouth, etc. By the end of that year sales had increased tenfold over the first year. Of course, we started in mid-May 2001 and had only modest sales that year.

In 2004 Elhadji opened a seasonal retail shop in the Hotel de la Piax, a large new hotel on the east side of Agadez. While it was good for him to have a store in Agadez the shop was too far from the center of town where most of the tourists went shopping to do much business.

The wholesale business began in a small way in 2006. The long term objective is to sell most of the jewelry wholesale with some juried art festivals, the internet and special shows supplementing the income with retail sales. While there is not a lot of profit in the wholesale business the larger quantities in the orders mean more work for the artisans.

2007 was a banner year for TuaregJewelry.com because of the very popular exhibition, “The Art of Being Tuareg,” which had its first run at the Fowler Museum at UCLA and then moved on to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Elhadji demonstrated silversmith skills and Hadija, his stepmother, did leatherwork for the first two weeks of the Cantor exhibition. The Cantor Bookshop sold, and continues to sell, a lot of the Koumama jewelry. We joined the Museum Store Association and participated in our first trade show. There were also retail sales at the art festivals and other events.

In February 2007 some Tuaregs rebelled against the government and fighting broke out between the rebels and the military. Elhadji returned to Agadez in mid-June, realized that his beloved hometown was no longer a safe place for him and fled to Niamey with his wife and children the following day. He immediately devised a plan to keep both the artisans who stayed behind in Agadez and those who had also fled to Niamey working. He turned the terrible situation into an opportunity.

First Elhadji asked his oldest brother, Sidi, to work with the Agadez artisans. Sidi distributes the assignments, hands out the silver, makes sure that the work is of the highest quality and finished on time. He pays the smiths the agreed amount for their work. Then he arranges to deliver the jewelry to Elhadji in Niamey, not an easy task considering that it has to go through a war zone.

In 2005 Elhadji built a house in Niamey to use when he was in the capital on business and also for other people who needed a safe place to stay. Right after he arrived in 2007 he built a large tent of palm frond mats where the silversmiths could work and sleep. It was too small for everyone to sleep in so some spread their mats nearby in the sand. Initially most of the men were there without their families. Kola and their oldest daughter, Amina, cooked large quantities of macaroni and rice with thin gravy for all of them to eat. It was a grim time.

After a lot of discussion with me Elhadji decided in the fall of 2007 to buy a small piece of land in the Plateau, one of the wealthiest areas of Niamey. He built two shops side by side with space for a workshop on the side porch and behind the store. In the first few months there was little business. Gradually the word spread that the Koumama jewelry is the best and people began to come and buy. He now is doing a good business and counts ambassadors, embassy personnel and well to do Africans among his customers. The second shop has been rented for now. Someday he will expand to that space as so that he has room to display the leather things made by the women and beautifully tooled leather boxes made by other Tuaregs.

The number of silversmiths working with Elhadji has grown from about 20 men to more than 50, although there is not yet enough work to keep everyone busy all of the time. As Elhadji says they are a real society with people from several parts of Niger working with him. He is even training some Hausa men to be silversmiths, something unheard of in the Inadin Tuareg community. One is well on his way to becoming a master. The second man is now learning the skills by working on nickel. He is showing great promise. The third man is polishing silver, the last and very important step in making the jewelry. He works very hard so Elhadji has promised him that soon he will start learning the craft. Being silversmiths will give these men much brighter futures.

The silversmiths working with Elhadji are paid about twice the going rate in Niamey. Other people who buy jewelry are unhappy with him because they are being forced to pay people a fairer wage. Many smiths want to work for the Koumama group so Elhadji can select the most talented ones.

In 2008 we expanded our wholesale marketing. In addition to attending the Musuem Store Association show we participated in the San Francisco Gift Show in January. We got a big break when TuaregJewelry.com was selected to show in the Handmade section of the August New York International Gift Show, the only juried part of the huge show. The sales were good and customers suggested a number of interesting new non-jewelry project. Samples are being made now and will be at our booth at the January New York show.

Our dream at the beginning in 2001 to create real jobs for talented artisans so that they could support themselves and their families without handouts from anyone has become a reality. We have many ideas to keep the dream growing bigger and better every year and to someday have enough business so that everyone who wants to work hard will have the dignity of steady employment.

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