null
FREE SHIPPING FOR ORDERS $40 AND MORE

3 things I learned from starting my own company, as told by my daughter and co-founder

Kanti Goods on Mar 21st 2017

1. Look around and honor a sense of adventure.

Nearly 7 years ago, I was visiting my daughter in India. While traveling around, we met some amazing small-scale artists living in difficult conditions with loads of potential, but they had very few opportunities to sell their products. A lightbulb went off - our idea was simple - give artists a job by sharing their goods with the world. After that trip, we launched Kanti Goods, a social enterprise and mother-daughter company that links artists with the international market. By opening our eyes and our hearts, we saw a need and were inspired to take action.

2. The power of giving back.

One of our first artists we supported came from a low caste background in Nepal. After nearly losing his life to a preventable illness, he had the opportunity to learn how to be a silversmith. Slowly, but surely, he was able to build his business and hire more people from his indigenous community.

Today, he creates beautiful custom pieces of silver jewelry for us. Recently, our artist told me that he was able to donate $10,000 to a school in his home town that was destroyed by the recent earthquake. If this isn’t the power of giving back, I don’t know what is. Starting this business has showed me the power of giving back and I try to emulate this vision every day.

3. The real meaning of beauty.

Our company, Kanti, means beautiful in the ancient language of Sanskrit. We thought this meaning befitting of our goal to share beautiful goods infused with beautiful stories with the world. Our #bebeautiful #bekanti campaign took this dream to another level, because it has empowered people to see the beauty in themselves, around the world, and in others. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

I hope these 3 lessons I’ve learned along the way inspire you to look around, be beautiful, and give back to the world.

Be Beautiful. Be Kanti.

- Ernestine