Samantha Morshed Interview (Part One)

Samantha Morshed Interview (Part One)

By Niki

Samantha Morshed, founder of Pebble Child, an organization that works to create local employment for rural women in Bangladesh, speaks about her inspiration and the business model she chose to create. (And some fun facts: Why the name Pebble? And what’s the Broken Needle Register?)

My pre-interview preparation for speaking to Samantha Morshed, founder of Pebble toys and the nonprofit Hathay Bunano, was mostly limited to staring and longing at pictures of Pebble’s food rattles – oh, how I still crave cupcakes every time I think of them! However, aside from learning that Pebble sells adorable and creatively designed hand-knitted toys, I also learned that the organization works for an admirable purpose: creating local employment opportunities for rural women in Bangladesh.

Then the day of the interview came along, and, waiting for five o’clock, I created a mental image of Samantha in my mind – I pictured a native Bangladeshi who wanted to give back to her country. Naturally, I felt surprised when I found myself looking at the cheerful face of a Caucasian from England with her charming British accent. I wondered, What made her forsake a comfortable life in England to dedicate herself to the impoverished Bangladesh?

What inspired you to move to Bangladesh and start Hathay Bunano?

Samantha clarified that she originally went to Bangladesh in 2004 for a six-month visit, for the purpose of showing her children “the other side of their culture” (her husband is British-Bangladeshi). What came next, however, was completely unplanned. “When we started to live there,” related Samantha, “it became clear that there was so much need…we felt morally obligated to do something about it.” Drawing from her love of arts and crafts, Samantha, believing that she “had some solutions to some of the problems” in the handicraft business model, “decided to just start up a small handicraft setup” herself. Thus, the nonprofit Hathay Bunano, meaning hand-knitted, was born.

How did you go about creating Hathay Bunano, and then Pebble?

Samantha immediately introduced her first “big problem” to be the aspect of Pebble’s work that I admire most: design. Samantha explained that, “One of big problems with handicraft projects was that everything was fine as long as one of the big donor organizations was paying for a designer… As soon as the designer’s contract finished and the money ran out, you could no longer make designs that people wanted.” Instead of giving in to periodic downfalls in design, Samantha “set about taking what you could learn from the readymade garments industry…after all, Bangladesh is one of the largest suppliers of T-Shirts and things in the world.” She took what she could learn from that large-scale industry, and worked to “apply it to the handicraft industry.” And, apparently, she took in a lot.

Pebble's delicious looking cupcake rattle,
 coming soon to Shopping for a Change!

The toys originally produced through Hathay Bunano were originally private labeled for other companies, but as Samantha explained to us, she decided to create the Pebble brand, “really because…the story behind the women at Hathay Bunano was not coming out. The large companies who were taking our products were very keen to keep it a secret, to avoid competition. It was never my intention originally to create a brand. It was my intention to increase employment through the handicraft model.”

Are the women working at their homes, or are they working at set locations?

“One of the biggest problems with the traditional handicraft model and working out of homes is that you can’t guarantee basic health and safety. This goes back to the way that we started…selling to large organizations. We needed to demonstrate that we were able to maintain basic health and safety requirements. One of the most important ones is the Broken Needle Register. We can’t guarantee that if women are working in their homes. We also can’t guarantee that there’s no child labor involved. If you sell into fair trade stores, the child labor issue is smaller. There is an understanding that if children are going to school…it’s considered okay if they are working two hours a day after school. But with larger companies it doesn’t work.”

Well, I was now wondering, as I’m sure some of you are as well, what the “broken needle register” is. Though I was afraid that it might just be common knowledge, I took a leap and asked anyway…

What is the Broken Needle Register?

It turns out that the Broken Needle Register is a factory requirement “worldwide.” Though I myself found it both interesting and slightly ridiculous, in hindsight, it seems like a good safety measure. “If a needle breaks…you need to find all the pieces of that needle and stick them into a register.”

And, finally, for the sake of curiosity…

How did you come up with the name Pebble?

“There’s nothing emotional attached with it. A good name should be two syllables maximum so it can sell in any country. A ‘pebble’ is a little thing, but at the same time it’s strong and soft. It just seemed to fit.”

Hi, I’m Niki, and I’m an intern this summer at Shopping for a Change! I’m a rising junior in high school, with a passion for singing and playing the piano. So far, I’ve had a great experience working, learning about marketing, reading inspiring stories, conducting interviews, and now blog-writing. Hope you enjoy reading the installments of the interview!