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Hand-beaded African animals
LYNNE KONSTANTIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I
n 2012, lifelong friends Becky Riess and Kris Engle had come to a crossroads in their careers. Each had worked hard for more than 20 years — Riess taking the corporate route and Engle becoming a South Africa-based entrepreneur and travelling around the world. They had learned a lot and earned enough, but both felt
A purchase from Thumbprint Gallery shows that a successful business can put people first.
they needed something more. They wanted to put their individual expertise to work in a way that could help others in need. Inspired by Engle’s adopted home of South Africa, the friends honed in on the idea of supporting fairly traded artisan companies in areas of the world greatly affected by unemployment, and to do so in a way that
A South African artisan at work
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JULY 9 • 2020
recognizes the entrepreneurial spirit. “Even though apartheid is over, the country was left badly scarred,” Riess said. The unemployment rate for South African women ages 18 to 35 is approximately 40 percent. With Engle managing business in South Africa and Riess handling things in the U.S., the pair launched Thumbprint Artifacts as a wholesaler, offering unique home decor and gift items handcrafted by South African women and sold to the U.S. market. Hand-beaded jewelry, hand-roasted coffee by Himelhoch’s, ceramics, felt baby booties, body butter — and Judaica — are among the items offered. Buoyed by interest from buyers at the semi-annual NY Now gift show — the largest
in the country — the business in 2018 opened a small shop in Detroit’s Eastern Market called Thumbprint Gallery. Now, inspired by the COVID19 quarantine, the friends have launched a website, thumbprintdetroit.com. “Our goal here at the Thumbprint fulfillment and gallery is to hire women from Detroit who we can train and employ. Now we’re helping women on two continents,” Riess said. Every year at the gift show, a group of women shopping for items for a North Carolina temple would stop by Riess’ booth and ask if she had any Judaica. “They loved what we offered, and they loved the idea of supporting fair trade, but there wasn’t anything for their specific needs,” Riess said. So Riess got in touch with
