BEHIND OUR BRANDS
Getting to know Samantha Morshed from Pebble
How sweet are Pebble products? Their adorable collection of quirky animals and colourful toys make them a firm favourite of the Family Nation team.
Better yet, all of their products are 100% handcrafted by fairly paid women in Bangladesh, providing a safe and flexible working environment for those in need.
We absolutely love the range and what it stands for. That’s why we are proud distributors for Pebble here in Italy.
And now we are so excited to introduce you to the brains behind the brand, Samantha Morshed.
Hi Samantha! So great to speak to you, thank you for giving us a bit of your time.
We’ve love to start off by finding out what the inspiration was behind forming Pebble?
When we arrived as a family to Bangladesh in 2004, it was just impossible for me to see so much poverty and not try to do something to help.
I had seen many handicrafts projects in Bangladesh over the years and I really felt that they could achieve so much more,
and so with Hathay Bunano (the non profit organization we founded initially before the Pebble brand) we set out to demonstrate how handicrafts could be scaled into a hand made industry
which could provide valuable local employment to many women.
And look how much you went on to achieve - incredible! How would you describe Pebble in just three words?
Handmade, fair trade, naturally! That’s our tagline and it’s as relevant today as when we first started.
We love it! And what would you say makes your products truly unique?
Handmade products are all unique. Every item is slightly different from the next. This is the joy of handmade.
This is what shows you that it was made by a woman with love for the product and whilst the products are standard shapes, each one has a little of the woman who made it, in it.
That’s such a beautiful sentiment and something we definitely feel in your wonderful products.
Now: family! How do you balance parenthood and a busy work life?
It was very difficult for years! I think there is no easy way around this. As women we are expected to be able to do it all and its really tough.
When my children were younger I felt continually pulled between their needs and the needs of the business and emotionally that was very difficult for me.
In my business I was trying to make the world a better place – it was crucial to me. I really believed that it was possible to make the lives of thousands of women better and I was and still am, completely committed to that.
But my children are the loves of my life. They were both born very tiny and my eldest was in an incubator for 10 days. Nothing can prepare you for that and you can never be the same person again afterwards.
There is no balance between these two needs – I just took one day a time and tried to make the best decision I could at the time.
Now my children are older – 15 and 13 – and so they don’t need me so much and it’s a much easier balance for me. That’s all I can say – it gets easier.
Well we think you are truly inspiring to achieve so much in such difficult times!
We know that you have lived in the UK and Bangladesh, but where has been your favourite ever family holiday?
We love to go for holidays in Thailand and Malaysia. There are so many beautiful islands and we are so fortunate to be so close to them.
Living in London when my children were babies, a holiday to Malaysia was a very long flight and so we would generally choose holiday destinations closer to home.
But from Dhaka it’s just 2 hours to Bangkok. It’s one of the great perks of this location.
We are VERY jealous! So if you had to pick an all time favourite from the Pebble range, what would it be?
It has to be the octopus because it is still the best seller in the Pebble range and has been since it was introduced.
For many products we go through painstaking designs and redesigns and feedback and colour changes and it can take a long time to develop a new product.
For the octopus it was completely different. I was sitting watching tv one night and suddenly wanted to make an octopus and I only had three colours of yarn in my work basket.
I was too tired to get up and go and get more from my store and so I made an octopus with those three green / turquoise colours. And everyone loved it instantly. Sometimes you’re just lucky.
Our customers absolutely adore the octopus… and we love it too, it sits very proudly in the Family Nation showroom!
Are you able to pinpoint what it is that gives you the ultimate job satisfaction?
Without a doubt seeing children finish school. Many of the women who make Pebble toys will first pay off microfinance loans when they start working with us
and once they’ve removed that burden a huge proportion are very clear that they make Pebble toys in order to send their children to school and, more importantly,
keep their daughters in school until the end of high school, preventing the early marriage that happens when families can no longer afford to keep their daughters.
Seeing children finish school is fabulous because you know that the next generation will have a better and more prosperous life than their parents did and will have lots more opportunities.
We can only imagine what an incredible feeling that must be! Now finally, can you give us a clue about future plans for Pebble?
We’ve started to introduce a home range for Pebble and will continue to work on that with playmats, toy boxes, rugs, nursery decorations, etc.
We have lots of new avenues to explore all involving handmade and fair-trade in some way and we are excited to be working with new partners in Bangladesh, who are also fair trade, and who bring different handicraft skills to the range.
Thank you so much for speaking to us Samantha - it’s been fantastic hearing more about your incredible story!
Check out our full Pebble range here.
