Crossing the Digital Divide: Opportunities to Scale Impact in the Artisan Sector
R.I.S.E. Artisan Fund invited Hedvig Alexander, co-founder of Powered by People, and Priya Krishnamoorthy, founder and CEO of 200 Million Artisans, to share their perspectives and recent research on opportunities in the artisan sector. Their conversation focused on the best ways to use digital technologies to scale the sector and create greater economic opportunities for artisan producers.
Reimagining the Artisan Sector
The artisan sector is the second-largest employer in the developing world after agriculture, worth over $32 billion every year according to the Artisan Alliance. Artisan activity creates jobs, increases local incomes, and preserves cultural traditions that in many places are at risk of being lost. Over 65% of artisan activity takes place in developing economies.
The majority of artisans are small producers – often women – working informally which too often means this is an overlooked, undervalued and underfunded economic sector with still untapped potential.
Reimagining the Potential of the Artisan Sector
In the spring of 2020 as shut downs were imposed to manage the outbreak of the coronavirus, artisan enterprises were severely impacted by canceled production orders, workshop closures, limited availability of raw materials and skyrocketing transportation costs. As these and other economic dislocations impacted our partners as well as our own operations, we needed to adjust and assess what we could do to alleviate the disruption both in the near term and for an uncertain future.