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Map Magazine

Dreamers: JODIE FRIED

Posted by map mag on August 5, 2010

Interview by Frances Frangenheim.

Bholu is a small word for a global company with a giant scope. In its Indian Kaatchchhi translation, bholu is a term of endearment to a small child, which is poignant for many reasons, not least of which because Bholu is founder Jodie Fried’s precious baby. Adelaide-born and currently living in Los Angeles with her husband, Jodie started her ethical interiors company in 2004 when she approached women in India to create embroidery designs on quality Australian wool felt. Starting out with 20 artisans, Bholu has grown to employ up to 380 women who produce beautiful tactile items – cushions, throws, rugs, lampshades, wallpaper, fabric kids toys and linen. Bholu is also helping build schools for underprivileged littlies in India. At the heart of Jodie’s business decisions is a love of India and a responsibility to Bholu’s artisans, which makes the idea of ever giving up when it all gets too hard simply unfathomable.

The earthquake that struck the Indian town of Gujarat on 26 January 2001 was devastating. Measuring up to 7.9 on the Richter scale, it killed more than 20,000 people, injured another 167,000 and destroyed 400,000 homes. At the epicentre of the quake was Bhuj, an area where many traditional artisans live. At the time, Jodie Fried was on an artist residency in India and travelled to the disaster zone to help locals rebuild. Jodie stayed for four months and fell in love, both with the women and their incredible embroidered handiwork. Reminiscing about her experiences in Gujarat, Jodie knows it was the world trying to tell her to slow down and look up. At the time, she had been living in India for two years working feverishly in Bollywood and on other film projects. With a NIDA design degree under her belt, she was gung ho about following in her great grandfather’s footsteps and becoming a costume designer. She says her experience in Gujarat was like a slap in the face; a jolt to the system.

“I think it’s like when you trip over when you’ve got to get somewhere,” Jodie explains. “You’re really busy and you’ve picked your path and you’re charging down it and you trip and you fall and you hurt yourself and then you have to spend a moment getting up. And it’s in that process that you actually stop and you see all these other things … I think that’s what happened with the earthquake – I was presented with this whole other scenario of how I could be in this world and how I could use my creative skills to work with these women and help lift them out of poverty. And it just became a whole other journey, which was very accidental.”

The seed for Bholu was planted and in 2004 Jodie returned to Kaatchchhi with Australian fabrics. She approached the women she’d worked alongside years ago and invited them to make cushions and blanket samples using their traditional Indian embroidery techniques to create her simple, clean designs. Jodie is the first to admit the early days were a challenge, with countless frustrations along the way.

“It certainly wasn’t easy because you’re working with really remote communities and the barrier of language, and you’re working against the grain of all their traditional embroidery,” Jodie explains. “Indian embroidery is often symmetrical, even and very dense, using bright colours on cotton. Whereas I was asking them to work with Australian wool felt to do very free designs that they thought their kids could do – which is how we got the name Bholu – so I was trying to re-educate them about how we could work with their skills and how we could present that to customers.”

The concept was to marry the modern with the traditional but it wasn’t until the first load of orders arrived that the artisans began to understand Jodie’s vision and trust in the relationship.

For the first four years of Bholu, Jodie worked as a one-man band, travelling between India and Australia and managing both the major and the minute – design, fabric buying, global sales, exporting, packaging and posting the orders. She also set about raising funds to build kindergartens for underprivileged children in India and teamed up with Architects Without Frontiers to build the first Bholu School in 2007. There are now 10 kindergartens (each costs up to approximately $2,500) educating 250 kids. Plans are underway to incorporate community spaces and women’s health clinics  into future schools.

In the last two years Jodie has started to relinquish her control of the business to enable Bholu to grow further with the input of a passionate team spread out over the United States and Australia. Jodie says this step has been both frightening and wonderful in the same breath. Bholu has grown to employ 380 Indian artisans at peak production times and is stocked worldwide, so it’s clear Jodie has little choice but to rely on others to keep the wind in Bholu’s sails.

Jodie says she never dreamed Bholu would grow to such heights. She also didn’t set out to start a fairtrade company or an eco venture. Her goal was simply to pay women fair wages and to develop a steady source of income for them to become integral members in their community.  She was also determined for Bholu to own its environmental and social responsibilities. Ironically, the more she looked into the international guidelines around fairtrade, the more she realised her policies were spot on, although there still isn’t a sound system to classify fairtrade craft as there is for coffee.

Over the six years of challenges and successes, Jodie says it’s the love of India and its people that keeps her motivated. “It’s the reward  of knowing where Bholu goes, what it supports and what changes it is making. And that is the principal goal and foundation for the company. The minute that any of those elements change then it’s not what it ever set out to be.”

Her advice to others starting a fairtrade business in a developing country is to be true to your goal and to have unwavering passion and belief because it’s not an easy road. “You have to understand the culture and have some kind of connection with the people.” Jodie also says there’s  no magical short cut to launching an ethical socially responsible business: “They always take longer to get off the ground and they’re always more expensive to run.”

“That’s the next step. I’m sure it will be equally as difficult. But at least with all the work I’ve done with Bholu we can hopefully give a leg  up to people who have built their organisations to a certain level and now need that exposure to progress and employ more people. That’s definitely one thing I’d love to do.”

Jodie says she still has much to achieve with her work. “Bholu is now six years old and it’s really taken up until last year to run it smoothly and have the women in work full time. I don’t think I could do that single-handedly again; that is, work from the ground up. Instead, I would love Bholu to expand into different cultures so I’m starting to investigate some organisations in Peru and Nepal with people who are like mini Bholus.” The idea is to bring designs from different cultures under the one Bholu umbrella and aesthetic.