Upcycled Treasures from Koru Street

By Lorrie Baumann

Amy Stretmater had one of those advertising jobs where the job is only as secure as the account you’re working on, and when she began to see that the account wasn’t going to be there anymore, she decided to take the opportunity to pick up and leave the country for six months. “I thought, ‘Where could I go that I can’t go on an American two-week vacation?’” she said.

Since she’d already done quite a bit of traveling in Europe, she decided to go in another direction. “Leaving in September, I thought it would be better to go to the Southern Hemisphere, if for no other reason than that I didn’t have as much clothing with me,” she said.

She settled on New Zealand as a starting place, and then traveled into Asia. She was in Cambodia, about two-thirds of the way through her trip, when she noticed as she and her friend were taking a tuk tuk during a visit to Angkor Wat that she was seeing everywhere around her the workmanship of people who believed in re-purposing and reusing objects rather than simply throwing them away when they’d fulfilled the purpose for which they were originally created. It struck her that that’s quite different from the American culture in which she’d grown up. “We trade in our phone if it’s a year old,” she said.

That observation was still at the back of her mind when she left Cambodia to visit a friend who was living in Delhi, India, as a consular officer employed at the U.S. embassy. There, she visited a native market and learned about Conserve India, an organization that employs and trains hundreds of people from Delhi’s most disadvantaged communities to turn discarded plastic bags into upcycled products. The organization “works with artisans in the slums who are rag-pickers. One skill they have is where to find the good garbage,” Stretmater said.

Stretmater bought gifts for friends as well as a few things for herself from Conserve’s booth in the market, including a wallet that was in her hand when she paid for a meal after dinner with a friend once she was back in the United States and wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to find something to do with what I have learned,’” she said. “You don’t come home from six months away and go back to regular life – you have to change one little thing.”

Her friend noticed the wallet and commented on it, and it was at that moment that Stretmater knew what she wanted to do next, which was to help Conserve by importing some of its goods and selling them in a few local markets as a side project. “I think it would be good to talk about in job interviews,” she said.

Then store owners who saw the Conserve products in Stretmater’s market booths started asking if she sold wholesale. “Eventually, it became a full-time business,” she said. “I never got around to looking for that full-time job.”

Today, Stretmater is the owner of Koru Street, and she’s still traveling the world looking in local markets for artisans who create unusual gift items from recycled materials, especially materials that would normally go into the garbage. “I’m always trying to do things that are a little bit different, something more modern, something that I haven’t already seen here,” she said. “They do the design. The only thing I design is if I have to tweak something to make it work for the American market…. I want to use their skill set at designing everything.”

Among the items that Koru Street was offering this winter in the pavilions at the Las Vegas Market and in the Global Design area at The Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market was the klikety klik box, a gift box handmade in South Africa from discarded plastic bottles. It can be used closed as a gift box, or when it’s open, it can be used as a vase or an LED candle holder. Designs include birds, butterflies, flowers, seaside, kitchen and graphics. Three sizes are available, and retail prices range from $9 to $15.

Stretmater is also still working with Conserve, and from them, she’s importing bags in sizes ranging from small purses through messenger bags as well as wallets like the one that sparked the idea to start her business after her friend commented on it. They’re made from a variety of materials, including plastic bags, inner tubes, seat belts and tent canvas – all from India. Retail prices for the items range from $4.50 to $65, with the majority in the range between $4.50 and $15.