Atitlan Leather is not your typical online store. It is a medium that connects the unique designs of Guatemala with the world. It is a place where you can both support the communities of Lake Atitlan, and keep their remarkable leather traditions alive. Aside from Lake Atitlan itself, in no other place can one find such a remarkable assortment of leather products available for purchase.
It’s because of this that we are delighted to feature Atitlan Leather, and learn how its founder, Walter, turned his desire to help, into a successful global business.
From Volunteer To Entrepreneur
I was four months into my six-month tenure with Guatemalahousingalliance.org. In the early morning I would often venture to Cafe Cristalinas. It was here that I would often run into a man named Richard. He was a cantankerous yet knowledgeable old man. I often found him either building a website on WordPress, setting up amazon and eBay listings, or simply reading a book. He came for the coffee, as did I.
As we sipped our coffees we often debated politics, and also talked about business. This friendship often took us trivia night at El Barrio, where together, we made quite the formidable team. (trivia team tip: diversify your team as much as you can by mixing young/ old men / women – you get the gist oh, and, find Richard). Since we won almost every Wednesday, we would then see each other at our free or discounted brunch on Sundays.
I saw him around town more than anyone else and we always found ourselves in enjoyable conversation. While we never ended up agreeing much about politics, I really enjoyed our debates. When talking business there was one thing he never stopped repeating, “start your online business today! It’s the future!” I floated the idea around until one day it sunk in that I’m leaving in a couple months and if I wanted to do something it had to be now. His advice changed my life.
Discovering My Niche
The seed was planted. I was on the lookout for a product to sell. One day I paid a visit to the villages jack of all trades and networker, Victor Tuch. He himself was quite the entrepreneur. His most eccentric endeavor I can remember was hiring lucha libre wrestlers from the capital to perform at the annual fair. I admired his ambition, and I generally liked Victor. He was more than happy to help when I reached out to him. His philosophy was, what’s good for the community is good for him. He introduced me to coffee plantation owners, avocado farmers, fabric weevers, and out of all this I wasn’t quite convinced I could pull it off. Coffee is a huge market with child labor almost certainly involved, avocados will rot and are heavily regulated for importation, and Mayan fabric was an already saturated market. Then he introduced me to his brother in law Domingo (everyone he introduced me to was probably his brother in law) who had a small leather shop struggling to keep alive due to a prior bad partnership. It checked all the boxes: the product wouldn’t expire, importing is relatively easy, and leather was something you could be creative with. I was convinced that if I were going to do something, this was it!
Building A Partnership
Now that I narrowed down what I wanted to produce I had to determine if my partnership with Domingo would be viable. There was a certain level of trust I needed to be establish as I would be out of town most of the time and I also wanted to know how his earnings would be generally spent. I passed many afternoons in his home and shop learning about leather and his family. He has three kids, two girls and a boy. Even during economic struggle, he managed to send both his girls to good high schools where they both ended up graduating from. Both eventually went to college to become teachers. This might not sound like much to us coming from rich countries, but this was a huge positive in my book, as women in these communities often get sent to work, making low wages to contribute to the family. He could have had them working in the shop for example and this would not be uncommon. Not only did I learn to regard him as a good family man, but I also learned he was actively involved in his community church doing charitable acts. After months of time spent with him and his family, I was convinced this could work and that the endeavor was worth the effort.
A Leap Of Faith
I came up with some product ideas related to my traveling situation and began selling them to people in town. I was pleasantly surprised to find the expats really liked supporting fellow expats in their endeavors. With their feedback I choose a few product lines and made my first real order to take with me across the border. This order was paid for with a $3,000 cash advance from my credit card as I was a recent college graduate with $30,000 in student debt. I’ve often contemplated where Atitlan Leather could have gone if I were able to fully dedicate myself to the company rather than enter the workforce to service my debts, but that’s for another blog piece.
Making A Positive Impact
Being an expat living on the lake you’ll find plenty of opportunities to make a positive impact. I think if there is anything you can take away from this story is that living on Lake Atitlan can inspire you to do something good in a community of great, colorful people with tremendous potential. Opportunities will present themselves to those who are looking and there to take them. As a foreigner you have an enormous advantage to make a real difference in people’s lives on the lake. While there will be many obstacles, this difference you’re making will make it all worth it in the end.