Supporting artisans, preserving communities
Among the strengths and selling points of the Morpho Travel Experience model is the company’s partnership agreements with artisans across the 11 markets it serves. When a new territory is opening, the Morpho business development team prepares in-depth research about the key tourist attractions, symbols of the country and the cues that will entice them to shop for destination merchandise.
Product sectors and skilled partners are then chosen, based on their ability to deliver, their reliability, alongside price and quality considerations. And the creative process through to the production is overseen and quality-controlled by Morpho teams.
A selection of videos on this page showcases the work of Comunidad Latinoamericana de Artesanos, promoted by Morpho across its estate
The partnerships are multi-layered, ranging from support for communities, mentoring around the realities of selling at the airport, to margin support for small actors that could not otherwise enter the travel space.
The epitome of this support programme is Comunidad Latinoamericana de Artesanos (CLA), promoted by Morpho Travel Experience, and which seeks to tell the stories and preserve the cultural legacy of Latin American arts and crafts. In short, it is one community across five countries (so far).
CEO Adriana Echandi has been closely involved with this initiative since she founded it in 2018. Alongside the company’s purchasing and marketing team, senior management identified 38 skilled artisans from Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru and Chile. These artisans have been working with Morpho for many years and have shown exceptional performance and sales, says the company.
In May 2019, Morpho gathered these artisans in Lima, Peru, to exchange knowledge, experiences and talent through workshops and courses aimed to improve their business management skills and help them to tell the stories behind each product.
From that moment, Morpho teams scheduled visits to each of their craft studios, from Mexico City to the island of Chiloé, Chile, and documented the creative processes in video (as seen on this page). These media assets are linked to each product through QR codes, allowing travellers from around the world to access the artisans’ stories and validate the impact of their purchase in each country.
Morpho says: “Everywhere we have launched the CLA initiative, we have had a sustained economic impact and created linkages to over 600 families who work directly and indirectly with the project. Their collective efforts have enabled their crafts to reach people worldwide.”
Adriana Echandi says: “All of them have worked with us more than ten years and we have accomplished a lot together.
“In many places we work with the airports to display the work of the CLA artisans. We pay for them to come to the airport, to meet travellers and show what they can do. They are at the heart of our engagement with travellers in many places.”
Partnering for joint profit in Curacao (above); below, collaborators in the Emprende concept across Latin American markets
Dialling up the local experience with Emprende
Unrelated to the CLA enterprise, noted in the main article, but one in which local artisans are supported across Morpho market, is the Emprende concept. Each Emprende store is made individual by having the local telephone code including in the brand, 506 for Costa Rica for example.
Strategic Development Director Marcela Villalobos Moya says: “These are entrepreneurs who we give a platform to expand to new markets, people who often began with their passion as a hobby and are trying to extend that into a business. “
Emprende sprung from the need to cater to growing demand from young travellers, primarily millennials, for locally made products that embody innovation and contemporary design with local identity, rather than solely focusing on explicit cultural heritage or traditional crafts.
Additionally, Morpho identified a need to support entrepreneurs who had reinvented themselves during the pandemic and gained traction within close circles and social media networks – but who faced stagnation due to a lack of tools and resources to invest in digital platforms, or physical spaces to take the necessary next step when travel resumed.
Morpho Travel Experience says that this was where “the desire and creativity of entrepreneurs eager to keep growing intersected with our aspiration to create more experiences for our passengers and meet their needs.”
Emprende 506 was the first space to open at San José Airport in Costa Rica, later expanded in that country to Liberia Airport. Altogether, over 30 ventures have been featured. The next will be Emprende 56, located in the Central Plaza at the new International Terminal in Santiago, Chile, later this year.
August 2023