The Oaxaca Collection
Welcome to the Oaxaca Collection! Whetstone has always cultivated a close and honoring relationship with the land, tracing the origins of food to the places and the people from around the world who know them most intimately.
We’re so excited to share our Oaxaca Collection with you. So let’s talk about it!
As a media company, we wanted to be very conscientious in our approach for Oaxaca Collection, our newest e-commerce vertical.
Our intention is to create a new type of media for Whetstone. One that offers tangible, consistent support for groups working with ecologically sound materials in ways that maintain and preserve their craft.
As we approached this new venture, we wanted to put the same ideas and values into practice that we share on our other platforms.
Since our inception, Whetstone has engaged in difficult and layered conversations within the diaspora around the grave realities of exploitation and appropriation. From thought leaders, we’ve learned different ways to rethink the roles we play in global supply chains.
At Whetstone, we are focused on creating and offering beautiful things that help teach and support ideas that center our planet’s wellbeing— and the people who are often erased in capitalistic systems of oppression.
As a platform (and as consumers ourselves) we see with too much frequency the way marketplaces silence creators and keepers of cultural knowledge from their own stories and craft. We are constantly looking at new models for how to dismantle exploitative frameworks.
So what is reflected in the price? When you see a ceramic for $45 that you could purchase in Oaxaca for much less, why buy it from Whetstone?
While we aim to always be a profitable business, we are not willing to sacrifice integrity or ethics to get there. We want to create a space, and market a product, in a way that is fair to all involved, making sure that everyone is getting paid and being seen.
With that in mind, here are some of the foundational ideas we are committed to:
When you buy something from the Oaxaca Collection, every person involved— from creation to marketing— has set their price for their labor without contest. What does that mean? It means that we gladly pay what people ask, without attempting to negotiate a lower rate.
Our payment to an artisan is not determined by a fixed percentage of our retail price. Rather, our retail price is shaped by how much an artisan asks for their work.
We never negotiate on prices with an artisan (unless it’s to suggest a higher rate that better reflects the value of their skill and artistry.) We also pay day rates for time spent filming their work.
Because the Whetstone focus is on an artisan’s story as well as their work, your purchase reflects the true cost of faithfully telling that story. All media for the Oaxaca Collection is shot onsite by Mexican film crews, and we always cover related lodging, food, and transportation costs.
We are also committed to transparent, ecologically sound sourcing of materials.
Examples include using cotton grown by co-ops on the Oaxacan coast, and using earth that is communally sourced and protected. We also work with natural dyes using plants cultivated in Oaxaca, and the paper from our journals is locally made using plants indigenous to the land.
We also commit to fully absorbing any breakage or loss in our shipments, and we work with a local Oaxacan liaison to make sure we maintain accountability when navigating cultural nuances.
In addition to our Oaxacan partners, Whetstone’s internal team is an integral part of making this collection possible. Editors, writers and web developers are all a piece of this pie.
We feel called to show up to this work in other ways, too. We use our presence to help amplify the social accounts of our artisan collaborators. As appropriate, we also share information about location and studio name to create opportunities to broaden their reach and grow their business as they desire.
Whetstone also shares all developed media with our artisans to use freely as they wish to promote their work.
It’s exciting to see artisans growing their audiences and selling their work. And it’s exciting to see you all falling in love with their art just like we have.
We hope to keep growing with your support in a way that allows us to keep sharing the stories of the people who make the things you love most, in a newly imagined framework.
At Whetstone, we appreciate your support and invite you to continue the conversation with us. Right now we’re listening to phenomenal episodes from one of our newest podcasts, Black Material Geographies, hosted by the incomparable Teju Adisa-Farrar.
Thank you for supporting Whetstone’s Oaxaca Collection. We are grateful that you are on this journey with us.