Money Date With Reca
/Every Friday I recommend having a money date…with a mimosa. Hence the name of my blog, Money & Mimosas.
Your money date is your special time to review your finances, celebrate your wins, and reflect on how you used your money to make a difference. Feel free to do it alone or with your money buddy. If you’d like a step-by-step guide for your money date, click here to download your free checklist.
In these money date articles, Money & Mimosas features small to medium-sized businesses that practice sustainability and ethical sourcing. This week we’re featuring Reca, a New Zealand-based curated digital marketplace of beautiful quality handcrafted jewelry that supports women who are building better lives for themselves.
Meet Myint Aung, the founder of Reca
How did growing up with strong female role-models impact you when starting your business?
When I was young I was raised by my aunty in Myanmar, and both my aunt and my mum had to be entrepreneurs to make a living. Business is about taking risks, but business in Myanmar is really different to what we think of today. For my mum this involved travelling a lot, improvising on what she could buy and sell, and potentially ending up in dangerous situations, sometimes even worrying about being shot at by rebels. Don’t worry, she wasn’t doing anything immoral like running drugs or anything like that, it was just a tough environment. They’re both incredibly strong women who didn’t have to rely on husbands to provide for them – which is not easy to do when you have kids and when you are a woman in a small town. So they’ve both been through a lot, and they really are fearless.
Starting your own business is scary, cutting down your hours at your ‘real job’ is scary, putting your career on hold is scary, and working late at night on your business is tough. I’m really lucky that my role models have given me the strength and courage I needed to get started and keep going.
Why is the slow fashion movement so important?
Fast fashion has a huge impact on the environment. We don’t see a lot of it because we’re lucky and live in a clean, green country and all our rubbish and recycling just gets picked up. But it’s still there and causing so many problems all over the world. It eventually catches back up to us - for example, micro plastic from our clothes ends up in the oceans and in the stomachs of the seafood we eat. Not ideal.
It’s also a major social issue. People making the clothes are mistreated, underpaid and often forced to work in poor conditions for the sake of cheap and disposable fashion, and it’s just not fair.
How do you give back to other businesses in your community?
We are still a very young business and finding our feet, so right now we end up getting more help than we give back. We do try to shop locally as much as we can, and support local businesses.
A lot of our suppliers are from overseas, but that’s because these are really amazing causes that we’re happy to support, not because of price. We’re excited to keep supporting these causes but are trying to look at local suppliers too. Something we’re trying to start up is working with local female resettled refugees from Myanmar to make high quality candles. A lot of these women can’t speak English well, and don’t have a great education but have great work ethics. There’s a lot of government support of course, but we want to help in any way we can.
What advice would you give to another woman who is thinking about starting her own business?
Think about something you are passionate about and something that aligns with your values then just start it - no matter how perfect you want your idea to be, you will want to change it down the track anyway. So don’t wait for the perfect moment to do it or for your idea to be perfect, just do it.
