| Ousmane Macina |
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Relationships and the Art of Business In Mali, Macina says, “there’s no paper, no receipts, just a handshake, and trust.” Business relationships are established at a very personal level in Mali, where Macina says, “You cook together and you eat together, and you come back to the studio.” A client may stay with you two or three nights. Only then, do you decide about the work that needs to be done. After many years of mastering his craft and running his own store in Bamako, the capital of Mali, Macina moved to New York City, and shortly thereafter to Boston, in 1990. “New York was a big change. So, first when I came here, it was not easy,” Macina says. A friend advised him to try to get a job “in a company.” Already a jeweler and businessman, Macina was not swayed to work for someone else. “I said, I cannot work for a company. I want to work in my company, and have people work for me!” But running his own company in the United States presented immense challenges, especially in the beginning. In America, Macina says, “Almost anything you do, you have to write. I didn’t know how to write in English at that time. And, it was not easy. I had to go back and forth every three months… and do what I love in Mali. And then, I’d come back [to the U.S.] and try to learn a new process because I had the intention to stay.” The American system of financial record keeping and reporting was the most difficult for Macina to navigate. Despite a language barrier, he managed to sort through regulations such as obtaining a business license, filing for a federal tax ID number, keeping abreast of importing laws and declaring goods as he crossed international lines. “I got a lot of bumps,” Macina reveals. “Once I came here and I didn’t know how to declare things into America, and they seized it. When they seized it, I had to get a lawyer.” Fortunately, his lawyer not only helped him pull through that specific situation, but he also prepared Macina for future difficulties by teaching him to read the laws for himself and to stay current  with importing regulations. Mostly, Macina says, he has learned to, “ask a lot of questions.”In Mali, Macina says, “you make money, you spend money. Nobody will come up to you for anything. And, that’s the difference.” But working with U.S. tax and importing laws, Macina proclaims, “there are a lot of ways that you can do something illegal without knowing it.” Nonetheless, Macina has found a way to use his business experience from Mali—the custom of creating trusting, one-on-one relationships—to help him manage his affairs here, in the U.S.; even in the practicalities. “You just have to be very vigilant, and ask, and learn,” Macina explains. “You’ve got to go to the offices, [for example] the tax office. I go there myself, and I ask them how to pay it. That’s a good experience. Because when you go there, somebody will tell you how to do it, once, twice, three times. Whatever you don’t understand, just ask them. That’s how I learned to conduct business in the legal way.” Likewise, connecting with people around him has helped Macina develop an entrepreneurship that is creatively fulfilling and meaningful, beyond the “business” of it all. “Interacting with people,” Macina confides, ”the business made that very easy. I make a lot of friends wherever I go. Any city here is like my house, because I have friends there. I don’t even need a hotel.” “You see, artists connect very easily, because they have the same qualities, the same ideas.” For example, when Macina sets up his booth at a show, artists will approach him and start a conversation about his work. “I love artists,” Macina exclaims, “because communication [with them] is easy and simple. You meet them and, yes, it’s a business; but also, they’re not businesspeople, they’re artists. They really just have to do the business part because it’s part of life—part of American life. But that will not void the friendship and the craftsmanship of being an artist.” Tradition of Business Macina’s family has been jewelers for perhaps fourteen centuries. They made jewelry for the kings of regions including the Macina, Seku Amadu and Amadu Amadu Empires. Macina is the oldest of twelve in his family, where he and all of his brothers learned jewelry making from his father. As a child, Macina attended a French school, but went home afterward to work in his father’s jewelry shop. His first job was using the goatskin blower (a traditional technique for melding gold), and he began to make pieces at the age of seven. Traditionally, as the oldest in the family, Macina would have taken over his father’s shop. But he chose, instead, to move to the capital city of Bamako and open his own jewelry store. Though he broke with tradition in the strictest sense, Macina still kept the family line of jewelry making. Because in the broader sense, Macina has been a mast head for his family’s heritage and brought their jewelry to the world. After living on the East Coast for twelve years—in New York and Boston—Macina moved permanently to Santa Fe in 2002, where he established his jewelry studio. With Santa Fe as his home base, Macina travels extensively and participates in domestic and international contemporary/fine art shows, folk art shows and craft fairs. He offers jewelry making demonstrations in museums, and has taught at the Brookfield Craft Center in Connecticut, and the Portland College of Art in Maine. In Santa Fe, he participates in the International Folk Art Market and has collaborated on a number of pieces with Santa Fe fine jeweler, Valerie Fairchild. He does all this while sustaining a cooperative center for crafts in Mali. The center, which he built and organized, serves as a hub for artists from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to produce jewelry and other traditional crafts for international marketing. Service to Humanity in the Know-How of Business For Macina, developing a market for his jewelry and other African artisans serves two primary purposes: First, it is a means to share his culture with others and connect people. At shows, for example, Macina says visitors “see things [hand-crafted jewelry]. It’s unusual… it’s nice. It attracts them, and they ask questions about the piece. And there you go, that will bring a conversation about a different culture which is far, far away from them… It’s a huge contribution to the whole world.” Second, Macina says, “It’s for helping them [the people of Africa]. It’s making them connected to the world. It is… really important to spread the pieces, until we see the pieces, and we see them again, and again, and again. From different tribes, from different areas. In Mali, in Niger, in Burkina Faso.” With these goals in mind, Macina has learned to adjust and create jewelry which suits different markets, while retaining the core of traditional design and method. Traditional Fula earrings, for example, are boat or banana shaped at the bottom, and look like a slightly twisted star fruit. In Mali, they are often very large—hanging to the shoulder, with a diameter of five or six inches. Macina was the first goldsmith to produce traditional Fulani earrings in a smaller size, which he sells most frequently in the United States. As Macina explains it, “I do museum shows, folk art shows, international shows, and domestic shows. There’s quite a difference between them, and different merchandise.” Though, he admits, recognizing the difference between shows and their markets—what sells and what doesn’t—has come through trial-and-error. “I was disappointed at some point because I would take my traditional jewelry to contemporary shows, and… I would sell nothing! I would lose money. And, I would think that they are nuts,” he says with laughter. “But, I ended up learning where to go with which jewelry.” Macina teaches this business practice at the cooperative center in Mali, as well—where artists are making new sizes of Fulani earrings. Although the artists sometimes need convincing to alter their traditional techniques and design, Macina says the cooperative helps people meet certain needs they couldn’t otherwise; enables them to care for their sick and to provide food for their families. “It’s complicated for them; they want to be able to make the size that they are used to making. I say, no. I want to sell your goods all around the world, so that… your children and your grandchildren will benefit from it, because they will be selling, and they will be connected to the world. So, I’m doing something for all of us.” |
