👸🏽Who is behind the brand? Get to know us!👸🏽

A vision, a mission, a sisterhood. That in actual sense is Waistbeads Berlin in a nut shell but in more depth...who is behind the brand? How did Waistbeads Berlin come to be...and why waist beads?

Well for starters the ones behind the brand are Kaddy and Sula. Two queens whose friendship ascended to sisterhood many years ago. The two of us met in High School towards the final years of our teens in Berlin. We were lucky to find ourselves in a circle of six queens who definitely make up the backbone of our friendship. Within that circle, the two of us were always on the more adventurous side when it came to ideas of self employment and having a consistent flow of jobs and gigs here and there that really built our side hustle skills.

*Major throwback*

Kaddy's African roots lay in Gambia and Sula's African roots are in Zambia. Both countries have waist beads deeply embedded in their culture so both of us have been wearing waist beads for a very long time. Kaddy from the time that she was a 7 day old baby as per her tradition and Sula by the time she grew from puberty into womanhood in her teens as in her tradition. Naturally both of us had been "the plug" for waist beads for many of our friends and so as it was, one of the many times Sula was returning to Germany from Zambia, Kaddy asked her to bring some waist beads. This time however, she ordered a bulk quantity and it only took another day or two before the two of them recognised the open market within Germany and Europe and decided to fill the gap.

While waist beads are a symbol of femininity and sensuality, which are obviously in the centre of our branding, it was important for us to use our brand to empower. While empowering our customers to tap into and explore their feminine side and sensuality, we want to bridge the cultural gap that naturally occurs very frequently in diasporic satellite communities. Whith extended families, popular culture, linguistic access or even simple things such a traditional foods being difficult to come by when living in the diaspora, the infrastructure to pass on customs and cultures are frequently not given. Using Zambia as an example, many traditional customs and cultural expectations are passed on through the siblings of your parents, so aunties and uncles rather than in direct conversation between parent and child. However, if you raise your children miles away from your own nuclear family and siblings, who is going to fill that gap and teach your children customs and culture? What more children who don't grow up with their African parents at all for diverse reasons? Or more so individuals whose African heritage is hard to trace such as commonly found in the Afro -Caribbean, -Latinx or -American communities. How will they access their culture? That is exactly the kind of gap we wish to fill.

As a result we make sure to not only sell our product on our platforms, but all the more importantly, make the information about our product available to all consumers, waist beads connoisseurs, people trying to reconnect or even people trying to educate themselves on the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. We create educational graphics, hold diverse interviews and use this blog space to share thoughts, insights, information and topics that are interesting to address in connection to waist beads. That's pretty much us as far as our approach to customers and our back ground goes. But indeed there is more to come.

We do have a grander, more circular economic vision for our brand and wish to include and approach many more aspects. So stay tuned to see us grow this Queendom further and further. Don't forget to stay waisted and join us as our next #WaistedQueen.

Cin cin

Your Waistbeads Team