The Good Story Shop, Ethik gathers hand-crafted wares from around the globe

Among the hustle and bustle of Owen Street in Huskisson is a shop with a good story – in fact, it’s called Ethik, the Good Story Shop, for very good reasons.

Jervis Bay Weekend magazine spent some time with owner, Nicky Cannon, to find out the back story of this delightful retailer of hand-felted, hand-printed, hand-stitched, needle-pointed and forged products from around the globe.

Ethik, the good story shop is located on Owen Street Huskisson. Photo: Samantha Tannous

JBW: How did you get started sourcing hand-crafted products?

Nicky: My husband Steve has been going to Nepal to trek since the 80s. We went on our first overseas trip together in the mid-90s and we made an impromptu trip up to Nepal. Steve had friends there, and we still have great friends around the Annapurna trekking region, near Pokhara, it’s a beautiful lake.

I still have the bag I bought on that first trip, made from hand-dyed and hand-woven cotton, and we still sell the same bags in our shop today. They are so well made, they last forever. They hand-dye all the cotton yarns in big vats, then hang it out to dry before weaving it, and cutting and sewing it into the bags. The cloth is made on three-metre long backstrap looms, and it’s amazing to watch the women weaving, they can be on their phones at the same time.

We took our girls there for the first time when they were about 7 and 9 years old (they are in their 20s now), and we brought back a few those woven bags to sell at the markets in Tomerong. It was meant to be a hobby for me because I wasn’t working at the time, but we had no idea how popular they would be.

It’s grown from there into our shop in Huskisson and our online store, selling hand-crafted products that we source from Nepal, India and Turkey mainly, and sometimes other countries depending on our travels.

Steve and Nicky Cannon, owners of Ethik, are blessed by the felt makers in Nepal. Photo: supplied

JBW: What sort of items do you seek out?

Nicky: We love to source products that have a great back story, and we share those stories with our customers. For example, these products here that have a cat on them with wobbly legs, those have been hand-woven by a woman in a wheelchair. We support this group in Nepal because they employ a lot of women who have disabilities.

We like products made from the offcuts or the scraps. We have women making items from discarded saris, for example. They still use treadle sewing machines. We offered to buy them electric machines but they said no, they all learn on the pedal power machines and feel comfortable on them. Electricity supply is more reliable now in places like Nepal but it used to be a big problem – sometimes they would only have power for an hour a day – and these machines meant they could keep on working.

These bowls here are made with garbage – literal garbage, like plastic packaging for noodles and chips. They are made by people who are so impoverished they don’t have much, but they can collect rubbish, wash it, cut it into strips, and weave it and coil it with grasses into a bowl. It’s mainly women who make these bowls, they are turning something non-biodegradable into something useful and it’s a way for them to earn some income too. They can do this weaving in between their household chores and it helps them to become empowered.

JBW: You recently worked with a local group called Keep Jervis Bay Unspoilt – tell us about that.

Nicky: We helped the group with a fundraising campaign, and it was very popular. We worked with our felt suppliers in Nepal to design and make a range of Gang Gang cockatoos, which are an endangered species. The proceeds from the sale of the cockatoos went to the charity. They were very popular, we sold out quickly.

Ethik works with felt makers in Nepal to design unique products, like this prototype Gang Gang cockatoo. Photo: supplied

JBW: That’s interesting, tell us more about how you work with your suppliers.

Nicky: We work closely with our felt suppliers in Nepal to design products for our shop. We take photos over to the factory and work with their master felters who make a sample, and when we are happy with it, they teach the other felters how to make that design. The Gang Gang cockatoos, for example, took the master felter about two hours to work up from the photos.

About half of the felted products we sell are our designs and half are the factory’s. It’s a special relationship that we have developed with them over many years. We encouraged them to always make the best felt in the region, and they now wholesale to North America and Europe too, which is a great success for them! We are thrilled to see their business grow.

JBW: Have you seen other suppliers grow their businesses like that?

Nicky: Yes we have, like the women in Turkey who supply this fine needlepoint jewellery. We saw this jewellery in Istanbul and we loved it but we really wanted to find the source, the makers. On a trip to Turkey we decided to try hot air ballooning in Cappadocia, it’s famous for the landscape and the villages with fairy-like houses and chimneys. Afterwards we were strolling through one of the towns and we came across a tiny shop that was producing this amazing jewellery – we found the source!

These two women, like me, started selling their wares from a market stall, and it was so popular they opened a shop, and now they employ about 80 women who work from home producing this needlepoint. It’s another ‘good story’ about empowering women.

These sunflowers and daisies are really popular right now, and they are so delicate, made with a tiny crocket hook – they learn the skills from a very young age and are masters of the craft. It’s passed on from generation to generation.

Ethik sources handicrafts from Nepal, India and Turkey. Photo: supplied

JBW: What are some of your favourite products from India?

Nicky: We love these bedspreads, they are kantha stitched, it takes one woman about a month to do all the hand-stitching on one quilt. We also love upcycled kantha quilts that are sewn into jackets. They are perfect for mild Australian winters here because they are cotton and not too heavy. We select the quilts we like and think will sell in the shop, then they are sewn up into the jackets. We are about to get a new delivery of these soon.

Also from India, we source beautiful hand block printed fabrics, mostly from Jaipur in Rajasthan, it’s the traditional home of block printing. We source a lot of clothing from Anokhi, which was founded in 1970 in Jaipur. They are the masters of block printing. They make small batch collections and everything they do is beautiful in the detail.

JBW: Thank you for sharing the stories behind your product ranges, and we can’t wait to see what new finds you will share with us soon.