Retail for Good: Reca Champions Refugee Women’s Stories and Futures

Reca isn’t your typical retail business.

Reca’s founder Myint Aung, came to New Zealand with her family as a political refugee. From her own experience she knows the difficulties that face refugees fleeing from persecution and trying to start a new life.

Choosing to leave her marketing career behind, Myint chose to spend her time building a social enterprise to provide jobs for women in parts of the world where they wouldn’t have a chance.

So began Reca, an ethically focused jewellery and fashion retailer that would provide the foundation for Myint’s social enterprise.

Reca may be an outlier compared to most retailers; Myint has no grand plans for expanding to more stores or generating exorbitant amounts of revenue. Her focus is on improving the capabilities of her social enterprise.

Nevertheless, the appetite for sustainably made and ethically sourced fashion is growing. With slow fashion and socially conscious brands reaping the benefits of this demand, Reca is able to put their social enterprise to the front and centre.

A retailer guided with a humanitarian vision

Myint’s family came to New Zealand as refugees seeking political asylum when she was young. This experience would form the foundation for her personal philosophy and her vision for Reca.

“My family came to New Zealand as political refugees. From the involvement that my family had I know that there are many people out there that are struggling.”

As she built her life in New Zealand, that humanitarian spirit never left her as she sought a way to help make a difference.

Myint was doing marketing in the fashion industry, working for a magazine publisher. Even though Myint was doing well, her career path did not line up with her dream of doing more for disadvantaged communities.

“My background is in retail management. But at the same time, my long-term goal is to retire fairly early and then just do volunteer work.”

While she isn’t politically active herself, Myint knew she wanted to spend her life improving the lives of refugees and women who don’t have opportunities for a better life.

“I wanted to make sure I’m helping other people while also making sure that I’m also taking care of myself as well, because the way I see it, you can’t help other people if you are not in your own safe place as well.”

With this vision firmly in place, Myint decided it was time to shift gears from her corporate life and put her energy into her true vocation. As things fell into place, the beginnings of Reca aligned with where Myint wanted to take her life.

“So that’s where I started Reca. When I was starting, I was looking at different options and I decided that I wanted to go down a more ethical route.”

Aligning with ethical partners

With Reca’s primary goal to provide women with a pathway to a better life, Myint also wants to ensure that the jewellery her team is making in-house is of the highest quality to best present the integrity of the brand’s mission.

As she set Reca up, Myint focused on making sure Reca was partnering with organisations that shared her vision.

Myint wanted to partner with organisations that provided training and opportunities to women from marginalised backgrounds, particularly in parts of Asia where the gender equality gap is huge.

“I used to source the product from places like the Philippines where women are at risk from sex trafficking; they’d get a safe house to stay there and they create the pieces, so they can still support their family in remote areas.”

One of those was Tayo Collective, a foundation in the Philippines that supports women who have been trafficked in the sex trade. There are an estimated 500,000 women exploited and trafficked in the Philippines, with roughly 100,000 under the age of 18. Tayo Collective provides these women with a safe place to live, scholarships and more support where they need.

Working with Tayo Collective, the women gain the opportunity to work and learn new skills while they study, including handcrafting jewellery. This opportunity allows many of these women to earn a living wage, allowing them to help their own families and pave a new path for their future.

The jewellery designed and crafted by the Tayo Collective artisans embody a powerful story of women embracing redemption and hope. It made Tayo Collective a perfect fit for Reca and Myint, who is so passionate about providing women with opportunities to better their lives.

Reca’s shared vision unifies their team

Reca also employs refugee women in New Zealand who are trained to make the jewellery – it’s all about giving these women a chance.

“Eventually I decided to work with ladies that came to New Zealand as refugees. I started training them on how to make the jewellery and making sure that they got paid a living wage to make the pieces.”

Myint is hiring people who share her vision and really understand the impact of the work they’re doing.

“When I’m hiring people I talk to them about my vision for Reca and make sure they’re also passionate about it.”

“So one of my team members, she’s from my previous company where she got paid more, but she chose to come work with me. With Reca, she’s helping to make a difference. So, with the people that are in my team, they also share the same vision with me, which is very important.”

Championing women’s stories and artistry

Reca has a focus on educating customers on the products and the philosophy behind the jewellery. It’s important that the staff are able to focus on this to build brand equity and customer loyalty,

“When we have customers walking in, we make sure that we explain to them about the products that we have, not just how it’s nice; we tell them about each particular piece, where it comes from and who made it.

“So we go into detail explaining to them. When we are talking to the customer, that is one of the messages that we push through as well as a focus.”

Looking to the future

Myint’s long-term goal remains focused on starting a social enterprise in 2024. Originally, this was to open a space in Messa, a border town in Myanmar to train women to make clothing or jewellery.

However, political unrest has made the region socially and economically unstable. Not to be deterred, Myint is still chasing her happy place.

“I want to set up a system where we can have a workshop training new ladies there to make clothing or jewellery; something to give job opportunities for the people there.”

In fact, the development of the social enterprise and Reca’s expansion to new locations go hand in hand.

“The reason why I opened the second store is because I actually want to start a social enterprise next. So that’s why for me to do that I need to have a second location because the first location is very little, but the second one is a much, much larger space.”

Want to learn how Reca leveraged Lightspeed to level up their operations and performance?

In this case study, we break down the powerful tools Myint used to set Reca up for success.