About Us
About Us
At La Chayo, we work with skilled artisans from all over the world to bring you high quality, hand crafted, unique products with a cultural and emotional connection. These artisans use traditional designs and techniques to create some of the most intricate artwork pieces from their communities right to your home.
From clothing to shoes to housewares, we think you’ll love these one of a kind pieces!
Treat yourself to something special and relish in the fact that a portion of the proceeds of every sale goes back to the communities we work with to empower women, fight discrimination, provide educational assistance to children, training opportunities for families, and has a positive impact on the world around us. We aim to be a conscious, compassionate social enterprise.
Our Mission
Our mission is to create opportunities for artisans and communities to thrive through the creation of handcrafted, exquisitely made goods while helping to preserve the cultural traditions of the people who create these one of a kind products. We are dedicated to giving back to these communities and to promoting conscious consumerism to make deliberate positive impacts on the world.
From our CEO
Hello all! My name is Jes and I am the CEO and founder of La Chayo. I’d like to thank you for stopping by to show your support and I hope you enjoy the beautifully crafted, artisan made, and fairly traded products we have to offer.
I started La Chayo as a way to honor my mother, Maria, a Guatemalan born woman with a heart of gold (who everyone called Chayo/ Chayito). Having family from Guatemala exposed me to the beautiful culture and traditions of the motherland from an early age. Growing up, my grandmother would often visit Guatemala and bring back items made by hand by the people of Guatemala who would create these gorgeous textiles by using traditional Mayan backloom weaving techniques as a way to provide for their families there. As I grew older I recognized the richness of the culture that flowed through my veins and how lucky I was to bare witness to the resilient people of Guatemala, my mother being one of the strongest I’ve ever known. She had always made an effort to give back to our family there and to the people of Guatemala because a majority of those people were living in poverty and she would do whatever she could to help her people in any way that she could. I know now; as an adult, that she instilled in me the power to be a compassionate, thoughtful, and strong woman with a need to give back and live a purposeful life.
As we laid my mother to rest on December 2, 2017, I felt an overwhelming need to continue her efforts, so I would not only carry the torch but it would burn brighter and longer and provide assistance to so many more. This is how La Chayo was born and thus with your support and conscious spending, we will work together to make this world a better place.
This one‘s for you mami!