Arts&Life

shopping

30 | JULY 9 • 2020 

I

n 2012, lifelong friends 
Becky Riess and Kris Engle 
had come to a crossroads in 
their careers. Each had worked 
hard for more than 20 years — 
Riess taking the corporate route 
and Engle becoming a South 
Africa-based entrepreneur and 
travelling around the world. 
They had learned a lot and 
earned enough, but both felt 

they needed something more. 
They wanted to put their indi-
vidual expertise to work in a way 
that could help others in need.
Inspired by Engle’
s adopt-
ed home of South Africa, the 
friends honed in on the idea of 
supporting fairly traded artisan 
companies in areas of the world 
greatly affected by unemploy-
ment, and to do so in a way that 

recognizes the entrepreneurial 
spirit.
“Even though apartheid is 
over, the country was left badly 
scarred,
” Riess said. The unem-
ployment rate for South African 
women ages 18 to 35 is approxi-
mately 40 percent.
With Engle managing busi-
ness in South Africa and Riess 
handling things in the U.S., 
the pair launched Thumbprint 
Artifacts as a wholesaler, offer-
ing unique home decor and 
gift items handcrafted by South 
African women and sold to 
the U.S. market. Hand-beaded 
jewelry, hand-roasted coffee by 
Himelhoch’
s, ceramics, felt baby 
booties, body butter — and 
Judaica — are among the items 
offered.
Buoyed by interest from 
buyers at the semi-annual NY 
Now gift show — the largest 

in the country — the business 
in 2018 opened a small shop 
in Detroit’
s Eastern Market 
called Thumbprint Gallery. 
Now, inspired by the COVID-
19 quarantine, the friends have 
launched a website, thumb-
printdetroit.com. “Our goal here 
at the Thumbprint fulfillment 
and gallery is to hire women 
from Detroit who we can train 
and employ. Now we’
re helping 
women on two continents,
” 
Riess said.
Every year at the gift show, a 
group of women shopping for 
items for a North Carolina tem-
ple would stop by Riess’
 booth 
and ask if she had any Judaica. 
“They loved what we offered, 
and they loved the idea of sup-
porting fair trade, but there 
wasn’
t anything for their specific 
needs,
” Riess said.
So Riess got in touch with 

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THUMBNAIL GALLERY

A South African
artisan at work

Fair Trade
Shop

A purchase from Thumbprint Gallery shows 
that a successful business can put people fi
 rst. 

LYNNE KONSTANTIN
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Hand-beaded
African animals