Chat With and Buy From Artisans in Remote Cooperatives!

ChatBasket.com is a new e-commerce site that allows customers to chat live with the artisans who made the products on sale. We sell one hand-made product at a time and host a chat room to allow you to chat with the product's designer, other customers, and special guests!

With this Indiegogo campaign, we're officially launching our new company Chat Basket and kicking it off with awesome hand-made products from non-profit artisanal cooperatives in remote corners of the world to demonstrate Chat Basket's power to connect artisans with online customers.

The products for sale here come from cooperatives in Peru, Guatemala, Kenya and Mexico, whose proceeds fund community development projects. After the Indiegogo campaign, the artisans from these cooperatives will be in Chat Basket's chat room to chat with you about their lives, product designs, inspirations, manufacturing processes, and anything else you want to talk about! For example, you will actually get to chat live with alpaca farmers in a remote village in the Peruvian Andes about the wool coin purses they make by hand. Pretty cool!

Some of the Quechua artisans who will be in our chat room:

A Guatemalan artisan who will be in our chat room:

About Us and Our Vision

We are a team of experienced entrepreneurs in San Francisco who have been working in product design, manufacturing, e-commerce, and international shipping. We've run a successful crowdfunding campaign before that raised $162,917 for a pet jellyfish tank. One of our team members was heavily involved in Duke University's Mercado Globale Fair Trade Initiative while in college and saw how many incredible products were being crafted by hand all over the world. We've already built the Chat Basket website and are using this Indiegogo campaign to launch the site, purchase enough product to make the shipping economical, and provide much needed money for community development funds to the cooperatives supplying us with products.

We want Chat Basket to bring more personal interaction to online shopping. Our vision is to let you purchase a product directly from the very person who designed it and knows it in and out, not a retailer selling thousands of other products bought through layers of middle men. After the Indiegogo campaign, we'll continue to sell all kinds of products designed with passion and allow those products' designers to chat directly with their potential customers in our chat room. We hope you'll help us start our journey!

Credits: Musical track by Sam Damask. Some video footage by Ali McClymont and Jag Sandhu.

What You Get and What We Need

You can purchase products from Chat Basket's first artisans through this Indiegogo campaign at a one-time discounted price. Once the campaign is over, these products along with several others will be for sale for several weeks while these artisans chat with you in our chat room. Then we will open up the site to all kinds of new products. You can sign up to be notified when the artisans you're most interested in will be in the chat room.

We've crunched the numbers and calculated we need to sell at least $1,000 of products during this campaign to make the shipping economical. We use a batch system to ship everything to our warehouse in the U.S. first before distributing to customers. This is highly efficient and cost effective, as long as a minimum amount of product is ordered.

Your products will be delivered after the artisan runs their sale after the end of the Indeigogo campaign. That means it will be anywhere from 2 to 10 weeks until you receive your product depending on when you contribute to our campaign and which artisan you purchase from. Additionally, if this campaign gets really big and we sell a lot of units, it may take a few extra weeks for the artisans to keep up with that sudden demand, but that's a good problem to have! All rewards include shipping to domesetic U.S. addresses, but please add $15 per order for any international addresses.

We chose products from artisans in remote locations all over the world to show you the power of Chat Basket's technology to connect any passionate artisan with their equally passionate customers. We also wanted this to be a philanthropic endeavor, so all our artisans are part of non-profit cooperatives that use the money from their product sales to develop community projects like schools, work training, and business financing.

Your Rewards for Contributing to Our Campaign

These rewards are at a discount price. Sign up to get notified when the artisans you like the most are available to chat at ChatBasket.com after the Indiegogo campaign. Also, if you make a contribution, we'll email you when the artisan who made the product you bought will be in the chat room.

IPad Case by Asociación de Mujeres del Altiplano in Guatemala ($15):

Hand-sewn fabric made on a foot pedal loom. Fits all iPad models. AMA's logo embroidered on the front.

Made in a Fair Trade cooperative of Mayan women in the highlands of Guatemala.

Coin Purse by Awamaki in Peru ($20):

100% alpaca wool woven by Quechua women. 4 x 3 inches with a zippered top. Perfect for holding losables of any kind. Each piece is made with one-of-a-kind textile designed by the artisan.

Made in a Fair Trade Peruvian cooperative in the foothills of the Andes Mountain Range.

Dog Leash by Asociación de Mujeres del Altiplano in Guatemala ($25):

Sewn in the style of traditional headwraps using recycled pieces of fabric. 74 inches x 1 inch. Hand loop on one end and collar attachment on the other. Each color pattern is unique.

Made in a Fair Trade cooperative of Mayan women in the highlands of Guatemala.

Scarf by Pendeza in Kenya ($60):

Hand-spun organic cotton woven on looms. Lightweight and soft. Each scarf has a unique character with subtle design elements.

Made from raw materials into finished product all in the same cooperative in Kenya.

Hat with Ear Flaps by Q'ente in Peru ($65):

Baby alpaca wool. Available in small (20 inches) or large (22 inches) sizes with white or black tassels. Keeps your most important organ warm.

Made in a Fair Trade Peruvian cooperative of Quechua women.

Shoulder Bag by Q'ente in Peru ($80):

100% fine hand-spun wool. 13 inches long x 12 inches wide. Fastens with a wooden button. Durable and unique.

Made in a Fair Trade Peruvian cooperative of Quechua women.

Chat Basket's Future

We really appreciate your help and want you to know we're investing a lot in this campaign too. We've started a business from scratch before and we're using that business's infrastructure, including a 5,000 square foot warehouse, to incubate and launch Chat Basket.

We have really big plans for Chat Basket and just need a little help from you now to nudge us off the dock. We think it's a shame that online shopping has become so impersonal. You used to buy your shirt from the guy who picked out the cloth with a magnifying glass and your eggs from the girl who knew the hens by name. When you shop online, you buy from retailers selling hundreds of other products who can't tell you anything more about them than what's listed in the technical specifications.

The designer of a product knows what fiber was used to make the thread and how many holes are in every the button. They know the product like the back of their hand and it's the embodiment of their vision. Chat Basket lets you pick the designer's brain and learn the story behind the product, straight from the horse's mouth.

Other Ways To Help

The best way you can help us make our dream a reality is to purchase the reward products offered at a discount price during this Indeigogo campaign. But there are other ways you can help too!

- Like us on Chat Basket's Facebook page.

- Post a link to this campaign to your Facebook status or Twitter feed: igg.me/at/chatbasket. The easiest way is to click on the Like, Tweet or +1 buttons on this page just under the video.

- Browse our upcoming sales and sign up to get alerted when artisans with products you're most interested in will be chatting on ChatBasket.com.