GoodWeave

Spotlight On: Odegard, Inc

New York, New York

Odegard, Inc., was the first U.S. company to join RugMark, the organization that carries out GoodWeave's certification program. Founded by Stephanie Odegard—a recognized leader in contemporary design—the company attributes its success to the twin pillars of good business and good deeds.

Stephanie began with social concerns, which she turned into sound business practice. She first visited the carpet factories of Nepal in 1987, as a consultant for the World Bank, charged with helping the rug business in Nepal grow into an industry that could offer a better life to more people. Her assignment was "to redesign how they marketed and presented traditional crafts to the rest of the world." That meant everything from pressuring local officials to resolve problems with the wool-supply chain to advising the makers on the types of carpets that affluent Westerners want to buy.

Not many people were doing this sort of work, but Stephanie was an old hand at it. A former buyer for Dayton Hudson in Minneapolis, who had joined the Peace Corps in the 1970s, she had repositioned bark cloth products from Fiji and created a line of Jamaican-made kitchenware that was eventually featured at Macy's. With the success of these projects, she felt she had found a way for developing countries to preserve their local cultures even as they joined the global economy. "I found out that people are more willing to accept ideas that would improve the quality of their lives—sending their children to school, having inoculations for basic things like tetanus—if their stomachs are full. And one of the ways to do this without taking away their culture is to promote the traditional crafts," she explains. "If they’re done according to traditional methods and have real meaning, people in the West will spend a lot of money for them."

Stephanie hadn't gone to Nepal looking to start a venture of her own. But the people, materials and skill she encountered there added up to a business education. "By the time I left, I had discovered the best suppliers and a quality of hand-knotted Tibetan carpet that no one had made for commercial purposes before. They were made by one family which was very open to having some design influence." In her late 30s, just when she had expected her globe-trotting days would be over, she launched an importing business to provide clients with carpets designed by Stephanie herself, handmade in Nepal, and then finished in Europe. Today Odegard, Inc., is a 30-person, multimillion dollar business, whose products have changed the high-end’s definition of an Oriental rug.

As her rugs gain renown, Stephanie remains insistent on fitting luxury consumer goods into a vision of social progress. She has won numerous accolades and awards for her design talents and her commitment to social progress and philanthropic accountability. They include the 2004 Aid to Artisans Award for Innovation in Craft; being named a 2004 "Giant of Design" by House Beautiful; being named the number two carpet brand in the House & Garden "Best of the Best" survey in 2004 and 2005; Legacy Award finalist for the 2004 WOW Award presented by WithIt (Women in the Home Industries Today); the 2002 Elle Decor International Design Award for Floor Covering; and the National Peace Corps Association 2001 Business Symposium Award for Entrepreneurship. She serves as a member of the Director's Circle of the National Peace Corps Association and is on the board of the Alpha Workshops and the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust.

Stephanie's elegant designs have shaped rugs that grace venues like the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; Restaurant Daniel and the Chambers Hotel project with David Rockwell, both in New York City; and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. As a measure of Stephanie's socially sound style and business savvy, Metropolitan Home named her one of the top 100 design people, objects, projects and organizations epitomizing the best design today. Stephanie credits this honor partly to her membership in the GoodWeave initiative. "People will tell you that fine knotting for rugs requires small hands," says Odegard. "That's a falsehood. Fine knotting requires strong hands."

For more information about Odegard, Inc., visit www.odegardinc.com.

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