PURPOSE DRIVEN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
with Barrett Ward, Founder & CEO of ABLE
An Excerpt from Rank & File Magazine
“WE ARE HOPEFUL, AND WE BELIEVE IN
PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION. WE’RE NOT PERFECT,
BUT WE WANT TO BE PERFECTLY TRANSPARENT.”
These words are of ABLE — a women’s ethical lifestyle brand that is committed to progress and transparency as they work to bring reconciliation to the fashion industry by creating transformative opportunities for women around the world.
Rank & File sits down with the founder and CEO of ABLE, Barrett Ward, for a candid conversation around all things accountability. We touch on their new #PublishYourWages movement and ACCOUNTABLE audit, as well as how to practically live out transparency despite imperfection as a founder.
DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
“If you’re going to be serious about solutions to poverty, then you have to create jobs, and you have to do so for women. That is a socially scientific fact. So that’s really where we started. It wasn’t this grand vision of changing the world. It was simply a few women saying ‘we need a job,’” Barrett Ward says with conviction as he recounts the founding story of ABLE. After “being dragged kicking and screaming” by his new wife at the time to start their marriage in Ethiopia, Barrett and Rachel’s eyes were opened to the effects of poverty as they lived in proximity to the pervasive commercial sex industry. “Young women having to sell their bodies to make ends meet is just unacceptable. You either have to ignore it completely, or you have to do something about it.”
In talking with these young girls, Barrett and Rachel learned they simply needed an opportunity — a job. The women wanted to make scarves, so without any experience in fashion beforehand “we became a scarf company,” Barrett recalls.
Since these beginnings in 2010, ABLE has added leather goods, shoes, apparel, jewelry, and denim, evolving into a women’s ethical lifestyle brand on a mission to challenge the culture of the fashion industry by creating transformative opportunities for women at their headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee and around the world. They also became the first brand to publish their lowest wages, stepping into radical transparency to ignite change.
Key Application: Building a successful purpose-driven company can feel daunting at any stage, partially because it can quickly become ego-driven if you aren’t careful. So the better question is, how can you right a wrong, stand up for your values and love people better? It can be simple: you see something wrong (inside or outside your company), and you decide to do something about it. You ask questions, and you seek to make progress in the best way you can.
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