Some entrepreneurs might find that turning her passion into income might remove some of the joy.
For others, the opposite occurs. A fleeting interest deepens and transforms.
Always a fan of semiprecious stones—fascinated by the way that volcanoes, rivers, layers of earth give forth these vivid gifts to bedeck our wrists and necks—she finally took them into her own hands. She started fashioning her own designs.
She didn’t know those stones, those hands, would lead her home. That learning how to combine stones and wire would lead her back in time, back to the ways Latin American hands have performed that same task through the ages. That studying how the earth yields beauty would lead her into studying how the earth yields health. Alongside her jewelry, she now placed creams and soaps. When the pandemic came, she earned less, but learned more.
Even as her income, like all entrepreneurs’, shrank during the pandemic, she found that her mission grew: to remind us that Latin America can hold everything we seek. That beauty needn’t come from somewhere else. That what was once, for her, a fleeting interest, is actually a timeless gift: gifts from a land that says, as she puts it, “Our heritage should never go out of style.”
Inspired by the story of Erika Sevilla of Goicochea, San José, founder of Lakshmi Touch and a member of our Entrepreneurs 506 WhatsApp group (join here!), which has shaped and informed our January edition. Our weekly Media Naranja column tells short love stories with a Costa Rican twist. During this edition, “Toolkit 2022,” we’re focusing on entrepreneurs who are making a difference.
