One evening in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a felting artisan ended her day with a prayer. Could our companions have good well being. Could they be bold, and profitable, and should their companies develop. The following morning, sisters-in-law Chinara Makashova and Nazgul Esenbaeva, and the individuals they labored with awoke to what appeared like a miracle: Shopify orders. So many Shopify orders.
They started working. It felt like every thing was falling into place: The corporate they’d constructed from scratch was exporting felted slippers and artisan merchandise to wholesale companions across the globe. And with assist from USAID’s inexperienced enterprise initiative in Central Asia, they had been increasing their manufacturing skills — and at last constructing their very own trendy, direct-to-consumer internet retailer: one with the fee processing and knowledge safety infrastructure to assist them attain prospects instantly.
However simply as their new ecommerce infrastructure was coming collectively, the USAID funding vanished around the globe — leaving them with a $35,000 funding hole. In so many locations, the web makes constructing a retail enterprise simple — however on the planet’s most land-locked nation, with a banking system slowed down by sanctions in opposition to one neighbor and cybersecurity limitations in opposition to one other, progress is a balancing act. Tumar’s path has been unconventional: bringing collectively nomadic custom, Soviet legacy, and digital commerce to construct a contemporary enterprise, even when the infrastructure round them can’t sustain. Their first problem: scaling a 5,000-year-old course of that had by no means earlier than been automated, with machines salvaged from the collapse of the USSR.
For hundreds of years, Kyrgyz nomads on the Eurasian steppe drove their flocks from the low inexperienced valleys to the snowy slopes of the Tian Shan mountains, sheared their sheeps’ lush thick wool, and used warmth, water, and friction to felt it into the sturdy shyrdak blankets that lined their yurts. Felt might have been the world’s first-ever textile. It was sturdy, dense, and sturdy. It might stand as much as bitter chilly or pouring rain. However between industrialization and the stress, below Soviet rule, to desert the previous, Kyrgyz moist felting by hand nearly disappeared. Actually this specific felting custom was only a few farflung elders and hidden artifacts from extinction within the Nineties when some ladies in Bishkek, graduating from college right into a post-Soviet world, started to hunt out, re-learn, and revive the observe.
Makashova and Esenbaeva — with assist from Makashova’s aunt Roza — realized the best way to use this millennia-old strategy of moist felting with Kyrgyz wool to make issues like shyrdaks and kalpak hats. In 1998, they began Tumar Artwork Group. Inside a decade, Tumar had its first wholesale associate. And in recent times, USAID-funded packages helped them share their data with ladies all through Central Asia, reviving an historical business whereas spurring a brand new financial system.
On the felt manufacturing facility ground
At the moment, Tumar’s Bishkek facility is a labyrinth of sunlit workspaces, some with pastel ground tiles, some with geraniums lining the windowsills, one filled with previous jelly jars and occasional containers filled with pigments and dyes. Employees pull large, fluffy sheets of “pre-felt” off the conveyor belt of a wool carding machine. On a switchboard that appears like a Chilly Battle rocket launch interface, they toggle dials which might be labeled in Chinese language, with hand-scrawled Cyrillic translations taped above.
Nowadays, trendy, business felting operations use a water-free needle-felting course of, Makashova defined. Some incorporate glue or artificial fibers. However not right here. Tumar’s engineering crew hacked their solution to avoiding all that, leveraging their customized manufacturing line to automate processes like carding (aligning the fibers), or kneading, carried out with a one-of-a-kind “beating machine.”
“We take care to maintain our conventional expertise of moist felting,” Makashova stated. However “for essentially the most sophisticated technique of moist urgent, trendy engineering doesn’t provide machines, so now we have to search for previous Soviet schemes, adapt and make these machines ourselves — or restore previous machines.”
To make considered one of their most in-demand merchandise — felted slippers — they wanted a heavy metallic tub to carry water and warmth, and flywheels that would apply constant rhythmic stress and agitation to the wool. An previous Soviet wool milling machine would have carried out the trick. “Sadly,” Makashova stated, “they’re nearly inconceivable to seek out.”
With scant monetary assets and an financial system in upheaval, it was onerous for this start-up to seek out, purchase, and ship within the machines they wanted — partly as a result of a few of these machines didn’t but exist: Kyrgyz hand felting had by no means earlier than been automated. Makashova’s brother, an automotive engineer, organized the group’s personal small “mechanization base,” gathering, first, Soviet instruments and metalworking machines. Regularly, the corporate acquired textile processing gear from Italy, China, Russia, and past, salvaging, renovating, retrofitting, and Frankensteining gear to convey automation to an historical craft.
Then, extra luck arrived: A Tumar affiliate discovered a bath and flywheels in “a heap of scrap metallic supposed for recycling,” Makashova recalled. The corporate’s engineering group restored the discover, “and now we will’t think about our work with out these machines.”
As of the 2010s, Tumar was working extra with wholesale companions around the globe whereas persevering with to make items for his or her brick-and-mortar store of the identical identify, on a sunny nook in central Bishkek, fashionable with vacationers and expats.
By the late 2010s, the worldwide marketplace for sustainable, pure supplies was on an upswing, and vacationers coming by way of their Bishkek store took discover, together with a man in Richmond, Virginia named Barclay Saul. He cherished that you possibly can see Tumar’s total provide chain, from discipline to manufacturing facility, in a day, and within the exploding panorama of eco-conscious “Instagram manufacturers,” he and a associate determined to launch Kyrgies out of a Richmond space for storing, and promote the slippers on-line.
In spring of 2020, when tourism got here to a halt, Tumar’s bustling retail enterprise did too. Saul’s wager was a wise one: Kyrgies’ gross sales surged. Folks had been staying residence — they usually needed the appropriate footwear for it. However additionally they needed pure supplies. “This enterprise has taught me merely that [people want to] purchase much less stuff, high quality stuff,” Kyrgies CEO Saul stated. Kyrgies’ ecommerce enterprise has continued to double yr over yr, enabling Tumar to double its workers and scale their output fourfold up to now 5 years.
That is the dream, Chinara stated — however there’s one dream they nonetheless haven’t been in a position to manifest within the actuality of at the moment’s sophisticated web: their very own internet retailer. The sale of artisan items out of the Bishkek storefront continues to be, in some methods, an important factor they do, stated Makashova. It’s only a quarter of their income, nevertheless it’s a supply for his or her product innovation. Because of platforms like Shopify, Kyrgies might launch their retail enterprise within the US just about in a single day. However for a Kyrgyzstan-based enterprise, on-line retail is not any simple feat. The price of transport by air or land from the center of Central Asia is the primary hurdle. And one other factor: There’s no PayPal right here. Cost programs, Makashova stated, are “a really, very huge downside.”
Nonetheless at the moment, Kyrgyzstan’s banking system is carefully tied to Russia’s, and Western sanctions put in place after Putin’s invasion of Crimea have made cross-border transactions difficult. Some Kyrgyz banks, cautious of being blacklisted, have minimize off connections to Russian-linked fee programs, and that’s left firms like Tumar in a lurch. One other wrinkle: With rising issues over China’s entry to US client knowledge, platforms dealing with funds in nations close to China — neighboring Kyrgyzstan included — are topic to critical cybersecurity hurdles. And if a fee doesn’t undergo on the primary try, typically, there gained’t be a second try. “We’ve misplaced many purchasers because of this,” Esenbaeva stated.
All this to say, Tumar’s old-school internet retailer rapidly turned out of date. They found out they wanted to rebuild their web site with ISO 27001-compliant back-end infrastructure: encryption protocols, safe socket layers, and a funds gateway able to navigating cross-border compliance from Central Asia, all in hopes of holding worldwide prospects (and the cybersecurity platforms that defend them) from getting scared out of the acquisition circulation.
As of January 2025, the whole plan was in place. A brand new web site was launched. That they had the cash in hand to construct out the direct-sale infrastructure. However there was only one catch: The challenge was being financed by a inexperienced enterprise grant from the now gutted and shuttered USAID.
Tumar is hoping that enrolling in Estonia’s e-Residency program will pull their plans for contemporary, world fee processing out of a loss of life spiral — however they nonetheless have a couple of $35,000 worldwide funding hole to fill with USAID’s dissolution.
On the outskirts of Bishkek, at Tumar’s new wool processing facility, the “break yurt” seems like a step again in time. Employees drink black tea and snack on puffy little squares of fried dough with clotted cream and jam. Proper subsequent door, a extra trendy scene unfolds: solar pours by way of the oculus within the yurt’s tunduk dome roof onto architectural drawings unfurled on a convention desk. Cabinets of binders and spiral-bound notebooks lean in opposition to the richly coloured, shyrdak-lined partitions. A flat-bed all-in-one printer, paying homage to HP circa 2010 — whirs. An identical-vintage, thick-bezeled, matte-black pc monitor and keyboard set-up peeks out from piles of print-outs, a glue stick, an previous calculator.
At this new manufacturing facility, some 100 tons per yr after all wool that may have been burned as waste is as a substitute being cleaned and processed. Extra USAID inexperienced enterprise help had been on the best way — and it might’ve helped Tumar double the output. Now, they might be on their solution to engaging in that on their very own, increasing their product line to incorporate, for instance, a wholly biodegradable slipper, and soundproofing and insulation panels (each “no-waste” merchandise made, partly, from slipper scraps). And, importantly to the founders, dependable shares of top of the range uncooked materials that different companies throughout the area haven’t beforehand had entry to. Throughout a stretch of grass from the side-by-side yurts, the warehouse is abuzz with exercise.
“We need to open [up] potentialities [for] artisans to get new direct on-line orders,” and to discover ways to keep high quality and consistency as output will increase, Makashova stated. And the one manner they will do it’s to continue to grow.
There are workshops and small companies throughout Central Asia ready for this uncooked materials to come back their manner, Esenbaeva stated. Which means—except for their very own manufacturing of felted items—they’re needing to increase their partnerships with small, family-owned Kyrgyz sheep farms, and improve their capability for processing wholesale felt. To make all of it occur, they’ll have to hold gathering—and constructing—machines. Esenbaeva laughed, quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “We’re answerable for these we tame.”
