Watermark Association of Artisans Inc.
Carolyn McKecuen, Executive Director
150 US Highway 158 East
Camden, N.C. 27921
(919) 338-0853
(919) 338-1444 fax

It started humbly enough, back in 1978, as a group of 35 women who banded together to form a cooperative in hope of selling their crafts locally in Camden County, a rural community isolated between the Norfolk metropolitan area, North Carolina's Research Triangle and the Outer Banks. They got some technical assistance and a small grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which at the time fostered crafts cooperatives as well as farm co-ops. The Camden group, which quickly grew to 80 members, opened a retail shop in the old brick train station in Elizabeth City, N.C., and waited for the money to start rolling in.

Unfortunately, a combination of management problems and poor sales caused the money to flow in the other direction, and it wasn't long before the cooperative found itself $60,000 in debt. This could have marked a sad, quick end to a hopeful story, but luckily, Carolyn McKecuen (pronounced "McCune"), a potter and member of the cooperative, took over as co-op manager and, taking a minimal salary, turned things around with a brilliant decision that has made Watermark into the No. 1 national model of arts-and-crafts cooperatives and Camden County's largest employer, a model that is actively replicating itself not only across the nation but around the world. McKecuen and Watermark have earned countless honors -- she received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1994 -- and Watermark is providing a living, or at least part of one -- to hundreds of poor people in one of North Carolina's poorest counties.

The secret to Watermark's success was as simple as recognizing that a tiny rural town can't provide a large-enough market to support hundreds of artisans selling their crafts, but the nation, and the world, most certainly can. By starting small and working hard, McKecuen developed markets for the Carolina crafts by working crafts shows, developing a mail-order enterprise, and most important, making arrangements to provide quality merchandise for major retailers with names as significant as Ralph Lauren, Esprit, the QVC Cable Shopping Channel and department stores in Europe and Japan. Joining forces with the Ms. Foundation and its Collaborative Fund for Women's Economic Development, Watermark took responsibility for telemarketing for Ms.'s annual "Take Our Daughters to Work" Day, and parlayed that into telemarketing contracts with other national, rights-oriented programs, another source of paying jobs for members of its community.

The organization's income grew by 25 percent to 30 percent a year, and its membership grew to match, with more than 700 artisans now participating as shareholders. New members join by demonstrating skill at a craft -- or acquiring that skill through Watermark's associated non-profit training and economic-development arm, Northeastern Community Development Corp., Inc. (NEED) -- then pay a $75 fee (payable in installments) to become a member of the co-op. Members receive "orders" to produce crafts for Watermark's various contractor, and every member is expected to "cross-train" so as to be competent at producing more than one kind of object. The cooperative's products include wooden products, quilted and sewn items, baskets, jewelry, painted objects and much more. Work assignments are set up so as to ensure an income of at least $5.50 and hour, and McKecuen estimates that at least 400 of the co-op members are making a significant living from their crafts. A few earn a substantial, full-time wage as high as $40,000 a year, while many more significantly supplement their family income to the tune of $10,000 to $20,000 a year.

As the organization built, it quickly outgrew the old train station and moved into a modern, $450,000 retail shop, warehouse and training facility several miles outside Elizabeth City, where it attracts tourists headed for the Outer Banks; although the shop is constantly busy, though, the organization now receives 93 percent of its $1 million annual income from its wholesale manufacturing and distributing efforts. Watermark's fact sheet estimates that the organization has pumped $16 million into the local economy since 1980. And Watermark leverages all this with a staff of 14 and an operating budget of just $400,000 a year.

Meanwhile, NEED, as mentioned above, provides job-skills and self-employment skills training for local workers, operates a micro-enterprise loan fund, and provides technical assistance and training to individuals and organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere that seek to build similar cooperatives. McKecuen's husband, George, who was director of NEED until recently, now operates a for-profit consulting firm and is starting a new non-profit, Human Resources Development, which will provide extensive, on-site technical assistance to organizations forming or rehabilitating co-operatives.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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