Ayni

Ayni is a single word for a whole economy: you help me plant, I help you harvest, and nobody keeps a ledger because everybody remembers. It is how highland communities have shared labour for centuries. It is also the closest thing we have to a business model. We buy at the price the weavers set, we come back, we say where the cloth is from.

The word

Ayni is Quechua and Aymara for a reciprocal exchange between equals. Not a gift, which expects nothing, and not a sale, which is finished when the money changes hands. Ayni is a favour that carries an obligation to return it in kind, at a time the other person needs it. The return is not measured. It is remembered.

How it works in the highlands

A household needs a field ploughed, a roof thatched, a wall raised. Neighbours come. Later, when those neighbours need the same, the household goes. Larger works, a canal, a terrace, a road, are done by the whole community under a related idea, minka, where everyone gives labour to something everyone will use. The Inca state ran on a version of this at imperial scale. It is why there were no beggars in Cusco, or so the chroniclers said.

How we practise it

We are a small company on another continent, so our ayni is modest and it is mostly a purchasing policy. We buy finished cloth directly from weavers and cooperatives at the price they set. We do not push for volume the loom cannot give. We name the tradition and, when we know it, the place on every product. And we return a share of every drop to weaving communities and craft preservation. Read the full list on what we stand on.

What it is not

It is not charity, and we do not describe it that way. The weavers are not being helped; they are being paid, for cloth that was worth the price before we arrived. Ayni goes both ways. The cloth carries our brand. The least we can do is carry its name. See the weavers and the pieces cut from their cloth in full weave.