A Recap of 2011 with Jennifer's Hamam

2011 was an action-packed year for Jennifer’s Hamam!

A second Jennifer's Hamam shop was opened in the Arasta Bazaar (No. 43), three new staff members were hired and 25 new designs were created, produced and placed on the shelves. A new line of keses (bath mitts) made from tree bark were added to the collection, and design choices in peskir increased by 200%.

Since the beginning of 2011, all the designs are original, limited edition, and produced entirely in Turkey, by Turkish weavers practising an ancient – and almost forgotten – craft.

Jennifer travelled 35,000 kilometers in 2011: buying natural Turkish fibers for all the woven pieces, and visiting the weavers scattered mostly in the south and southeast of Turkey. On each trip to visit the weavers, she works with them closely, creating new designs, and selecting the thread colors and combinations to come up with unique and beautiful items that reflect quality from the past.

All of the textiles in both shops are hand-woven on old-style shuttled looms, by real human beings, from natural fibers all sourced and grown in Turkey, including GOTS certified organic cotton threads, linen, bamboo and silk. The towels, bedcovers, sheets, bathrobes, shawls and pestamels stocked in both shops take time to produce; the upside is that they last for decades longer than machine-made towels.

"It was really exciting when we completely sold out of colorful robes and bed sheets in 2011!" Jennifer shared. "Everyone feels a sense of urgency and excitement to keep up with this demand."

One of the many objectives for 2011 was to find more looms. Most of the looms that existed in Turkey have been sent to the scrap yard over the last 17 years and finding them is not always an easy task. It was a devastating experience in January 2011 when four looms were found with one man - but out of pride and ego he refused to sell them and instead, for pennies on the dollar, sent them to the scrap yard.

Later in the year, four more looms – including a smaller one for weaving looped towels - were found stored away in several old closed workshops, and purchased and repaired. As of the end of November 2011 all four are now operational with four new weaving staff. An extra two weavers - who were happy to return to their original craft – were also hired to increase the weaving hours on two of the looms from eight hours/day to 16 hours / day.

In late spring a new warehouse was purchased within walking distance of the shops to provide better service for wholesale clients. Due to some personal tragedy, the warehouse was rented out until December 2011, until the energy and effort could be put towards the renovation and setting up the space.

Thanks to numerous and glowing reviews on websites such as Trip Advisor, Lonely Planet and Google, listings on various blogs and great press in publications like Time Out Istanbul, Luxury in Istanbul, Cornucopia's 'good finds', many travel books such as Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, several local papers and even a newspaper in Canada, Jennifer, the weavers and shop staff have been very busy.

"The weavers are always telling me just how happy they are for the people who find their woven items beautiful enough to take home with them!" said Jennifer enthusiastically. "I'm thrilled because without a consumer who cares about better quality found in work done by humans, weaving would already be dead."

Jennifer’s Hamam thanks each and every customer for keeping one of Turkey’s oldest traditions alive and its artisans employed.

But it isn’t all work: one of the youngest weavers married last year, and had a baby in August. Another, who was close to bankruptcy when he started weaving for the shop, just bought his own apartment and had a second child in October after 10 years of marriage. And, their most senior staff member in the shop was engaged in 2011 and his wedding was just a month ago … Congratulations Senol!

As to 2012: Jennifer, the staff, and the weavers are energized for the season to come and all the hard work of the winter coming finally coming to fruition.

Renovations on the new warehouse are complete and all the product that the weavers have been hard at work making over the last year is slowly being moved into the new space. "'I'm very excited about this new warehouse. We were late getting to this project, but that it's finished in time for the season is fantastic!" This space will enable more storage of existing products and faster delivery time to the shops; and service wholesale clients in a more relaxed, larger space.

The human element is what is most important in this craft and cannot be forgotten. Thank you to all of you who have supported Jennifer's Hamam and its weavers in 2011. Watch for many great new things to come in 2012!!

written by: Celeste Ganderson

An Exciting Week for Jennifer's Hamam

March 5th, 2011 marked the grand opening of the 2nd location of Jennifer's Hamam
“We couldn’t be happier!!!” exclaimed Jennifer, owner.
“It’s all thanks to our wonderful customers who have chosen to support the art of weaving and the quality products made by this dying breed of artisans in Turkey.”

“The weavers that still exist in Turkey should be congratulated for persevering through this difficult time with their own dead market. These artisans have had to change their idea of business to match the needs of the outside world that is just beginning to wake up to the new-old idea of human made textiles. This is not always an easy thing to do when you've been doing the same thing for a very long time, but the weavers we work with have adjusted wonderfully!”

The new location is bright and welcoming. It carries the same wonderful quality woven textiles, but with a different flavours of designs and colours.“We don’t want to compete against ourselves; we want to expand our range and offer people more choice.” She says. If you can’t find what you are looking for in one shop, you’ll most certainly find it in the other.

Jennifer seems to care more about the education of her customers than she does her sales. She says that you can maybe make a sale by default without education, but you can never really get the market to purchase this kind of quality without a sincere dedication to educating each customer. She believes this is the reason why the two shops are so successful and why so many customers come back and recommend the product to their friends.

The new location is just a 3 minute walk from the original shop located at the other end of the ARASTA BAZAAR, No. 43, Sultanahmet, Istanbul. Both shops have a big Canadian flag in the window and are open 9am – 9pm during the high season. Be sure to visit when you’re in the area and ask for Jennifer.

A new view for 2011

It's been a year and a half since our doors opened.  We've learned and grown a lot since that time.  The past year was a time for establishing our foundation and learning the business of weaving, especially in the area of woven towels with loops.  

Our goal was to acquire two more looms in 2010.  We are very excited to report we found another five! They have all been repaired and are up and running.  

Three of the looms went to our weaver, set up to accommodate the different sizes we make.  This is very exciting because prior to the acquisition of these looms, our weavers spent 2.5 days re-threading the looms each time we changed sizes.  This is a huge leap forward in our ability to produce more quickly.

The other two looms went to a family that weaves flat textiles.  After many conversations in 2010, we discovered that the grandfather of the family, now in his late 70s, used to weave with this style of loom.  The looms were given to them in late November 2010.  They have been repaired and the grandfather is now teaching the members of the family how to operate them. We're hopeful that by March we will start to receive pieces produced on these new-to-us looms. 

It's the beginning of a new year.  The fruits of seeds planted in 2010 are now ripening.   Any looped towel made on our looms will be run one at a time with a proper salvage.  All items made in 2011 will be our exclusive Jennifer's Hamam design.  Three of the families we were worried would stop weaving last year are continuing and feeling new hope for the future. 

So what's on the horizon?  

It's our goal in the next 3-5 years that we double the number of our looms working on our exclusive designs.   

In the next year, we will be approaching International colleges and universities to set up a program  to have students study with our silk weavers for 3 to 12 months.  This family, specializing in the precious but time-intesive silk work wants to give up the raising of silk worms, and the spinning, dying and weaving of silk.  Financially it's becoming a burden for them; finding reliable staff that won't steal their ideas is more and more difficult.  If they stop what they are doing and move on to other materials, such as cotton, the loss would be immeasurable.  A student program will benefit all parties and will hopefully be the first step to helping this family continue their art.

Another exciting idea came when an interested expat friend and her Turkish husband alerted us to a small group of Turkish women from the North-West of Turkey who are interested in learning how to weave.  At this point we have no idea how we will equip them with looms or who will be their teacher, but we will be on the scene trying to put this project together.

Birth of an Old Tradition

Jennifer's Hamam opened on August 1st, 2009. It is the dream child of Jennifer Gaudet, the Canadian owner. 

Jennifer had been teaching English in Thailand for 7 years, but had started thinking about opening her own business. She came to Turkey as a tourist in October 2005. “Coming out of the airport that night I arrived in Istanbul, I felt like it was home.” During her holiday, she discovered that Turkish laws were very open to businesses owned by foreigners, and she made the decision to move to Istanbul and open a business in the tourist area of Sultanahmet.

Her first project was a cafe´ and art gallery. She designed and decorated the shop herself and after 3 months of renovations Java Studio opened on April 1st, 2007. The business was a great success and was listed in every travel book imaginable within a very short time. Tourists love the relaxed atmosphere it offered, as well as the highest quality coffees and teas found in the area.

In July 2009, Jennifer sold Java Studio and pursued her second dream of running a shop selling REAL Turkish towels made not in factories, but on old-style looms.

Since opening the response has been overwhelming. She takes no credit for her new-found success saying. "It's not me or my salesmanship, as I am not a salesman; it's the quality of the product, and the consumer's ability to see the difference between us and our competitors selling factory pieces."

Jennifer takes great pride in visiting her weavers on a regular basis
, and only buys from people whose looms she has seen in person. She aims to educate her clients about this art form and hopefully help preserve it for future generations. "There are only three families left in Turkey that know how to do the looping technique, one of which we met just by pure accident and they were just two weeks away from shutting their workshop, selling the looms and getting 'real' jobs. Just six short months after this serendipitous meeting, we have financed another loom for them and they've been busy producing fun designer towels for us ever since.  It's my goal to find at least one more loom before the end of the year.  This will really make a difference in the amount of down-time needed to re-thread the looms for different-sized towels.  We're just at the beginning.  I can hardly wait to see where we're at in another five years!"

Her passion and enthusiasm for the product and for the art form of weaving is truly contagious.  We're sure that weaving will continue if Jennifer's Hamam has anything to say about it.