The Secret to Native Artist Success: It's Not What You Think

0:00It's been really important to be working with that tribe, understanding the needs they have within their community and where they would like this brand to go. Hey, what's going on? I'm Benjamin Gottlieb, and this is Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. You know, companies are typically owned by individuals. When they get bigger, that becomes investors, stockholders. But if you ask Colleen Echo Hawk, there are not many brands like 8th Generation. Everything we do, done in collaboration with that artist, there's just not many businesses like 8th Generation that are owned by a tribe.

0:34It's an art and lifestyle company based in the Seattle area. This model of shared ownership is something that Colleen is here to walk you through today. She's currently the company's CEO, and we're chatting as part of our series, Spotlighting Indigenous Entrepreneurs on Shopify, through our Build Native program. Colleen, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm so glad to be here. We are so happy to have you. We're in this beautiful space here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Power in numbers, power in the collective. It makes a lot of sense intellectually. But I'm curious, why is that the right model for your company, 8th Generation?

1:04Well, 8th Generation is so different and so unique in that we work with Native artists from around the country who trust us to bring their art and design into the home goods space and into the lifestyle space. We were founded by Louis Gong, who is an artist and a member of the Nooksack tribe. But he sold our company to the Snoqualmie tribe, who are a very important tribe in Seattle. They're one of the, we're on their land, literally, in Seattle, where we have our warehouse and our headquarters. And so it's been really important to be working with that tribe, to be understanding the needs that they have within their community and where they would like this brand to go.

1:46So it's been this wonderful experience. And, you know, there's just not many businesses like 8th Generation that are owned by a tribe. So it's very, we're always learning something new. We're always like going our own way and trying out, you know, the trying out what's going to work, what's not going to work. But it's been an incredible pleasure to work with the Snoqualmie Tribal Council. Well, I want to get into that a little bit more, what it's like to actually work with a tribal council, collective ownership. Yeah. But you brought up a very interesting word very early on in this interview, trust.

2:17Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's been a lot of mistrust amongst Native artists when it comes to selling their artwork or their wares, right? Oh, you got me right away because that's something I'm very passionate about. It's part of why our company even started. So when our company started, one thing that you heard all the time is that from, you know, non-Native artists saying this was inspired by Native art and design. Inspired. Inspired by, inspired by Native art and design. And you would see that in big, big brands that, you know, Target would have that or, you know, of course, Pendleton.

2:52And there's all these different brands out there that have, you know, art and design that was inspired by Native people. And that has really harmed Native community. Let me be frank about it. That has caused harm for Native artists and Native community. What does that mean for the consumer? What does inspired by mean? So inspired by means like someone just, you know, saw like a geometric, for instance. Like there's beautiful, beautiful geometric designs out there in the plains and the Southwest. And someone saw that and thought, oh, I'm just going to like, I'm going to take that. I'm going to take a version of it and I'm going to put it on a tote bag and I'm going to put it on a shirt.

3:26I'm going to put it on a blanket. And so that has just the just the geometrics, for instance, has caused a lot of people to think that Native art is only the geometrics. You know, I had this experience recently in a focus group where we showed a floral design, which is really important. And like in my Athabascan culture, for the Anishinaabe community, like florals in Native community and Native art is very, very common. But I showed it to someone and she said, I don't see that as Native art. And I'm like, oh, my God, like it hit me in my heart. I'm like, oh, you know, because it really, truly is.

4:01But most people can connect Native art and design, especially in the home goods space, to geometrics, to Southwest and to some Plains art. So what they've seen commercially reproduced by some of the big companies that you just mentioned. Absolutely. And so what we get to do in 8th Generation is we get to, like, talk to a Native artist, a Seneca artist, for instance, and say, look, what would you like to do? Tell us what's from your community and how can we, like, profile true Seneca art and design? And so we recently worked with this artist named Lindley Logan, just incredible human. He's so cool, so fun.

4:38He's been an artist, a professional artist for, I think, over 20 years. And he said to me, Colleen, I would like for us to have like real traditional Seneca pottery represented somehow. So right now you could go to agegeneration.com and you could click on a bowls, cereal bowls or soup bowls that if you and you look at those bowls, they look like Seneca pottery. You could go back in the archives and you could see what they look like. Now, that is important for visibility for Native people because many people in this country just think Native people are kind of gone. Like we've kind of missed it away, you know, and so we are really excited about showing real American art and design.

5:18We know that this is something that our communities are hungry for. You know, 8th Generation is really blessed in that the Native community loves us. But we also think it's bigger and more important than that. We think that every American person should be thinking about Native art and design. You know, I was really lucky to go to Japan in 2018 before the pandemic. And one thing that just really got me is I looked around – there was Japanese art and design everywhere. We need to ask ourselves as Americans, why is Native American art and design not everywhere? And how do we help people feel great about having it in their homes and really celebrating that this is Turtle Island, that this is Native land that we all get to live on, tribal land?

6:03Tribal land is also communities that are not monolithic, right? You were talking about the Seneca people, which I believe is in the Pacific Northwest area. Seneca is on the East Coast. Second East Coast. Okay. And that's something we try to do at 8th Generation is when we're looking for new artists, we're looking at geographic representation. So we look at all of our artists and go, oh, well, we've got a lot of folks in the Northwest and we've got some folks in the Southwest. What about the East Coast? And that was how we came to be working with Lindley and profiling all that wonderful Seneca art.

6:34You mentioned the artists and at 8th Generation, you do something rather unique with your artists. Yeah. You don't own their art. You license their art, which for a number of small business owners might be watching or listening, this is an interesting tactic for owning and working with artists when you have your own business. Why do you do that and how does it work? Oh, it's so incredibly important for us to not own the art that we are working with because what has happened in the past is someone, a Native artist may be working with a big brand and they say, hey, we love that design. And then they buy it from that artist.

7:09And then they can slap it on whatever they want to put it on. They can put it on a mug. They can put it on a blanket. They can put it on, you know, they can make a printout of it. But we really want our artists to know that as a tribally owned business and, you know, myself and our tribal staff, we want them to feel ownership of what we're putting out there. So we license their art. We might say to them, hey, we think this piece might look or this might look really great on a tote bag. What do you think? And they will say yes or no. And then they're with us every step of the way through the design process.

7:44They're like, yeah, I like that. per item. And so we have over 250 items on our website and we have over 50 in design right now. And so that takes time. That hits our bottom line, frankly. But it's so important for us to ensure that we are working with those artists to make sure they feel great about their product and that we are honoring them and not just who they are as individuals, but we're also honoring who they are as tribal members and what they want to be representing as their tribal art comes out into this pretty public space. It's really, really important. And really, thanks for asking the question.

8:27It's my pleasure. And speaking of the products themselves, like just about every business, each generation started with one product, right? There was an initial product, like the blanket, right? So curious, why did you decide or why did the company decide to start with blankets in particular? Yeah, well, blankets are really important to the Native community. I could tell you many, many times where I have been gifted a blanket because for a graduation or for a ceremony, it's just been a part of the Native community for a really long time. Most of the blankets that we've gifted each other have been from Pendleton, which is not owned by native, not owned by native people.

9:07It's not tribally owned. And our founder, he just is like, man, like if we're giving each other blankets all the time and we're, you know, spending money on this, like why wouldn't that money and that, you know, go back into the native community? So he very, very bravely and with a true entrepreneur spirit just started thinking about what it would mean to manufacture blankets. And so we're really proud that 8th Generation is the first native-owned company to manufacture blankets and also produce blankets for everyone, not just for Native people. So when you come into our studios in Seattle, you'll see our knitting machines just working away to produce and manufacture right in Seattle.

9:50And then we also work with other manufacturers around the globe to produce blankets from, you know, the UK to China to India. And we're really excited to be part of that global marketplace. And speaking of Seattle, you do have a storefront in Seattle, which I believe I've walked by myself. It's in a very rather prominent area. Exactly. And people can cruise by and check it out. Colleen, I want to take a step back if we can and talk a little bit about your upbringing. We were just talking a little bit before we started rolling that you grew up in a very rural part of the country in Alaska. And I would imagine for you to be in this position today, you took over as CEO a few years ago of eighth generation.

10:30I mean, what a journey that must have been. But you were telling me that you came from a family of entrepreneurship, right? I did. Alaska is a really special place. People go to Alaska and live in Alaska and it's really rough conditions. You have to be prepared if you live in Alaska. And so I grew up in this little tiny town where my grandma and my grandpa had two or three different businesses. The one that I remember the most growing up was our motel. It was called Kelly's Motel. Later when we were getting fancy, it was called Kelly's Country Inn. So that was real bougie. And we loved that. But I grew up just working the front desk.

11:11My first ever job was cleaning hotel rooms. And my grandma would come out there and say, that's not good enough, Colleen. And I just learned like the mechanics of business through watching my grandma run that business. And she would have my sister, who was 12 years old at the time, do all the books. My sister like learned how to run. I don't know why I didn't, but I was out there cleaning rooms and my sister got to do the cushy jobs. But that was a real amazing experience because it really taught me that I can do it. that there was no kind of the fear of starting a new business or I used to work in the nonprofit world or starting a new initiative.

11:54I have no fear around those kind of things. I often tell my team and it's one of my mottos is fail often to succeed sooner because failure is just part of the process. We have products that I just look at and go, man, I thought that was such a good idea. But it's not going to make it. It just doesn't work. You just said something so fascinating. You have no fear. I'd like to drill down a little bit more on that because they're, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a lot of, let's say, lack of education or potentially fear surrounding entrepreneurship, particularly not just amongst the broader public, but particularly in the Native American community.

12:32There's not a lot of education about it. Folks don't see themselves represented in these spaces. How do we overcome something like that? That is such a good point. And I think that when you look at like the economies within Native communities, you'll see that we have some pretty awful statistics, right? Like we come, some of the most impoverished communities in our country are Native communities. And I think of that often and think of and take it very seriously. Part of the reason that we don't see a lot of folks wanting to start new businesses who are Native is because we have no backup. You know, we don't have generational wealth.

13:09Imagine if you're somebody who's like maybe you bought a house and you've got a small cushion of money and you're kind of feeling like I would like to start a new business. There's a fear that like you might lose all of that, that you've worked so hard to get. And so I'm really excited about the future of business in Indian country and really trying to encourage folks. One, go for it. And two, I want the nonprofit world, the philanthropic world to really be thinking about investing in Native-owned businesses as part of our work of addressing the wealth gap and making sure that we're doing something different than just what we have been doing in the past.

13:49So there's incredible opportunities for Native entrepreneurs out there. There's ways that we can influence the business world that are just going to have a big impact. And I'm always trying to tell my team, like, listen, you may be, you know, a project manager right now, but I want you to think and see yourself in the C-suite. Like, what does that look like? Why don't we have, you know, Native people who are leading Fortune 500 companies? I think the way that we would understand successful business and successful prosperity in this country would be different and would be shaped a little bit differently.

14:21I come from potlatch culture. I come from community where what that potlatch culture means is that you save and you work hard to gather a lot of money and gifts or whatever it might be, and then you give it all away. It's a shared prosperity. That's how you show your wealth is by being able to give to the community. And imagine if we had C-suite level people, you know, Fortune 500 people who were native and felt that way. And we're like, wow, I want to give as much of this away as I can. I think that could have such an incredible impact on our country and our communities. And we're going to get there.

15:02I feel excited about that. It's going to be fun. Well, it seems almost trite to say, but representation remains so important, especially when it comes to having C-suite roles or being entrepreneurs. There is no bigger encouragement than seeing someone who looks like you doing the thing that you want to do. My guest today, Colleen Echo Hawk, the CEO of Eighth Generation. We're going to get back to our interview in just a moment. But first, I would like to remind you to subscribe to Shopify Masters wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, do the same. Also, check out the description box below.

15:33If you're interested in taking charge of your financial future, we have a link to a free trial for Shopify in that box. Go ahead and check it out. Colleen, e-commerce is at the core of what Shopify does, but it's also at the core of what 8th Generation does. You have so many options, truly, to pick a partner in this incredible, let's call it a journey, experiments, that you are running with 8th Generation. Why choose Shopify? You know, when I started at 8th Generation, I was, you know, talking to the previous CEO and our founder. And I said, you know, well, what's really good about what's going on here at 8th Generation?

16:11And he said Shopify. You know, he was like, hey, this is a great platform. We get great responses if we have problems. And we also, it's easy to use. And I got my login. I got in there. I started looking around. And I was like, oh, my God, this, it is great. I think the thing for me as a CEO, every morning I wake up and I check the news when I'm laying in bed, of course. Sounds familiar. You know, we're all on our phones. And then I check Shopify Analytics because I want to see what happened yesterday. And so that has been a really important tool for me. I'm always watching our sales. I'm always thinking about, like, you know, what's going on, looking at what products were the most successful that day, what was most successful that month.

16:57And so, you know, the Shopify app has become highly used. It's the second thing you opened, you just said. It's the second thing I opened. Before Instagram, before social. Yep, I got to do the news and then I do my Shopify analytics. But it's been an incredible tool for our company. We get comments all the time about how wonderful our website looks and how easy our platform is. And so we have really, really loved the Shopify experience. So to synthesize ease of use, but also the data and the analytics as a CEO, just like anyone who is the founder or runs a company, making data informed decisions is so important.

17:39What in particular do you find useful when you're looking over that data in terms of helping you make some of those big decisions you have to make as CEO? Yeah. You know, one of the things we've been really focused on the past two years was, you know, what kind of new products are going to be our hero products? You know, we already have blankets, which are just such a good product for us. And so I think having the ability to like look at a new product to to see its journey. You know, we usually sell quite a few new products at the beginning, the first couple of days and then seeing what that journey is, how our marketing is impacting what is going on with that product.

18:17being able to, like I said, look at it through the first month, the next three months and onward has been really important for us on decision making. Is that a product we're going to continue? Do we want to like do a different version of that product? The product journey has just been really important with Shopify analytics. I'm constantly running reports on different products because as I mentioned, the past years have been huge for us to be able to do it with Shopify. You mentioned marketing. It's something that eighth generation does really well. And what is different, I think, about today's consumer is that price, while a big consideration, is not the only thing.

18:59Folks who are buying products, they want to know the story behind them. Who made this blanket? Who made this piece of ceramic? Where did it come from? Who's benefiting from the purchase of this item? And you have been so successful in encapsulating that in your marketing. What are your marketing tactics and what has succeeded the most for you all? Well, I think that at the core of what we do is that we want to be telling the story of that artist and that product, right? So whenever you buy something from eighth generation, it will come with what we call an artist card. And it will tell you about that artist.

19:32It will tell you a little bit about their story and their journey. And then that's also brought forward onto our platforms, our online platforms. Of course, our website, but also through our social media, And we just try to share out like, hey, this is why this product is important to this artist. And this is the story behind it. So we've been really wildly successful sometimes with, you know, viral videos. With these collaborations, yeah. Yeah, and just like getting the stories out there. We have some, you know, videos that have had over 5 million views. We're a small company. That is huge, you know, to get those kind of views.

20:12It's just been really incredible. And we know that that marketing piece is just going to continue to grow as we grow the company, as we understand, you know, again, what the consumers want from eighth generation. I think one of the hardest things that we face in the marketing space is that the Native community really loves us and feels great about buying from us. They love it, right, because we're tribally owned. But it's that non-Native customer that we're trying to get. We really want folks who are non-Native to feel great about buying from a company. We know that conscious consumer that we fit right into that space.

20:50And so we're really out there trying to ask non-Native people to buy our products. What's the challenge there, though? I mean, what's the challenge? You know, people are fearful of cultural appropriation. Again, back to the inspired art. They don't want to buy that inspired Native art. They want to make sure that they're buying from, you know, a real Native artist. And then they also feel like, am I going to get called out? Are people going to say like, hey, you're wearing those, you know, Native Design earrings? Like you have on right now. Like I have on right now. Like, oh, is that wrong? Is that okay?

21:22So we're trying to just message that everything we do at 8th Generation, again, done in collaboration with that artist. It's not done, you know, without a lot of thought that you can buy anyone, can buy anything from our stores and then just wear it and feel great about it. or have it in your home. You know, we have incredible, incredible kitchenware right now. And I - We'll get them in the market for some, so I'm not supposed to do that. Check out our kitchenware. And I just think it's so special when you're like, you know, I made something, a big, huge salad the other day, put on this like platter that we have.

21:55And I thought like, wow, it's so interesting. Like I'm putting all this beautiful food onto this platter. And the platter happens to be designed by someone from the Seattle area, a tribal member from the Seattle area, Andrea Wilber Saigo. And on this platter is like traditional basket weaving pattern. And it's a pattern that has been in that area since time immemorial. So it just feels good. It's like, wow, I'm like, I'm creating this beautiful food for my family to eat and enjoy. And it looks great on this platter. And I'm remembering my connection to this place, to Seattle area. And it just feels good.

22:34So we want everyone to feel connected to that when they buy from eighth generation and use our products in their home. Circling back though, almost the double-edged sword of conscious consumerism, which is being too conscious, right? Like, I want to do well. My intentions are good. Oh, maybe I shouldn't wear those earrings or that necklace because someone might see me as being inconsiderate, for example. What is the messaging that you have as a company to combat that? Because I would imagine it might be, at least in your space, a significant issue in growing your audience? Yeah. Well, I think it goes back to like our tagline, inspired natives, not native inspired, right?

23:14We work with these inspired natives, these incredible artists who are wanting to provide for their families and to give back to their community. And when they bring their art and design to us, they are doing it in a way that is going to not connect any product to a spiritual practice or to a ceremonial practice, but instead it's putting out, you know, art that's joyful and exciting and celebratory. And so we try to really message that to our consumers. We say, hey, this is for you. Like for a while, we've been trying to say like, this is Native designed for you to enjoy and to be a part of your lifestyle.

23:56And so we continue just to message it and message it. And honestly, it's really hard. Like folks are just kind of disconnected from it. And it's one of our biggest marketing challenges. We're going to solve it. We want everyone to buy from us. We think it's good. And I will say that like we are the, like if you want to buy something that's really meaningful for like a wedding or an anniversary or, you know, for like Father's or Mother's Day, like we are the place. It's a great place. Like, I can't think of anything. I've been buying from H &M, like, long before I ever, ever worked there. And I have a really quick story to tell is that when our founder called, and so Louis was, I've known him for, I think we've known each other for like 20 years.

24:39He's the founder of the company. The founder of the company. He calls me and he says, Colleen, I think that you should be the next CEO of the company. And I'm like, I was just not, I wasn't thinking of it at all. And I was like, okay, I'll think about it. And I hang up. I was in the car and my kids happened to be listening. And as soon as I hung up, they said, Mom, you have to do it. You have to do it. You have to work at 8th Generation. And the reason they felt that way is that they're Native kids. And they see themselves represented at 8th Generation in a way that they don't see anywhere else.