ERIKO YAMAGUCHI

Current Country of residence: Bangladesh

Networth: $6+ million

Eriko Yamaguchi is the founder and CEO of Motherhouse Co., Ltd., a Bangladesh-based handbag design company whose products are all made from jute fiber, one of the world’s most environmentally-friendly fibers. At Motherhouse, Ms. Yamaguchi designs all of her own products and positions them for sale to developed country markets. In 2007, Business Week recognized her as one of the top emerging entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region.

She always wrote down my dreams and plans on sketchbooks. I wanted to sell our bags at our shops and also department stores; I wanted people to know about our products and activities… Every time we realized each dream, I felt happy so I thought we could take the big step at last. We opened this shop on August 21, 2007.

That was the only way to earn their trust. So I sold bags for dear life and made sales pitches for our products to any department store by myself. If I didn’t do those things at all, no matter how much I asked them to trust me or make good things with me, they wouldn’t have responded to those requests. Those would have sounded really spiritless for them.

Eventually she returned home with 160 jute bags made by local people from her own design. These bags, around $80 each, quickly sold out, and Yamaguchi decided to launch Motherhouse. Nowadays she has six directly managed stores in Tokyo Osaka and Fukuoka and also sells at some major department stores. Sales have gone up to more than $1.5 million from $30,000 a year ago. Yet Yamaguchi doesn’t plan to settle down; she is now in Nepal to start a new business.

Eriko Yamaguchi, 25, can be considered as one of the few successful Japanese entrepreneurs involved in fair trade. Her ‘Mother House Co.’ is actively fostering the idea of fair trade here through direct deals with producers in Bangladesh and other developing countries.

Bullied at elementary school she was a delinquent in junior high school, but after studied at Omiya Industrial High School before enrolling in the faculty of policy management of Keio University. She later went to Bangladesh and studied at the Graduate School of Development Studies of BRAC University. On returning from Bangladesh she launched Mother House Co. and this year won the Business Planning Contest for Women Entrepreneurs. She has also written a book, “The Naked Life”, in which she explains her views of this unique form of capitalism with a humane face.

“I wouldn’t trust other people at all for the rest of my life if I gave it up. Finally I thought that I would believe in myself.”

Click HERE for an interview of Eriko’s work in Bangladesh.