Fashion that binds family to charities

Just weeks ago, Dave and Suzette Munson were in Rwanda spending precious time with kids orphaned by that country’s genocide in 1994.

As they common meals, shopped and only hung out with a immature adults — now in their late teenagers and early 20s — a couple, who revisit twice a year with their possess dual immature children, spoke to them about family: “The thing taken divided from them during such a immature age,” Suzette said.

Added her husband: “We know that they are going to get married one day and be husbands and fathers, wives and mothers. They wish to know how to provide a wife, a husband, how a father and mom provide their kids since they have no examples of that.”

With increase from their leather products line, Saddleback Leather Co. in San Antonio, a Munsons financially unite 12 of a orphans by Rwanda’s Africa New Life Ministries. They also have upheld New Life with supports toward a Bible school, Africa College of Theology in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.

Fashion hospitality isn’t new. Companies such as MAC, Kiehl’s and Toms boots and designers Donna Karan, Kenneth Cole, Michael Kors and Diane von Furstenberg are donors to free groups and causes, mostly by sales of dedicated items.

But Dave Munson’s life always has been focused on assisting others, and he creates certain his whole family is privately concerned in his philanthropy.

In a 10 years that Saddleback has existed as an online sell business (www.Saddle backLeather.com), a association has given divided $1 million to several private groups, several faith-based, such as New Life.

Three years ago, Munson and his mom schooled about a classification that helps orphans with propagandize tuition, medical care, wardrobe and dishes by sponsorships.

“It’s extraordinary that a integrate that immature has gotten that committed to philanthropy,” pronounced Marvin Eggleston, New Life’s house chairman, who also resides in San Antonio. He pronounced though Saddleback’s help, New Life wouldn’t have a Bible school.

Suzette’s possess 2-year-old online sell business, Love 41 (www.Love41.com, named for Psalms 41), also advantages New Life. She sells valuables and handbags, a latter done by Saddleback with 100 percent of a increase ancillary a ministry. To date, her business has sponsored some-more than 250 orphans and helps widows learn pursuit skills.

Other groups that Saddleback assists are a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; Mercy Ships, proffer surgeons and dentists who assistance children in building countries; and Centro NOE, a Mexican propagandize in Morelia where Munson taught English to bankrupt kids 14 years ago.

It was then, in 1999, that Munson, creatively from Portland, Ore., strike on his leather products business idea. He indispensable a bag for his things — work and play — and had a leather craftsman stitch it from with a sketch of his own.

Later, on a brief revisit to Portland, he said, people constantly stopped him to ask about a bag. He had some-more done in Mexico and returned to Portland to sell them for $250 a cocktail out of his Toyota Land Cruiser with his black Labrador, Blue, during his side. He sole out in 4 hours.

Munson wouldn’t give sales total though pronounced that a association has grown each year, with final year’s expansion adult 45 percent from 2011. Slightly some-more than one-third of Saddleback’s sales are from word of mouth.

Handbags, follower bags, duffles, satchels, belts, wallets, luggage and most some-more are done during a company’s Mexican bureau in Leon, Guanajuato, and distributed by Fort Worth’s Chamberlain Shipping Inc. Prices operation from $14 for a wallet sleeve to $1,175 for a suitcase.

And each product comes with a 100-year warranty, that explains a company’s familiar slogan, “They’ll quarrel over it when you’re dead.”

“Building a business is about building relationships,” Munson said. “If we sole thousands of bags though we didn’t have relationships, my life would be worthless.”

Many business like that about Munson. They also value Dave and Suzette’s humanitarianism.

Jimmy Sexton, owners of several weekly newspapers in Neosho, Mo., and a longtime customer, has oral to Munson on a phone.

“I’ve always believed in assisting my neighbors, though articulate to Dave has desirous my family and we to unite a child in a same encampment they help,” Sexton said.

James Foley II, who lives in Lomita, Calif., has sent tiny contributions to Africa New Life after reading about a work there around Munson’s blog and videos on a company’s website and Facebook.

“I’ll be doing business with Saddleback for a prolonged time,” Foley said.

Munson likes conference that.

“If it’s only about creation a whole garland of income to retire on a beach in Florida and collect seashells compartment we die, good that’s a rubbish of a life for me,” he said. “That has no fulfillment, no fun in it. It’s carrying a purpose in life that counts.”

mquintanilla@express-news.net