Fermín Vilcapoma Bohórquez and his wife, Madeleine Labán Rivera, are silver and semi-precious stone jewelry makers who live in San Juan de Lurigancho, a northern suburb of Lima in Peru. Fermín grew up in the rural town of Canta which is about 80 kilometers north and east of Lima. He moved to Lima when he was 11. His stepfather was a jeweler and he learned jewelry making from him since the workshop was in their home. When Fermín completed high school, he hoped to study engineering, but his family couldn’t afford the tuition at university so he worked in his stepfather’s jewelry workshop. When his stepfather died 23 years ago, Fermín took over and became the owner of the jewelry workshop.
He met Allpa, one our supplier groups in Peru, in 1988 and has been working with Allpa ever since. Ten Thousand Villages also began buying from Allpa in 1988. When our tour group visited Fermín and Madeleine in their home-workshop in February 2014, they told us they enjoy working with Allpa and are pleased that Allpa pays good prices and always pays on time. They feel like the people at Allpa are their friends, not just their business associates.
The business improved enough for Fermín and Madeleine to move to a new location in San Juan de Lurigancho in 2000. They have been able to make substantial improvements to their home and workshop since then and now have a three-story home that is half home and half workshop. When they are busy with orders, as many as 20 people work for them. On the day we visited, there were six people working in addition to Fermín and Madeleine.
Fermín is the jewelry designer and Madeleine is the business manager (accounting and sales). Over the years, Fermín has also encouraged some of his more talented workers to set up their own workshops and at least four of his former workers now own their own jewelry workshops.
While we were visiting, Fermín showed how a piece of jewelry is made from start to finish. He took some silver pellets and melted them with heat from his oxy-acetylene torch. Then he poured the molten silver into a rectangular mold. He immersed the mold in cold water and then, using a machine with two rollers (like a pasta machine or wringer-washer) rolled out the silver bar into a long silver band. He cut the band to the length of a bracelet and hammered a leaf design onto the bracelet. It took him less than 30 minutes to go from start to finish. When he was done, he wanted to give the bracelet to one of our tour group as a gift. Luis Heller of Allpa organized an impromptu raffle and Franco, Fermín’s 17 year old son, chose Kristine Ashwood as the lucky winner of the handmade, sterling silver bracelet.
The last activity of our visit was to shop in the jewelry showroom. We had a good time, picking out jewelry that we liked. We gave their retail sales a substantial boost.
Before we left I asked Franco how his school studies are going. He said he is about to graduate from high school and looking for a university to attend. He’s not sure what he wants to study yet, but it is encouraging to hear that Fermín and Madeleine have been successful enough in their jewelry workshop to be able to afford to send him on to university.
In the meantime, Franco was eager to tell me that he is learning to drive and he and Fermín showed me their car parked in their garage. Fermín sells his jewelry to Allpa and Manos Amigas and, over the years, Ten Thousand Villages has purchased Fermín’s jewelry through both Allpa and Manos Amigas.
It’s good to see that our purchases have had some part in helping Fermín’s family to build a successful jewelry business and a comfortable home in which to live and work. In addition, Franco will be able to attend university, a dream that his father was not able to fulfill for himself many years ago.