our values
Since 2008, Facteur Celeste has been creating fashion and home accessories, handmade from recycled materials. The brand focuses on mixing and merging cultures, materials and know-hows.
women empowerment
Facteur Celeste fosters women employment as they have a more difficult access to well valued jobs, all the more when disabled (26% of the women in our workshops).
Bringing regular revenues to women has a greater impact on society as they would reinvest 90% of it into the whole family well-being.
Facteur Celeste works daily with 52 women in Burkina Faso, in 4 workshops. 3 of them are in Ouagadougou, the other in Po, in the South of the country.
steady revenues and prices
The workshops welcome new women regularly but at a slow pace, in order to be able to warrant the new women some work for the upcoming months.
The goal of the project is to provide the women with a regular job. They are paid by the piece.
The price of each piece is discussed and fixed by mutual agreement, and according to the time necessary to craft it. This price cannot be lower than 200FCFA by working hour.
more than a job
Besides monthly revenues, that are 30% higher than the national average income, the women benefit from literacy courses, thematic trainings (international business, how to fix a price, how to conceive a collection, etc.).
They also have health insurance and a privilege access to the local clinic, and an allocation for their children or grandchildren school fees.
The women can work either at home or at the workshop. Coming to the workshop or taking part in orders is not mandatory. It is forbidden to work on Sundays.
The mothers of young children can come to the workshop with them, for maternity not to be an obstacle to financial autonomy.
rational margins for Facteur Celeste
To craft one "belle poubelle" (5 up to 7 days of work), the woman will receive 18 up to 21€. The local NGO adds up 20% margin to fund its rent and salaries.
The French company is part of a cooperative. It will sell this same item 44€ to shops, which will themselves sell it 110€.
With its margins, Facteur Celeste pays for importing taxes and freight from Burkina Faso to France, communications fees, the salary of one person, and pays for development (professional fairs, development of new products, etc.).
choosing handcraft
Our choice for handcraft guarantees work for a greater number of people. Indeed, one "belle poubelle", that the women nicknamed “belles poubelles”like "beautiful trashcans", needs 6 to 8 days to be made, which is equivalent to about 40 hours of work.
Then, it is necessary to constantly integrate new women to the workshops, as Facteur Céleste accessories become more and more popular. The groups of women are strengthened, allowing a high economic impact in this region.
an important cultural mixing
At first, the items were drawn by Delphine Kohler. Today, the women create 75% of collections. With time, they were able to master the corchet technique. They also gained self-confidence, and with it the will to create. The women are the source of most of the motives, but also the shapes in fashion and home collections.
Originated from different ethnies and backgrounds, their influences are numerous and their concretisation infinite. This is what makes Facteur Celeste so culturally rich.
100% upcycled materials
Facteur Celeste only works with discarded materials, mainly collectd in Burkina Faso streets by its inhabitants.
At first, our collections were only made with recycled plastic bgas. Since 2017, Facteur Celeste has been upcylcing new plastic waste : PET bottles and coated cotton for VITALE and VINTAGE collections.
All materials are used without dying processes. They are only cleaned and cut. This has an impact on our collections : in Burkina faso, it is easy to find black or white plastic bags, but fewer other colors.
As a consequence, our iconic items are in B&W, et we then work on series that last a few months or longer according to their availability.
collecting plastic waste
If, at first, the craftswomen collected the plastic bags themselves, Facteur Celeste now signed partnerships with women groups collecting plastic bags in their neighbourhood. Cleaned and sorted by colours, the plastic bags are then bought per kilo.
Up to 2016, Facteur Celeste also collected plastic bags in France, through the NGO Les Filles du Facteur. Since the plastic bags ban, we only collect in Burkina Faso. Nevertheless, some shops like Monoprix chose to give us some of the bags they could not give anymore. We agreed when the colors were great and hard to find in Burkina Faso.
eco-friendly at all levels
It is not perfect, but Facteur Celeste wishes to have the lowest ecological footprint as possible. At every step of crafting, delivery and selling, impacts are studied to be lowered.
For the moment, we import the items from Burkina Faso mainly via air freight. Marine transport is the ecological choice, but its delays are curently impossible for us to adapt to.
Plastic bags waste (handles and ends) are reused in the making of garland lights or given to a plastic melting workshop in Ouagadougou.
Deliveries from France are made with zero plastic, except plastic tape for non EU deliveries. If we have to use protecting plastic in parcels, it is 100% second-hand material.