A New Chapter
Mama Zwazo began in early 2017 as a dream between friends. We have grown into a community of women who believe in our ability to craft opportunity in Haiti. Our team is far and above those early ideas.
We’ve learned so much in the last year and grown into our own skin. We’ve figured out who we are as a brand and where we feel the Lord taking us. As we’ve experienced this growth, we’ve come to realize some of those early ideas don’t exactly fit who we are today and who we hope to be in the future.
We will always, at our core, be about making space for capable Haitians to impact their own families and communities. This will never change. In the beginning, we thought this meant employing mothers who were at risk or had already relinquished their children to orphanages. We soon realized our small administrative team could not manage in-depth skill training.
We made a slight pivot and, in what has proven to be one of the biggest blessings in our story, hired most of our team from a local trade school. On day one, Bledine, our seamstress, sewed near perfect blankets.
Suddenly, we had four employees, and the only mothers in our studio were our administrative team. The “Mama” in Mama Zwazo started to feel a bit funky, and not in that cute, retro way. It felt a bit like false advertising, because although we are a team of strong women, most of us aren’t moms. Maybe this isn’t such a huge deal, but we also started to look at expanding our product line beyond baby goods.
In this last year, we’ve become a sisterhood of joyful women, mostly not moms, crafting not just baby goods to stand tall in the fight for justice in Haiti. We want our work to honor each other and our customers in the best way possible.
A few months ago, we started praying and sitting with the idea of changing our name. (Wait, a name change and rebrand only a year into business? Yea we know, it sounds a bit crazy. It is a bit crazy.) We dreamed about a brand that would be a bit simpler, and a touch more reflective of our Caribbean home while also embracing the joy of women everywhere linking arms for good.
We threw around hundreds of names. Some were contenders, and some were immediately thrown out. We knew we wanted a name that stayed true to our Haitian home, but also didn’t feel like quite the tongue twister Mama Zwazo can be. We wanted to continue to highlight our belief that justice is often found in small things done well. We also wanted something that would solidify our belief in women and kids changing the world.
And, so, drum roll please….
Mama Zwazo is now…
Are you sure you’re ready?
Really, really sure?
…Petite Palm!!!
Petite Palm reflects all we are and hope to become.
Petite Palm is a socially conscious lifestyle brand nestled under the Caribbean sun in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Our one-of-a-kind goods craft opportunity for women to thrive. When you purchase our products, you choose to stand tall with us in the fight for justice.
We are women who believe in doing small things well. We are thriving under the sprawling palms of our island home. We believe together, we all flourish. We hope our handcrafted goods bring a joy to your everyday adventures.
Petite Palm will home to our much-anticipated online boutique. Our new streamlined site goes live tomorrow! (Sign up as an email insider to get early access tomorrow!) We’ll be rolling over our social media accounts to Petite Palm tomorrow morning too. All products ordered from our online store will show off our gorgeous new branding. We’re so excited to show you all the hard work we’ve been
doing behind the scenes!
Our stateside 501(c)3 presence will continue to be Mama Zwazo Foundation. You'll now hear us call our employee development programs, currently known as ReNest, the Mama Zwazo Initiative. So, if you’ve been with us since day one, and are a bit attached to our current name, you’ll still see it around!
Petite Palm is our next step in continuing to open doors to showcase all the beauty of Haiti.
We can’t wait to see what we build together as Petite Palm!
Love + Caribbean Light-
The Petite Palm Team