About
A small studio with a long supply chain — and a short list of middlemen.
Investerprise Africa is a family-run import studio in Tomball, Texas. We were founded in the summer of 2018 by Nancy Roach, who came home from a trip to Ghana with a suitcase of baskets and no real plan for what to do next.
Nancy Roach, founder. Photographed at the Tomball studio.
How it started
I'd just retired from a 22-year career in non-profit logistics and thought I'd take a long-overdue trip to West Africa to see a women's cooperative I'd been corresponding with. The plan was to visit, take notes, come home.
Two weeks in, I sat in the courtyard of a workshop in Bolgatanga while a woman named Akosua showed me how she coiled a basket. It took her four days. She told me what she earned for it. I did the math on the napkin I'd been using as a fan, and the number was indefensible.
I bought every basket she had. I bought every basket the workshop had. I shipped them home, put them on Etsy, and they sold in eleven days. I wired the money back. Akosua's husband called me on a borrowed phone to ask if it was real.
What we believe
Beautiful objects come from people who are paid fairly to make them. Slow shipping is fine. Small batches are fine. A waiting list is fine. What is not fine is pretending that the artisan at the start of the supply chain is anything other than the person whose name should be on the label.
Where we are today
In 2026, we work with 142 artisans across seven countries — Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Kenya, Rwanda, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. We have a small studio and showroom in Tomball, Texas. We answer our own emails. We pack our own boxes.
We're not trying to be Anthropologie. We're trying to be the shop you tell your sister about.
Our principles, in plain English.
Pay first, sell later
Artisans are paid 100% at the time we commission an order, never on consignment.
Two-link chain
We work directly with cooperatives and one freight forwarder. No agents, no resellers.
Small, signed batches
Every piece is hand-checked in Tomball and tagged with the maker's initials.
Honest shipping
Flat-rate domestic freight, carbon-offset, in recycled unbleached paper.
Returns without drama
30 days, no restocking fee, prepaid label. We trust you.
A real human reads this
Email Nancy directly. She answers within a business day, usually faster.
Giving back, quietly.
Since 2020, 3% of our gross revenue has supported literacy programs in our partner villages — children's classrooms and adult learning circles for the women in the cooperatives. We don't make a big deal out of it. We mention it once, here, in case you want to know.
In 2025 our annual contribution funded a small library extension at the Bolgatanga community center. We have photos. Email us if you want to see them.
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