A Chat With Dyan Eagles, founder and president, DharmaCrafts

CS: Could you talk about your relationships with vendors and craftspeople? What’s your relationship with them like?
Eagles: One thing we’ve tried since the catalog started was to use it as a venue for Buddhist artists and craftspeople to sell their work. To do what in Buddhism is called “right livelihood.” We try to use as many Buddhist artists as we can, especially American Buddhist artists and craftspeople. We develop a lot of our products in cooperation with them. Our overseas vendors, or those who import from overseas, we try to build a partnership. Over the years it’s developed so that when the vendor goes to Korea, he tries to find products that will be just for our catalog. Same for vendors in Thailand or Japan. They bring back things that aren’t offered elsewhere, that are specifically for us. It helps us to have exclusive products, and that’s been a really important thing, I think, in our success.