The Good Life is a life that is lived feeling good – and you can only feel that way if everything you do or think focuses on living with a conscience.

Even setting up a business…

Just being conscious of everything around us, of all the situations and people and issues and skills and opportunities that we are part of, is what makes for a more meaningful life, and if you can add to that empathy and a feeling of “us” rather than “me”, its hard not to be engulfed in a feeling of “goodness” all around!

At BARO MARKET, we chose to do everything possible to make life good for as many people as we could. We didn’t have a magic wand, but we had something very powerful : a conscience, and we believed that if we lived and worked and played with that conscience always alive and kicking, it would be hard to go wrong…We strove to present a sustainability that was all encompassing : that looked after the planet that hosted us, the people and crafts and skills being marginalised everywhere and boosted a sense of community that often got forgotten in this very high tech age.

The Good Life is truly conscious living : being conscious at every moment of everything we do or say. If your conscience can be used to be the Decision Maker, then every decision is made knowingly. Which means every decision is made in the midst of the world we live in and the social milieu we are part of – not outside of it.

We love beautiful things; we are a shop – both online and at real spaces; we cannot pretend to change the world singlehandedly. However, we do believe in that old story about the little drops of water… What we CAN do is to choose what we sell, spread what we believe in, build a strong community that believes in a collective well-being, be fair to everyone we deal with, strive to build an equitable society and always, always to stay authentic.

We built our business starting from these beliefs. Here are some of the things it translates into :

• We delve into what we find so that the stories we share with people will open their minds and expand their worlds
• We try as much as possible to introduce our clients to the artists, craftspeople and creators first-hand. Its only with this exposure that we can truly make a difference to their lives. Being secretive and guarded will not do that.
• We are local and global together : we go all over the country and sometimes outside, working with small communities or brands that work the best way possible, and we aim to take that everywhere we can – without diluting the local nuances of what they do
• Our pricing is sensible, which means it is not always cheap, but it always makes sense and nobody is ripped off
• We work with local communities and try always to use traditions and flavours that have always existed, often creating something new that came from the old
• We treat the often muddled way small businesses work as an opportunity, not a curse : we discover magic that is often unknown, and we can use our own strengths to make it work for all of us
• We honestly love what we do, or else it would not work!

The world today often seems obsessed with size – success is measured in huge volumes, massive turnovers and mega buyouts. I believe that each of us needs to define what our own yardsticks must be, and only measuring by those will ever make any sense. For us at BARO MARKET, our biggest priority has been what our brand stands for and what it means to anyone who encounters us in any way. Integrity, authenticity and true creative thought are what we value most; when we build on this, we find our way to that Holy Grail : a healthy balance sheet!

Doing business like this means, more than any other time, having a team of people who are all equally inspired by the same beliefs. It also means making sure that there are people at various stages of their life cycle all together, so that there is every kind of energy available, ranging from experience to tech to focus to dreams. Small teams with motivated people work best, and if everyone has a belief in their own vision being achieved through the collective, that’s the best version of any business you could have.

The immensity of this country has many downsides, but the upsides are that there is no end to what you can discover or to the stories you can unearth. For us, that really is the uniqueness we strive for : to keep discovering new things, new people, new talent that can be unveiled. If we can do that all the time and really well, we get more people interested in coming to us, more creators being able to earn a good livelihood and more success and value for our brand – and if that isn’t what a success story should be, what is??!!

Srila Chatterjee founded BARO MARKET online in September 2020, right in the midst of the pandemic, with a small and inspired team who all believed they could build a successful business on their terms! baromarket.in brings together artists, craftsmen and designers from all over India who work together to create beautiful things that are relevant and exciting for today’s living.