About us

Himalayan Handmades was founded by Stephen Forster 17 years ago. Following a number of years of travel and adventure, Stephen found himself in Kathmandu, the capital of the Mountain Kingdom of Nepal. Fascinated and impressed by the colors, textures and creativity of the arts, crafts and clothing of Nepal, Himalayan Handmades began as a part-time business selling at local craft markets. The positive response and continued demand for these unique creations resulted in Himalayan Handmades becoming a fulltime business. No longer limiting themselves to local markets, Himalayan Handmades began wholesaling throughout South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland and Mozambique and have been exporting direct from Nepal to the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, Greece and the UK. 
 
As a landlocked, mountainous country, exporting is the lifeblood of Nepal. Himalayan Handmades has spent years developing relationships with suppliers who they repeatedly support. We would like to assure all our customers that under no circumstances would Himalayan Handmades support suppliers that employ any form of child labour.

Although we have been importing, exporting and wholesaling from Nepal since the early 90’s this year we have now set up our own offices in Kathmandu in collaboration with our new business partner Mingma Lama who has many years of experience dealing with western clients and has an educational background in Information Technology. Our Kathmandu office will basically be an extension of our South African office and our packing and forwarding office in Nepal. We feel having our own office in Kathmandu will enable us to work even more closely with our suppliers and streamline our day to day business operations. Running concurrently with our Kathmandu office, Mingma and his team will work on market intelligence, product development, price negotiation, quality assurance, logistic and monitor supplier compliances (eg. child labor, work safety, Gov regulation etc).  At end of the day, the value and cost advantages we get from having this will be passed on to you, our customers.

For the past five years Himalayan Handmades have, in their own unique way, been supporting the “shoe shine” kids in Thamel, Kathmandu by providing them with cricket bats, shirts, balls, gloves, pads and recently erected a net so they could practice without losing balls in the Bagmati River! We also sponsored one of the boys who went to play in a tournament in Bihar, India. We prefer to give in this way as these kids love their cricket and we believe that by giving them something they enjoy doing, it will help in their overall development and bring a smile to their faces.

We also have a mountain biking company called Ride Away and use local guides in Nepal. Check it out at www.rideawaytours.com