All’s fair
A local business sells products that provide economic opportunity for artisans around the globe
By Stacey Wiebe 03/22/2007
It’s just like any other day.
You stroll into a Macy’s, or a department store like it, where you peruse the scarves, jewelry and purses in search of a one-of-a-kind gift that is as much about form as it is function.
Your eyes land on a silky green shawl and — what do you know — it was handmade in Nepal. Once upon a time, you’d consider the lovely little scarf a true find, even at a retail price of $80. But that was before you knew about fair trade.
Simply put, fair trade is the principle of offering fair compensation to artisans from all over the globe for the items that they render. Those items can be virtually anything —clothing, bags, purses, jewelry, you name it — but tend to be fairly artistic in nature.
For people like gallery owner Renee Meyer, who owns Ventura’s Accolades Gallery, fair trade is also an opportunity for her to sell the beautiful wares of economically disadvantaged people from around the world. Many of those economically disadvantaged are single mothers striving to make ends meet by making any manner of unique products, but the diverse and comparatively lucrative market made possible by fair trade opens doors for those from many walks of life.
“The basic idea is that the artisans, the producers of products, are working in good conditions,” says Meyer, who purchases products from a fair-trade company called World of Good Inc.
A bridge to commerce
World of Good’s mission is to “create opportunities for hundreds of artisan cooperatives around the world to share their best work with you by serving as a bridge to the U.S. retail market,” according to the company, which invests 10 percent of its profits in artisan communities via its affiliated non-profit organization, World of Good: Development Organization. The organization is designed to strengthen “standards for handcrafts in the international fair trade industry, and also improving the lives of thousands of artisans through community development projects.”
While organizations like World of Good assist artisans by helping to improve quality of life, those in the American retail business, like Meyer, can utilize the goods produced and feel that she’s making a difference in the process.
“The living wage is kind of a key thing,” Meyer says, explaining how fair trade helps artisans make a livable wage on the items produced. “It may be that they’re only making $1 a day, but they may have been previously making $1 a month in their country. $1 a day may be a living wage where they are.”
Ultimately, the practice of fair trade — a concept born in Europe about 40 years ago —benefits the consumer as well as the artisan. The same shawl that you could have purchased for $80 in the department store may have rendered a 10-cent profit for its maker. But with fair trade in play, you might pay $30 for the shawl while the maker receives a much higher wage. “Any store is full of imports,” Meyer says. “The difference is that you know the people making them are getting a decent wage.”
Those people are also working in decent conditions and may even have been given a zero-interest loan by a fair trade organization — like World of Good and others — to invest in their practices.
Fair trade beauty
Among the fair trade items in Meyer’s store are jewelry made by Colombian youth at high risk for delinquency in the Andean town of Villa de Leyva; wooden laquer boxes fashioned by Vietnamese in the Ha Tay Province; embroidered and beaded bags that help support Vietnamese rice farmers; silk scares woven in a little village near Hanoi; and purses made in South India that support HIV prevention and treatment activities. And then there are the journals handmade by a man in Bali who, desperate to earn money to be married, started making paper in his blender. The most expensive of Meyer’s fair trade items is $49.
“It really, really works for me,” says Meyer of carrying fair trade items. “It’s socially conscious, it’s beautiful and it’s well-priced … what I find so fascinating is that most of these items are made from what these people can find.”
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