The longer I am in retail, the more I find myself trying to make socially conscious decisions about what we feature for the store. This year we made a decision to strive to have more made in America items and pair those with unique fair trade gifts & jewelry. I feel this keeps us fresh and ahead of our competition by offering unique gifts that you just don’t find everywhere.
The fair trade movement dates to the 1940s, when a Pennsylvania Mennonite named Edna Ruth Byler traveled to Puerto Rico and was shocked by the poverty. She set up a business to sell the needlecrafts of female artisans she met on the trip; it later grew into the nonprofit retailer Ten Thousand Villages.
The movement began to blossom in Europe in the 1980s and since then has gone global, with coffee its leading commodity.
Companies looking to affix a fair trade label to their products go to an independent third party, such as FTUSA or Fairtrade International, to get certification that their products are coming from sources that meet certain standards.
Fairtrade International, based in Bonn, Germany, with affiliates in about two dozen countries, has standards for the sort of “small producer organization” preferred by companies like Equal Exchange. Among them: “Democracy. Profits should be equally distributed among the producers. All members have a voice and vote in the decision-making process of the organization.”
This is important to me. I think that the artists and workers creating an item should be paid fairly for what they are doing. It enables them to provide quality homes for their children and also enables them to learn other skills as needed.
Take coffee for example, Under fair trade rules, farmers get a $1.40 per pound “floor price” for coffee — a minimum maintained even if commodity markets go lower; a 20-cents-per-pound “social premium,” which pays for communal benefits like health clinics or schools; and an extra 30-cent premium if the coffee is organic. Now they are talking about adding larger plantations into this system. For me the whole reason the system was put into place was to give the small businesses an opportunity to compete and thrive regardless of size. This strikes home for me as our fabulous US government system constantly poops on the mom & pops that built this country. I have to spend countless hours researching and trying new things to separate me from the big chains and department stores. Thankfully my customers are looking for unique different items that tell a story.
If large plantations are allowed into the fair trade system, critics say, they could become eligible for premiums they don’t need to be profitable. There’s also widespread concern that the small farmer cooperatives could be squeezed out. The concern is that “large companies will use the fair trade seal to do what they call ‘fair-wash,’ to get the halo effect and perhaps confuse consumers about their overall practices,” said Daniel Jaffee, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington State University who has studied the movement. I would compare this to the large Fortune 500 companies who have charitable donations and programs to help ease their pain and help their image when they move into a town and destroy the economic infrastructure of a small town like Wally World.
For now, I look forward to the hunt of finding those unique gifts, jewelry and items both made in the USA and those from other countries that help to better someone’s quality of life.
Scentsations Gift Boutique 