Hello fellow fair traders!

I am very excited to announce that Handmade Expressions has been published in many blogs (commercial and personal) because of one product in particular: This is a paper bag. That’s actually the name of this unique fair trade product, a recycled newspaper shopping bag that can be customized with a retailer’s logo and other information.

The two major blogs that published information on it as “guilt-free shopping” and a “green product” were Treehugger.com and Gliving.tv. Others copied us onto blogs such as www.blogowogo.com, www.eco-cide.com, news.speeple.com, www.buzztracker.com, www.blogjunkies.com, www.kinja.com, lifehacker.com, www.myfeedz.com, us.keegy.com, www.personalbee.com, and more!

This has increased awareness of our product, and in doing so provided more sustainable employment for our artisans. However, the product has been highlighted as a “green” product, which is great (green = socially responsible, too), but no one has mentioned that it is also a fair trade product.

Don’t get me wrong. Here at the office we were crazy about the fact that our product was being featured all over the internet. Traffic to our website nearly tripled, and non-fair trade stores ordered several of our special bags. It is only now that we realize that the highlight of the bag was its green aspect, and how it made sense to buy such a good, economical bag to advertise either a store’s green consciousness, or an individual’s will to help the environment.

In a recent post I mentioned how the fair trade movement should learn from the green movement in terms of awareness. The green movement has numerous blogs, websites and supporters. This is the reason why our product got so much exposure.

Still, we have tried our best to educate everyone who calls about what fair trade is and interested them in looking at other products. This experience has given us even more insight into the impact that the green movement has on the consciousness of end consumers and retailers. Green = good. Fair trade = unknown, well, at least for a lot of people.

But I shouldn’t be too hard on the Fair Trade movement. The Green movement is easier to promote for several reasons: For starters, the fair traders who really, deeply understand the reasons for doing fair trade have had to travel and start business and friendship relationships with producers, farmers and artisans. It is hard to come back from a trip and, with the limited resources of one or a few individuals, promote that passion that drove them into the fair trade movement. It’s hard to convey all of those feelings, because fair trade is seen as “foreign” to many people here. And it’s no one’s fault. Many fair traders spend a lot of time traveling, keeping up businesses and maintaining artisan relationships. This leaves little time to get into the new channels of communication: blogs and internet videos. Usually, the easiest people to “convert” to conscious buyers are younger people, who read many blogs or watch internet videos. I encourage every fair trader to follow the example of supporters of the “green” movement, and create blogs that can be interconnected with other fair traders :)

Need an example? Just check out the links to the “blogs I like” here, on the left. Leave comments on their posts too, if you can :) The green movement, because it’s only about the impact an individual has on the planet (and we are ALL affected by they planet equally), then it’s easier to convince someone about the benefits of being socially responsible towards the environment. This has led big public figures to understand environmental issues and promote them. Take Al Gore, with his Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth”. Big, public figures can penetrate minds easier, and therefore promote Green products even more.

So, Fair Traders, lets start spreading the word even more, and looking for help and attention everywhere! Younger people can make blogs, like this one! We can also promote fair trade to public figures, who can then help us spread the word even more.

Does anyone have any comments or other suggestions for fair traders?

Thanks for reading!

Posted by Juan Portillo on 10/5/07

Today I want to share with you a social development program that Handmade Expressions is involved in. Your support of fair trade helps make this program possible. I’m really proud to be working for a company that helps with projects like these!

A compound word, Vidya-Archana stands for worshipping knowledge. Its meaning is derived from the Hindi language words “Vidya”, which means knowledge, and “Archana”, which means worship.

Handmade Expressions does not only provide sustainable employment to the artisans, but works on the overall development of their communities. That is what fair trade is all about. We believe that education is the key to a better life and a better society. Therefore, Vidya-Archana was started as an effort by Handmade Expressions to share and spread knowledge. This program is aimed for the children of the underprivileged section of society who have all the will but no means to fulfill their education needs.

The program focuses on collecting used books and stationary from donations and raising funds. They are then redistributed to economically disadvantaged children who want to study but don’t have the resources to continue their education. Financial aid is also given to students in terms of scholarships, merit awards and sponsorship for higher education. Vidya-Archana is currently being undertaken in northern India, helping more and more kids each year.

Posted by Juan Portillo on 9/24/07

I’ve talked before about how fair trade shouldn’t be taken as charity. It should be a business model that helps us create sustainability for everyone involved. It’s not about donating money so artisans can produce ornaments that will be sold only once because the only reason people bought them was because they felt sorry for them.

The fair trade movement in America, in my opinion, could grow faster if we start taking fair trade more seriously – in a business sense. Half of the people involved in fair trade are non-profits and religious organizations. These organizations get a lot of funding, and thus grow, which is great. However, people who get involved because they want to do socially responsible, for-profit business are (in some cases) having a hard time surviving. On many occasions I have tried to contact retailers listed in fair trade resource pages, only to find out that they had to close their businesses.

The industry is not growing fast enough because it might still be seen as charity. This slows down the rate at which people switch from conventional trade to fair trade, because there are not enough socially responsible choices available for the public. What all of us fair traders should do, then, is to educate everyone around us about how fair trade is a business model that benefits everyone from the producer to the consumer. We should all join forces at a local, state and national level to support each other and help the industry grow by educating the final consumers on how THEY too benefit from fair trade.

The Green movement has been very successful because of this. People who sell numerous green products effectively convey the idea of sustainability and the “good business sense” of buying ‘green’. Everyone has at least a vague idea of what a “green” product is. But I always find people who have never heard of fair trade. I’m pretty sure we have the potential to become as popular as the green movement. We just have to think about the different business strategies we can implement to become more mainstream and to educate people about socially responsible practices. It won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding in the end.

I guess that with this post I identified one of the “problems” this industry might be experiencing, not so much solutions. Nevertheless, it should spark deeper discussions in the future. At our growing fair trade company we are heavily discussing issues like these from a marketing/business point of view.

I’m not trying to say that the people involved in the fair trade movement don’t know about this issue. What I’m trying to say is that we should stray away from an image of charity and move towards an image of: “buy fair trade because it makes good business sense”! :-) And the trend has already started. Many businesses are helping producers make trendy, functional products that will be strong enough to compete against conventional trade products. It’s all about leveling the field for all the players in the industry. Like they said in the movie “Black Gold”: artisans don’t need aid, they need trade.

Posted by Juan Portillo on 9/24/07.

At Handmade Expressions we take our artisans’ feelings into consideration. We really want them to like what they’re doing and express themselves creatively. At the same time, we want to help them preserve their traditional art. That is why we help them create functional products, but following their own processes and using their unique skills. The result is a line of quality fair trade products which appeal to a Western audience.

Here is the story of the artisans who make our fair trade appliqué bags. Enjoy:

42 year-old “Kailash bahan” (yellow saree) and 38 year-old “Ganeshi bai” (pink saree, extreme right) are part of an all women cooperative in western Rajasthan. They have learned the art of hand appliqué from fellow village women and now they are passing on this art to many other women.

This is a female cooperative with 272 women actively practicing their hand appliqué skills. The artisans are distributed over the region in various villages. Women from far villages come once a week to the cooperative office, submit their products and collect more raw materials to take back to their homes and work on them.

Profits from this art help in the overall development of the group. This region now has medical centers providing basic health services, electricity produced from solar energy, evening schools for kids and vocational colleges for women!

Posted by Juan Portillo on 9/13/07.

I started doing marketing in the fair trade industry fresh out of college. I got my degree from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and they taught us that free trade is the way to go.

I attended a Texas Fair Trade Coalition meeting this week, and I felt a bit weird seeing how “free trade” was hated with such a passion. But then I realized: it’s not that they hate “free trade” and everything else I believed in during my college years, it’s the fact that “free trade” is not trade and it’s not free!!

So what’s the difference between free trade and fair trade? Here is my understanding of the issue (please correct me if I’m wrong):
The term “Globalization” has been thrown around a lot over the past decades as our world becomes ever more unified. However, it hasn’t been that fine and dandy idea we are taught about in schools. Billions of people still don’t drink clean water, don’t have electricity, and live on less than two dollars a day. I have seen this first hand, since I was born and raised in El Salvador for 18 years.

Yes, globalization is real. I’m living proof of it. But not all of us have been so lucky. And the individuals that have benefited from globalization are just coincidental. Big corporations are the real benefactors of “free trade” and globalization, because they are allowed to exploit the disadvantages of poorer countries and their respective citizens. Most corporations believe they are giving people an “opportunity” to improve their lives by offering jobs at factories, but in the end just take advantage of the lack of education and information that the disadvantaged communities of the world have. They are also capitalizing on the fact that these people are risk-averse, since they actually need the income to survive, and will reluctantly give in to conventional trade practices. Conventional trade doesn’t take into account the feelings of the people working on mundane tasks for long hours, nor do they care about their health.

This is not free trade. It’s almost just a “Free-ride” for corporations. It’s definitely not a sustainable process for our world. Not only are people exploited, but the natural resources are being depleted without concern for the future of our environment. Free trade should take into account the needs of ALL traders.

Fair trade offers an alternative business model where everyone can benefit. I will quote a few of the Fair Trade principles from Jacqueline DeCarlo’s book “Fair Trade: Beginner’s Guide” (pg. 20, table 2):

• Concerns for people, the planet, and profit predominate

• Technical assistance and training, along with social premiums, investment in low-income communities and opportunities for self-determination

• Disadvantaged groups such as women and ethnic minorities are made partners in the Fair Trade supply network

• Consumer education and advocacy leads to socially responsible business innovations

One last important point before my conclusion: fair trade is NOT charity. We want to achieve sustainable trading practices, where the producers and consumers can interact in a fair market. So don’t look at fair trade as a way to help one person who made one little gift. Think of it as a model we should all follow. In a free trade world, you have the freedom to choose whether you buy green and organic products, socially responsible products, or mass produced goods.

The disadvantaged people of the world don’t need our charity. They need information, education, training and consideration to be able to trade with people around the world as equals. We have the knowledge to make things right. Do we have the heart?

Posted by Juan Portillo on 9/13/07.