Names can carry personal, cultural, familial, and historical connections. They give us a sense of who we are, the community we belong to, and they help us find our place in the world. And it’s one more way our team pays homage to the makers whose hands create everything in our shop.Our design process is long. Typically our team spends 6-9 months from that first initial idea for a product through production and finally when it’s ready to sell, sometimes that timeline can extend to a year or two for our more complicated pieces. We obsess over every detail: from the material it’s made of (including where it comes from and how we obtain it), to the finished look of...
One of the foundations of our mission is to support equal opportunities for women. Did you know that 70% of all people living in poverty are women and girls? In the countries where we work, women are often viewed as second-class citizens who are held back by social, cultural, and economic barriers. Many have to decide how to feed and clothe their families on less than $2 per day, and that doesn’t even account for “luxuries” like schooling for children (it’s not free), medicine if someone gets sick, housing, and transportation. If a woman is lucky enough to find employment, they are only eligible to work the lowest paid jobs which come with dangerous working conditions and unthinkable long work...
2022 was a whirlwind year for me (I’m sure many of you can relate). I always find it’s helpful to have a look back at what happened—good and bad—to better plan for the future.On a personal level I was distracted more in 2022 than ever before; I had my first baby in April and the uncertainty of the world economy really wore on me the second half of the year. We have a lot of safety nets as citizens in the US, I’ve never worried about going hungry even if our business should completely fail, but our partners in Indonesia, India, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, and the Philippines often can’t rely on their governments taking care of their basic needs if...
As we finish up our holiday shopping please keep our makers in mind and understand the real difference you've made in their lives when you've chosen to gift thoughtfully with Fair Trade items.With our phones in our hands almost all the time, sometimes we can still seem more disconnected than ever. It’s our hope that by connecting you with the maker who created the products you buy from us, you realize that you’re connected to her and her entire village because you’ve changed their lives with your support.There are real people behind everything you buy from us. You may never get the chance to meet her face to face, but I promise she thinks about you often and appreciates you...
Last month our team received a note from a now former affiliate saying she could no longer support us because our products are made by people of a different faith than her.I was stunned.At first I closed the message because I was hurt by it, but I reopened it and finished it a few minutes later because I wanted to know why she felt that way.She indicated that her own faith forbid her from supporting products made by people of a different belief system. She said the idea that our brand celebrates these “other holidays” alongside our makers is offensive to her. She said that we misrepresented own values and that they don’t align with anything she believes in.We are...
