At our morning meeting today, I was greeted with Global Crafts tee shirt history. Three of the staff were sporting shirts from our attempts to get the Fair Trade message out there on a tee shirt and inspired me to write a blog post about it. JustifyThat.com Ronnie was wearing a tee from our[…]
I hope everyone has their travel plans to New York for the NY NOW trade show February 4-8. No?? Well I’ve been viewing the Fair Trade Federation member offerings and am almost sorry I’ll be hanging out in Florida during the dead of winter in the northeast. If you’re going, here are a few more[…]
I feel like I’m missing something by not exhibiting at trade shows, and not just the sales. From this distance they look like mini reunions and in a city like New York, great opportunities to get together over great food. For now it will have to suffice that I meet up with fellow Fair Trade Federation[…]
A new year and new fair trade products! One of these days I’ll make it to the NY NOW gift show–which is the most popular and successful for Fair Trade Federation member exhibitors–but for now I’ll continue to attend virtually. This winter’s NY NOW show takes place February 4th through the 8th. I asked the FTF NY NOW exhibitors what’s[…]
This year is the first in a long while that January is a big question mark for me. I’m trying to be positive but I have no idea what US legislation and laws are going to change my life or others I care about or what basic human rights are going to be at risk. I[…]
It’s shocking how prevalent the conversation around trade has become with this election cycle. Here we are, promoting fair trade as we know it, some of us for decades, only to have the word “trade” prefixed by a lot of negative adjectives (and expletives) that have given trade a bad name. But this is our[…]
When we at Global Crafts became members of the Fair Trade Federation in 2005, we found we were a part of an interesting group; married couple-owned and operated wholesale businesses. In our case, it was easy for us to make the decision when we returned from Kenya with no jobs, no kids, no home, to set up a[…]
After spending two days in our home with windows covered with plywood, no electricity, little cell service and no outside news other than an occasional text I had a lot of time to reflect. Earlier in the week we’d heard stories of the effects of Hurricane Matthew on Haiti and thankfully heard from the artisans that[…]
I wax nostalgic for the days when school started after Labor Day. So bear with me that I’m posting this on September 1st and featuring back-to-school items while in most places school has already started. Was it just me, or were you excited about getting a new (metal) lunchbox, a binder with a plastic sleeve for[…]
When we unpacked our first shipment of Zimbabwe wood carvings in 2003, we found that the empty spaces in the box were filled with blocks of wood with rusty pieces of metal attached. Each one weighed just under a pound. We’d shipped the order by EMS, which is international priority mail, and paid dearly for[…]