Fair Indigo: Click to Support Fair Trade
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09.27.06
Bill Bass used to run the online division of Land's End, and set up one of the best early shopping sites on the internet. Now he is applying those skills to build an online retailer of fair-trade clothing at reasonable prices. According to the New York Times: This new venture, Mr. Bass said, will go beyond simply promising to adhere to minimum-wage and other labor laws in a given country. “Most apparel companies say they meet legal wage minimums in foreign countries, but the problem is you can’t raise a family on the minimum wage in another country any more than you could do it here,” he said. The website has some neat features like its patent-pending zoom window on the technical side, and its descriptions of where it gets its clothes on the social side.
For instance these pants are described as "in our search for fair trade pants, we almost had to say "maybe next year." Most pant makers are huge places where wages may be legal, but take a back seat to everything else. Then we found a great little worker cooperative in Costa Rica.....Fair Indigo is proud to support a Costa Rican employee-owned cooperative. The company not only provides the community with employment opportunities, but its co-op structure means that its employees make all the decisions regarding their company’s future: they decide what equipment to invest in, set their own hours, pool their resources for more bargaining power, and share in all the profits." ::Fair Indigo via ::New York Times
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Great to hear about you guys. Love your stuff!