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Last year, Hamline first-year Margaret Shields bought her family members Fair Trade holiday gifts.
Fair Trade. Heard of it, right?

These days, fairly traded goods are becoming increasingly popular and more easily accessible.

Though ‘Fair Trade’ is a term most people are familiar with, many are unsure of its exact definition.

“I don’t know that I could call myself an expert, but I’m into the idea of Fair Trade,” Shields said. “I really just read a lot about the issue.”

In a nutshell, Fair Trade is a movement that attempts to provide workers and artisans fair wages. Large corporations are perceived by Fair Traders to be taking advantage of workers in many third-world countries by paying low wages in order to increase profits.

Stores and co-ops that support Fair Trade are trying to alleviate this problem.

“It’s important to know that the products you buy are produced and made by someone, whether they are paid fair wages or not,” Shields said. “Everyone should be paid a livable wage for the work they do. If it
means I need to pay more money or more attention to what I’m buying, I think it’s worth it.”

The only problem is, fairly-traded items can be hard to locate in stores.

“I’d say all grocery stores will sell [some] Fair Trade items,” Shields said. “[Fair Trade] clothing is difficult to find because you have to cross-reference every single brand with a list of companies that use sweatshops.”

For informed consumers in the Twin Cities, though, Fair Trade-focused stores make shopping a little easier.

In St. Paul, for example, there are three stores on Grand Avenue that sell Fair Trade items; in South Minneapolis, a Fair Trade clothing store was opened recently.

Kathy McGinley, the manager of Ten Thousand Villages on Grand Avenue, said that although Fair Trade stores are becoming increasingly apparent in the area, it’s still difficult to get the word out.

“The shortcoming of the whole movement is how disconnected the various Fair Trade organizations are,” she said. “We’re working right now towards better networking.”

At Ten Thousand Villages, all of the items for sale are Fair Trade. Many stores vary, however, in the percentages of Fair Trade goods they have available.

For example, Trade Winds, another Grand Avenue retailer, sells Fair Trade items along with goods from more established corporations. Owner Roxanne Sullivan is careful when dealing with companies that do not explicitly identify themselves with Fair Trade. “In those cases, I try to check into their backgrounds,” she said. “Most important to me is if they have a part of their business that gives back to the community.”

Though three Fair Trade stores are located so close in proximity to one another on Grand Avenue (the neighboring stores include Ten Thousand Villages, A Coat of Many Colors and Trade Winds), McGinley says they do not compete with each other.

“All fair traders want to support one another and their efforts,” she said. “So they’re willing to help publicize, advertise and work cooperatively on various things. It’s almost anti-competition.”

McGinley came to Ten Thousand Villages after becoming more aware of her previous employer’s labor practices. “I started to become concerned about the hand-woven rugs from China that we were selling very, very inexpensively,” she said. “I knew there was a lot of handwork involved in making it, and I just became concerned.”

Even though McGinley was bothered by unfair labor practices, she said, she hadn’t yet heard of Fair Trade.

“When I started, nobody knew what Fair Trade was,” she said. “Now, I would say nine out of ten people are familiar with the term, but may not be able to define it. That’s the next phase.”

Both McGinley of Ten Thousand Villages and Sullivan of Trade Winds know, for the most part, who their profits are helping.

Sullivan, for example, has personal connections to most of the artisans she supports in her store. Trade Winds features items byartisans from Kenya, Poland and Ecuador, to name a few.

“There’s a Native American designer I’ve worked with for over 20 years,” Sullivan said. “We work with about six jewelers from Poland and there’s another group, a co-op, in Nepal and Northern India.”
Sullivan said that though many of her customers are drawn to Trade Winds simply because of its beautiful handicraft selections, people also are very eager to support Fair Trade.

“We have wonderfully loyal customers,” she said. “They’ll make that special effort to come to our store because they like what we have and they respect the philosophy we like to support.”

Both Sullivan and McGinley say that most Fair Trade consumers make a conscious and deliberate effort to shop the way they do.

“We don’t always have the choice to make [informed decisions], but we should pursue them when we do,” said Sullivan. “I think each one of us can make a difference in our choices.”.

McGinley is pleased with the influx of people who are supporting Fair Trade of late. “It’s really quite a phenomenon that people are recognizing that they have power as consumers and can actually have influence,” she said.

With three Fair Trade-focused stores located on one street in St. Paul, informed consumption doesn’t seem so hard now, does it?