Embrace the ethical and sustainable practices of Motif Handmade with their Fair-Trade sourced textiles!
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Celebrate Fair Trade Month With FGmarket!
Fair Trade Month is here! October is all about fair trade business practices and products, and at FGmarket, we’re excited to celebrate all of our wonderful fair trade certified vendors!
What is fair trade? Well, fair trade is a way of doing business that ensures workers in developing countries are being treated fairly for their hard work. Fair trade business practices make sure workers earn fair wages, work in safe working conditions, and for reasonable hours. If a business bears the Fair Trade badge, then you know they treat their laborers with respect and fairness.
FGmarket has thousands of vendors, and many of them are proudly fair trade certified. Whether it’s jewelry, toys, personal care products, packaging & gift wrap, etc. you can be sure that the fair trade products sold by our wholesale vendors are top notch!
Want some more info about fair trade around the world? Check out these statistics from the Fair Trade Foundation.
- There are more than 1.65 million farmers and workers in Fairtrade certified producer organizations.
- 1,226 fair trade certified producer organizations exist in 74 countries.
- 26% of all farmers and workers in fair trade are women.
- 106.2 million euros, which is about 119 million U.S. dollars, was paid as premium to producers through fair trade deals.
Fair trade not only supports hardworking farmers and artisan crafters, it also helps to combat poverty in many parts of the world. This only works though if you and your customers actually buy fair trade products.
If you’d like to browse our Fair Trade section, click here and check out all of our fantastic fair trade certified vendors.
If you’d like to know how you can support fair trade business practices, and what you can do to make the fair trade movement more apparent in our world, check out some of these tips from Fair Trade USA.
Celebrate Fair Trade Month throughout October, and support hardworking farmers and workers around the world!
Silver Tree Designs Brings Fair Trade Butterfly Wing Jewelry To The World
Silver Tree Designs knows how important honest business practices and fair wages for employees are. That’s why they have committed to bringing beautiful Fair Trade jewelry to customers all over the world.
Founded in 2011 by Stuart Smith and his wife, Silver Tree Designs has one of the most unique stories behind their jewelry that you’ll ever hear.
While working with his wife in the fair trade movement in Peru, Smith discovered a special project that the Peruvian people were working on. They were attempting to preserve the traditional way of life in the Amazon through sustainable butterfly breeding. Silver Tree Designs started off helping this project move forward and ensure its success, but they discovered a completely new opportunity for change while working with the Shipibo Indigenous community. When the butterflies natural lifespan came to an end, they started turning their wings into colorful and unique high-quality jewelry with the help of a small group of silver artisans in Lima, Peru.
Through Silver Tree Designs’ butterfly jewelry program, and fair trade practices, they have been able to help the Peruvian community maintain a better quality of life and ensure a source of income for many people working in the country. Through more than 6 years of work in Peru, Silver Tree Designs has seen a lot of change in the community for the better.
Butterfly Wing Earrings
The Butterfly Wing Earrings made by Silver Tree Designs are absolutely gorgeous. Each piece is delicately procured once a butterfly has lived out its lifespan, and then carefully preserved in either sterling silver or silver plated nickel. Because each butterfly has its own unique wing pattern, you can be assured that each piece of jewelry bought from Silver Tree Designs will be unique in each and every way.
The earrings come in a multitude of different shapes, such as hearts, rectangles, circles, oblongs, and more! Of course, you can always get your earrings in the original shape of the wing, to preserve the beauty and grace of one of nature’s most breathtaking creatures.
Butterfly Wing Pendants
The pendants come in the same shapes as the earrings; heart, rectangle, oblong, circular, and wing. These pendants are the perfect accessory to a beautiful dress or gown. They will make your customers stand out from the rest of the crowd, and are great talking points for dinner parties. Your customers won’t be able to make it through a party without being stopped and asked about their beautiful Silver Treed Designs wing pendant!
Butterfly Wing Bracelets
If you can’t pick just one butterfly wing pattern, and want an exquisite collection of the most beautiful wings, try out their Butterfly Wing Bracelets. These bracelets, which come in either sterling silver or silver plated nickel, feature a collection of amazing butterfly wings, preserved in an acrylic glass frame. Each bracelet features a different collection of wings, so no two bracelets are the same!
Silver Tree Designs has truly created a brand new, unique way to admire the beauty of the natural world. They’ve done so through the honorable business practices of Fair Trade, and have done amazing work in the country or Peru. Buy from Silver Tree Designs today, and see why we just can’t stop admiring their work!
The Vanilla Company Seeks To Educate Others About The Importance of Pure Vanilla
It’s easy to forget how important vanilla flavoring is to the food industry. Typically, we might only think of vanilla as important to ice cream flavoring, birthday cake, or maybe even your favorite coffee creamer. But vanilla extract and the entire vanilla farming industry are important for not only their inclusion in some of the world’s favorite desserts but also for their impact on the world’s economy as one of the biggest import/export products on the market.
Here’s another thing most people might not know: surprisingly, nearly 99% of vanilla fragrances and flavors sold to consumers is actually artificial.
You might be wondering, “What’s the big deal? I’m still getting the flavor of vanilla that I want, just at a cheaper cost to me.”
While this might be true, a market dominated by artificial vanilla flavorings means that vanilla farmers in South and Central America, and around the world, suffer because of this. The demand for pure vanilla has gone down because of the ease and inexpensiveness of making artificial vanilla. The Vanilla Company and its founder, Patricia Rain, want to change that.
Patricia Rain has become known around the world by the prestigious title of The Vanilla Queen. She is well-known as the foremost expert in the vanilla industry.
After writing a cookbook on artichoke recipes in the early ’80s, Rain became more and more interested in the vanilla industry. She had always been interested in the versatile little plant, but it wasn’t until she was persuaded to write another cookbook about vanilla, The Vanilla Cookbook, that she really dove into becoming an expert on the subject.
In 1992, she was invited to speak at the quincentennial celebration of foods of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, and this is where her pursuit of knowledge really took off.
Over the years, she would travel the world in search of as much info as she could gather about the vanilla industry, visiting remote regions of the world and working directly with vanilla growers. In the process, she learned a wealth of info about the crop and entered into close friendships with many of the farmers that she met along the way.
Eventually, she would start The Vanilla Company as a way to not only provide income for herself, but as a way to work with farmers and women around the world to grow their businesses, and help them to achieve the dreams they chased after.
Today, The Vanilla Company still works with vanilla farmers around the world, and sells the pure vanilla extract that these farmers work so hard to produce.
The vanilla products sold by The Vanilla Company is superior in every way to the bland artificial products sold by 99% of the market.
The Vanilla Company’s vanilla is:
- More flavorful than other vanilla extracts
- Free from harmful chemical additives
- Kosher
- GMO and Gluten-free
- More bang for your buck, due to the vanilla beans being purchased directly from vanilla farmers, eliminating the middleman.
- Sustainably grown and fairly traded
- and Organically Grown!
It’s not just vanilla extract that The Vanilla Company sells, however. They also sell vanilla beans, paste, powder, vanilla sugar, and vanilla salt. These products are sold following the same guidelines as the vanilla extract, so you always know you’re buying vanilla products that sustain farmers who grow vanilla for a living.
Patricia Rain is passionate about what she does. She wants people to know about the importance of the amazing vanilla plant and what it does for so many people around the world.
Although prices for vanilla are high at the moment, Patricia Rain wants wholesale buyers to know that these prices should be dropping back down by November of 2016. This is due to certain regulations in Madagascar, where most of the world’s vanilla beans come from, undergoing a major change in rules and regulations for vanilla growers in that country.
The Vanilla Company and the Vanilla Queen want to make sure that the vanilla plant thrives and survives for generations to come. Check out The Vanilla Company, and buy your vanilla from a company that really does care about the environment, the vanilla farmers, and, of course, the vanilla plant.
FGmarket’s Weekly Pick — Antelope Beads
Antelope Beads is a jewelry company that has a slightly different start-up story than most businesses. The founder, Laura Bittner, was inspired by a trip to Kenya in 2006, where she witnessed a fair trade co-op that primarily employed single mothers making special Kazuri beads. These high-quality beads are noted for their beautiful colors and textures.
This led to her founding Antelope Beads, located in Boulder, Colorado, where she now provides many more high-quality beads to customers all around the world.
These beads include those made by Artisan and Fair Trade dealers such as Dorabeth Designs high-quality pewter components; Clay River Designs handmade porcelain beads; C Koop’s enameled beads; Samunnat Polymer Clay Beads, handmade in Nepal; and much more.
She views her endeavors as a part of a global circle of women helping women, and artists supporting each other’s art. For beads made from the highest quality materials on earth, and with utmost care put into each piece, check out Antelope Beads!
FGmarket’s Weekly Pick — The Vanilla Company
Vanilla is an essential flavoring that can be found in many dishes and desserts. But did you also know, in many cases, the poor farmers who harvest vanilla beans are given next to nothing for their hard work and crops?
The Vanilla Company, a Santa Cruz, California company, works to give farmers the wages they deserve for the high quality products they produce.
The company, led by Patricia Rain — a.k.a. The Vanilla Queen — purchases vanilla beans in bulk directly from vanilla farmers. They are also sustainably grown and fairly traded with farmers.
The vanilla from The Vanilla Company is also more flavorful than most vanilla, and is free from additives, such as caramel coloring and corn syrup.
For vanilla that is fairly traded, and leagues above the rest in quality and flavor, purchase from The Vanilla Company!