Trade is one of the strongest forces linking our lives and a source of unprecedented wealth. International trade rules are unfairly biased in favor of the wealthy. Fair trade gives consumers a chance to use their buying power to help those in poverty.
Fair trade is a free market trading system that ensures that certain social objectives are met in order to build long term financially beneficial partnerships between producers in developing regions and consumers in First World Nations.
Fair trade businesses pay fair wages in the local context of the source regions, work to ensure environmentally sustainable production, and safe working conditions.
October Is Fair Trade Month JOIN US ON OUR WEBSITE TO SEE OUR SPOOKY SPECIALS!
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Hmm, fair trade maybe. Fair in general likely not…
Anytime a single stock photo suffices for a wooden mask, that probably means they are so alike, so assembly line made, that someone is working a job they rather not being performing. Their love of their craft is gone, their passion drained. Furthermore their not as fun to collect. I urge you to collect authentic passionately made masks, moreover direct from the artisan when possible.
To MaskMan,
Thank you for your comments. I would tend not to agree with your comment about stock photos. In the case of our site, we have taken all of the photos ourselves rather than using stock photos. The details and differences are often significant, shapes, lines, colors can all vary, but it is difficult or impossible to put all of the variations onto an online store.
First it is very time consuming, then there are limits to data storage, bandwidth and number of SKU’s allowed in many platforms, the more you do the higher the operating cost. The use of one photo to represent a number of, “Similar enough to each other”, items is the only real practical approach.
The items that we have assembled are not produced in a factory in China, or any other country for that matter, if they were we could sell most of them for between 50% and 75% less. The items are however produced by artisan collectives and they do work from some basic templates or patterns, but because they are produced by hand they have natural variation in size, color, texture, etc. Our items were directly sourced form the creators on a buying trip to Bali and Lombok. The artisans of this area are very good at creating local and non-local content.
I would say that the creators of these items do have passion and pride in their product and are grateful to receive a fair, above average compensation in the local context, for their work. That is the idea behind fair trade, to ensure that the farmers or craftsmen receive a premium for there product above local market rates that is tied to the local cost of living, thus allowing the local people to invest in their future, have enough to eat, and school their children.
Our items are not authentic tribal artifacts; if they were we would be pricing our product in the hundreds of dollars if not the thousands of dollars as I have seen on some sites. We prefer to sell items that are accessible to all, even those that may not have the means for exotic vacations. Our products are a representation of traditional cultural crafts created for the sustainment of families in the area of origin where the alternative would all too often be exploitation in sweatshop factories or otherwise dangerous backbreaking labor.
I would suggest that you are correct that many of the items are produced, not because they love doing their craft but out of economic necessity after having the local culture devastated by multinational companies intent on exploiting the local labor at the lowest possible price, often less than the actual cost of living. If these folks were still living in their natural tribal societies, there would be no need for them to produce these items, and the only items they would produce would be those that were required by the tribe for their intended ritual use, without surplus to sell to outsiders.
I agree that I get the most enjoyment out of collecting things that I have traveled the world to find, but our store is one way that I can help the people that I have come to meet and care about.
Thanks
Tropic Design Imports.com.