Jeremy Piercy founded Shared Earth in 1986 when he opened his first shop in the centre of York. He later introduced Shared Earth’s own brand of Fair Trade gifts which were sold in the shop and also to wholesale customers.

Shared Earth is now the largest wholesaler and retailer of non-food products in the UK and has seven shops (York, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Liverpool and Bristol) as well as an online shop, and is a member of IFAT (International Fair Trade Association) and BAFTS (British Association for Fair Trade Shops). Shared Earth is passionately committed to Fair Trade principles and buys from 37 overseas suppliers in 15 countries, the majority being fellow members of IFAT.

Shared Earth has recently launched a franchise opportunity. Click here for more information.

Jeremy is currently writing a book about how his business began, what it is like to be a Fair Trade buyer and where Fair Trade is going.

Read Jeremy’s views on Fair Trade below…

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Fair Trade is growing fast in the UK – very fast. It’s tempting to think the whole world is changing with us. Unfortunately this isn’t so. We’re at the forefront of a movement which is at different stages of growth in different countries. A visitor from the USA, for instance, commented to me recently that the USA is “about 20 years behind” us in terms of public awareness. And indeed, awareness of Fair Trade issues is far greater in Europe than in the rest of the world.

I’ve just returned from an illuminating trip to Japan, where I saw sumo wrestlers on TV, travelled on the bullet train, admired the cherry blossom, and went to a Karaoke bar – wondering at the smart businessmen who took off their jackets and sang rock songs without any trace of inhibition. My girlfriend Mary, who speaks Japanese fluently, guided me through the complex railway system on a tour of the Fair Trade scene in Tokyo and Yokohama.

One person we spoke to almost exactly echoed our American visitor in York. “Fair Trade is growing fast in Japan,” he said, “but we’re still about 20 years behind you in the UK.”

And indeed, we had to visit about ten supermarket branches before we found just one Fair Trade product, a single packet of coffee. The Fairtrade mark is hardly used at all, and unrecognised by the Japanese public. A wholefood shop we visited was listed as a ‘Fair Trade outlet’ on the basis that it sold a couple of packets of Fair Trade coffee and 3 or 4 chocolate bars.

“The Japanese tradition is to care for one’s immediate family and community,” a local businessman told us. “It’s similar in China too. The Christian and Islamic values of giving to the poor and helping those who suffer, wherever they might be, is simply not a part of our culture. So the values of Fair Trade are more difficult for us to understand.”

This may explain why Fair Trade developed so much earlier in Europe, where many of the Fair Trade ‘pioneers’ were members of the churches.

However, we met some wonderfully dedicated people in Japan. I particularly admired Kanji Tsuchiya and the staff at Nepali Bazaro, one of the two IFAT members in Japan (the other being People Tree). We made an appointment at short notice but could not have been received in a more courteous and hospitable manner. Nepali Bazaro is a wholesaler which buys from over twenty producer groups in Nepal, specialising in clothes. During our visit they had two trainees from Nepal staying with them on three-month contracts, learning the techniques required to produce the clothing.

Kanji has sent all of his 24 staff to Nepal and they even learn to speak the language. “We have a meal together once a week where no Japanese is allowed!” he told us.

The other IFAT member, People Tree, also specialises in clothing. Much of it is made from organic cotton. It became clear why they receive so much attention in the media – they have four full-time staff working exclusively on PR! (most Fair Trade businesses don’t have any). Undoubtedly this has helped put Fair Trade on the map in Japan, but one wonders whether the wage bill has also contributed to People Tree’s financial problems.

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Bali is often referred to as a tropical paradise. I like to think of it as the island of cats. Its economy rests on tourism and crafts – wherever you go, you see shops by the roadside selling them. And an awful lot of them seem to be cats.

Mitra Bali, based near Ubud, is one of the foremost Fair Trade organisations in Indonesia. Agung Alit, its founder, is a sort of Fair Trade ageing hippy; indeed his long hair and laid-back attitude belie his intense desire to combat rural poverty, and some people don’t treat him seriously when they meet him for the first time. His staff love him not least because he frequently gets drunk with them and shares the most outrageous stories. When Michelle, Shared Earth’s head designer and I arrived in Bali on 10 March, a workshop on finance for Mitra Bali staff and producers had just ended, run by a British consultant.

“I met him at the airport,” said Agung, “picked up his bags, you know, carried them to the car. He thought I was the driver. I didn’t contradict him, why should I? I just pointed out things to him like all good drivers do – this is Kuta, that’s the president’s palace, that sort of thing. At the hotel he thanked me and said I’d been very helpful. ‘No problem,’ I said.

“Next day I heard him talking to Rah Aji, our Assistant Director. He’s an elite kind of guy, suit and tie, you know? He nodded in my direction. ‘Who’s your driver?’ he asked. ‘He was very helpful last night. You have a good member of staff there.’ Aji looked a bit surprised. ‘That’s Agung, our founder and M.D.,’ he replied. The consultant was very embarrassed.” Agung roared with laughter.

Agung became an activist in the late 1980s, when Suharto’s top-down, centralist development policy benefited his cronies in Jakarta a lot, and those in Bali very little. In 1991 he started working with Pekerti, a Fair Trade exporter in Java. But he kept wondering if he could do a better job exporting direct from Bali himself.

Then in 1993 Shared Earth’s buyer visited him and encouraged him to set up on his own. It was a challenge. “It’s so tempting - but I don’t know if I can,” he said. “Will you place an order if I do?” The answer was yes. And the most popular product we bought was carved wooden cats.

It wasn’t long before he was taking orders from Oxfam too, and soon there were other customers in Holland and the USA. One room in his house became an office, another a packing room, the third for living and sleeping in – until his wife, now with a young son, insisted he find separate premises elsewhere. Today, Mitra Bali has a large purpose-built office/warehouse/showroom complex, and works with hundreds of different producers.

Agung embodies the attitude that Fair Trade is not just about paying fair prices – it’s also about relationships and building respect and self-reliance. He drinks coffee and jokes with producers, lends them money interest-free, and recently even started buying some of them cows when orders were short.

He’s also passionate about the environment. Shared Earth has always been keen on using Albesia wood for its products – a softwood which grows to maturity in only 7-10 years – and in 1995 Agung started planting them for future use. A breakthrough came in 1994 when a woodcarver’s family got into serious debt and were about to be forced off their land. Mitra Bali paid off the debt in return for use of the land for ten years to plant trees. When they are harvested, the family will receive 70% of the income, and will have free timber to use for its carving. In the meantime, the ground in between the trees can be used for planting cassava and potatoes. The project has expanded to include 27 families, and 2,000 trees have now been planted. Planting symbolically takes place on World Fair Trade Day each May.

It’s all about trust, and working together. Mitra Bali has had a huge impact on the lives of hundreds of artisans and their families, and Shared Earth is proud to have helped Agung to get it going, and to have worked with him for so long.

More stories about Agung and Mitra Bali will be included in Jeremy’s forthcoming book, ‘Coffins, Cats and Fair Trade Sex Toys’, to be published in January 2009.

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“Do you want a bag?” the sales assistant asked. But our customer was having a bad hair day.

“Compared to what,” she responded angrily.

The answer to this could have been, “compared to not having a bag (you silly old fart).” But staff at Shared Earth try to be polite, and hopefully, the customer went away satisfied.

High street stores give away 13 billion plastic bags each year in the UK. That’s 15 a week for every family. They are used, on average, for 20 minutes, and then thrown away. They litter our streets and the countryside, and are a huge danger to wildlife. Worldwide. over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 dolphins, whales and other sea animals lost their lives last year, their wings, beaks or legs caught in plastic or their digestive tracts blocked because the plastic was mistaken for food.

In Ireland, a bag tax introduced in 2002 reduced usage of plastic bags by 90%. In many other countries, measures are in place to restrict usage or ban them completely. The largest bag manufacturer in China announced last week that it was closing down its factories in response to a decision by the Chinese government to ban plastic bags from June.

On 27 February, the Daily Mail launched its heavyweight ‘Banish the Bags’ campaign. M & S responded by announcing it would charge 5p a bag. On Friday, the Prime Minister took up the cause. Retailers are to be given a year to introduce charges or be compelled to do so by law.

Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, opposes change. It gives out 3 billion bags a year, and its voluntary scheme to reduce usage by 25% by 2008 was a flop – it reduced them by only 7%. Sainsbury’s, which uses 1.6 billion bags, is also dragging its feet. A survey of online grocery shopping last week found it was the worst offender of all, using 10 bags to pack only 30 items. Some – like a box of eggs and a packet of fish – had a bag all to themselves.

Yet 76% of shoppers support the introduction of charges or want an outright ban on plastic bags. According to Wastewatch, a levy would reduce usage by 11 billion bags each year.

What are Fair Trade shops doing? Some of us have been caught hopping. If we use plastic bags, they’re usually biodegradable, but most of us don’t charge for them. Shared Earth will introduce a charge of 10p this week. We also intend to charge for paper bags. They’re recycled, but it still takes energy to make and transport them.

Most Fair Trade shops sell jute or cotton shoppers, for instance Shared Earth’s, which have slogans like ‘I’m Not a Plastic Bag – and I’m Fairly Traded Too’ and ‘Use Me Till My Bottom Wears Out’. We are now selling one design at half price to encourage shoppers to take the responsible option.

Charging for bags could soon become the norm, which will raise substantial sums for environmental charities. Shared Earth will donate the money to a tree-planting scheme in India. The workshops where our wooden boxes are made are, of course, Fair Trade; in time, we hope the trees will be fairly managed and felled too.

Is the Daily Mail jumping on the bandwagon with its campaign against plastic bags? I say – all power to them. If it brings about change, that’s what matters.

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Monday 25 February is the start of Fairtrade Fortnight – one of the highlights of the Fair Trade year. But is it Fairtrade Fortnight or Fair Trade Fortnight? And does it matter??

Fairtrade (one word) is the “mark” which now applies to over 3,000 products in the UK – a fantastic achievement. It has enabled more and more Fairtrade products to appear in the supermarkets, which in turn raises awareness of Fair Trade (two words!) in general. 52% of the public recognise the mark, and this percentage is increasing all the time.

The mark appears almost exclusively on food. Two other commodities have been recognised – cotton and flowers – and one manufactured product, footballs from Pakistan. There are two reasons for this.

First, the procedures and paperwork make obtaining Fairtrade certification a time-consuming and expensive process; one importer told me it takes the profit from two containers of coffee, for instance, for the producer to cover the cost of obtaining the mark. That’s a lot of coffee! Orders for handicrafts are usually tiny in comparison. A container holds about 100,000 keyrings, for instance, or 25,000 spectacle cases. Shared Earth places orders for less than 500 of these items. Also, fashions change quickly, so products would often go out of date before the cost of obtaining the mark can be recuperated.

But the main reason handicrafts don’t have the mark is that the certification system was set up only to deal with agricultural products. The aim was to get Fair Trade products into the mainstream – and getting food into the supermarkets was the way to do this.

What about clothing? you may ask. Doesn’t M & S have a clothing range which carries the Fairtrade logo? It does – but it only applies to the cotton, not to where and how it’s made.

This is all set to change. The two main Fair Trade bodies worldwide are IFAT (International Federation for Fair Trade, which includes buyers and sellers of both food and crafts), and FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organisation, the umbrella organisation for labelling initiatives worldwide – the Fairtrade Foundation is its UK representative).

IFAT and FLO have started talks with the aim of creating a single mark which could apply to all products. A committee is setting up pilot projects, and by autumn, concrete proposals should be in place.

It’s not going to be easy. The system has to be credible, or businesses which are not committed to Fair Trade could take advantage of it. But it also needs to avoid complexity and bureaucracy, or small producers will not benefit from it.

Solutions to these problems will, I am sure, be found. Soon, I hope, Fair Trade will receive an excellent boost from a new mark, which will increase market access for handicraft producers, and raise awareness even further amongst consumers.

At Shared Earth, we celebrate Fair Trade Fortnight (not Fairtrade). We want all trade to be fair, not just food.

Long live Fair Trade!

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The Birmingham Spring Fair, which ended on 7 February, is the UK’s largest trade show for home and giftware. It’s massive, with over 80,000 trade visitors attending. Walking round all the halls is like running a marathon.

The catalogue for the Fair included, for the first time, a section listing Fair Trade exhibitors. I was disappointed that only 9 of the 43 on the list were importers which had been accredited by BAFTS (British Association for Fair Trade Shops). And indeed, there were some who were jumping on the bandwagon. “Can you tell me about your Fair Trade policy?” I asked one exhibitor of Christmas decorations from the Far East. “Oh, I don’t think you could call us fair,” he said, adding quickly, “though we don’t buy goods made by children.” This was the perception of other exhibitors too – that Fair Trade just means avoiding child labour.

But the majority of exhibitors not recognised by BAFTS were genuine about what they were doing, and knew a lot about Fair Trade. Some had wonderful products too. There were, for instance, some fantastic ceramic pots from Indonesia, selling largely to garden centres; some beautiful jewellery from Kenya, selling to upmarket boutiques; and some cute woollen dolls from Bangladesh, selling to craft and children’s shops. All supported worthy projects and were giving excellent support to the producers and communities involved. And they were selling to the mainstream market, not just to Fair Trade shops.

Fair Trade exhibitors were still a small minority overall, but there were significantly more of them than there were just two years ago. The organisers of the show were also aware about Fair Trade and keen to promote it. A big change from two years ago when they were either suspicious or just not interested, and an excellent sign that consumer demand for Fair Trade is growing fast. This was backed up by sales at Shared Earth’s stand, which increased by over 50% on last year. Fair Trade is on a roll!

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