A walk through Ten Thousand Villages on Main Street in Northampton is a stroll through a rich international bazaar. The store’s warm, earthy interior is a respite from the stark dreariness on the sidewalk. Gentle jazz and the smell of spices and herbal tea waft through the store. The work of artists and craftspeople the world over line the walls: African sculptures, intricate Peruvian glass paintings, colorful saris and handbags from Bangladesh, and wildly diverse jewelry from Niger, Cambodia, Haiti, Guatemala, and beyond. Each item has a story, and each shares a common thread: fair trade.

When the company we now know as Ten Thousand Villages began in 1946, fair trade was not the movement we’ve come to know today, and they helped to pioneer it. It began in the trunk of a car belonging to the wife of a Mennonite minister, who, on a trip to Puerto Rico, was moved by the inordinate poverty she saw and the talented craftspeople that were unable to make a living. She recognized the potential of a compassionate business model to provide artisans with a stable income and began paying them fair prices for their goods, then selling them in the U.S.

Since then, what started as “The Overseas Needlepoint and Crafts Program” has grown into a national nonprofit retailer with 390 retail stores throughout the U.S., and an additional 35 in Canada. The company received an Ethisphere Award from the World’s Most Ethical Companies Program in 2014. In 2015, it was named as a company to watch by Forbes trendspotters, and it made over $27.6 million in sales during its 2014-2015 fiscal year, all with a business model that’s changed little since day one. The fair trade movement itself has grown, too. Organizations like the Fair Trade Federation, of which Ten Thousand Villages is a founding member, and the World Fair Trade Organization provide accreditation for businesses who verify that they’re meeting fair trade standards.

The model that makes Ten Thousand Villages unique is that it’s mission-driven. The business offers artisans higher prices for goods than a company motivated by its bottom line. The company made over $7.5 million in purchases last year from artisans all over the world, the majority of which were in South Asia but included the West Bank and Ethiopia, according to Ten Thousand Villages’ annual report.

 

Retail associates Maggie Harrison and Stacey Terlik guide me around the store, discussing their favorite artisan groups. The stores serve not only as a retail space, but as a window into the causes the company champions.

“My favorite artisan group is a group of women from Bangladesh who make recycled saris,” Harrison says. “They’d previously worked in really hazardous jobs, like clothing factories, the sex trade, stuff like that. Now they’ve been able to get out of those hazardous industries and have a safe, reliable job where they’re paid fairly for their work.”

I notice immediately that the spotlight belongs to the artisans. The faces that appear in its marketing campaigns belong to the same people producing the goods. It’s a marketing model that appeals to ethically-minded consumers. Simultaneously, it aims to raise awareness. The company’s website is an encyclopedia of the artisan groups it employs and information about each group is distributed in the store. The artisans, universally, are disadvantaged in some way. Often, in multiple ways. Consider the story of the Ethiopians that make jewelry from bullet casings, or the Cambodians that make fine jewelry from collected bomb fragments. Metaphor doesn’t get any richer than that: these artisans are taking the tragedies that ravaged their lives and using them as bricks to rebuild. In many cases, producing goods for Ten Thousand Villages is the difference between making a living and languishing in abject poverty, or being forced to engage in dangerous, exploitative work. Consider the Bangladeshi women Harrison spoke of, an artisan group called Prokritee, which operates a program called Sacred Mark to provide counseling, training, and employment to survivors of Bangladesh’s sex trade with a portion of the proceeds they make selling saris to Ten Thousand Villages. Running one of these beautiful garments through your hands is a moving experience.

It’s the Ten Thousand Villages business model that makes this possible. Artisans receive 50 percent of their compensation as a commission on their work and the other 50 percent before the product has even left their workshop. The proceeds are used to build the business through purchasing raw materials or equipment or are channeled into the community. It’s dedicated to providing long-term commitment to artisans, helping them to grow. Any profits made by Ten Thousand Villages are retained within the organization, rather than distributed to owners or shareholders, allowing them to keep retail prices competitive despite paying more for their inventory.

“Hearing their stories, their struggles, their sacrifice,” says Karen Shanahan, Northampton’s store manager, “it strikes me how they all have a similar common thread, and that is that they want to help others and each other. It’s not just about helping themselves. It breaks that cycle of poverty when you do that. In this country, you may have a CEO that wants to be rich. But when it’s an artisan, it’s not about them reaping all the rewards, it’s about the community and the people they work with to earn an income and support their families. A lot of times it’s really basic: it’s for food and education, living.”

 

But even this model is susceptible to market pressures. Following an impressively consistent streak of growth and profitability, the organization has operated at a loss since 2013. Juanita Fox, advertising coordinator, acknowledges the challenges the company has faced in recent years.

“We certainly want to be profitable,” Fox says. “At the end of the day, we want to provide opportunities for artisans around the world to have an outlet for their merchandise here in North America … The retail marketplace is tough. To be honest, it’s tough. So we’re doing the best we can to grow our business so that we can be sustainable for the long term.”

To be fair, she says, Ten Thousand Villages is susceptible to the same volatile market forces as its for-profit competitors. To help ensure that it remains competitive, the company employs teams of purchasers that work directly with the artisans to create products that appeal to North American consumers, while preserving traditional aesthetics.

So, how will fair trade fair in the future? The research is murky, but the movement does seem to be making gains. Research by Fairtrade International shows an increase in the number of farmers taking part in the program, as well as meager increases in overall sales reported by those farmers. A 2015 Stanford University study found that sales of two coffee brands rose by almost ten percent when it carried a fair trade label, despite being eight percent more expensive.

“We really feel like we’re telling their stories. The interesting piece is connecting the artisan to the consumer,” Fox says. “We see ourselves somewhat as a bridge between the two worlds.”

Peter Vancini can be contacted at pvancini@valleyadvocate.com.