Where has the Year Gone

I can't believe it is September and I have not posted since January.

Trade Fair continues to exceed our expectations. Sales have continued to be good through the Summer months. We participated in the Artwalk and had average sales of about $550 for each the three events.

As more people learn of our efforts, we are seeing more and more new faces in the shop. We are looking forward to a good holiday season.

Two big news events for the year so far:

We are now a 501(c)(3) non profit organization.

We have been able to make three more significant donations. We contributed $5000 to each of the following organizations.

CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE: To promote and provide community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Central Asia.
Their website is http://www.ikat.org/.

CARE: A leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. They work alongside women because they believe women, equipped with the proper resources, have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE’s efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters.
Their website is http://www.care.org/.

FINA: International provides financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living. We target the poorest of the working poor: those who have the least access to services such as loans, savings programs, and insurance. Our clients include women, who make up 70 percent of the world's poor; individuals unable to find work in the formal sector; families displaced by war and internal conflict; the rural poor; and those affected by chronic poverty. With more than 20 years' experience and over 500,000 clients on four continents, FINCA offers a proven solution to poverty. According to their website, $5,000 can sponsor a Village Bank in a region where FINCA currently operates. The web site is http://www.villagebanking.org/

Thanks for your interest in our effort to help alleviate poverty through "fair trade" practices.

Linda

Happy New Year 2008

We have made it through the busiest retail time of the year. Thanks to all of our great volunteers, we had a great last quarter. Our sales were almost $60,000.

The best news of all is that our board met in November and voted to make the following contributions:

Heifer Project ( $10,000) - whose mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth. They do this with a simple idea of giving families a source of food (animals) rather than short-term relief and the families then pass the gift on by giving away offsprings of their animals.

India Cyclone Relief ($10,000) -In mid-November, Bangladesh was devastated by Cyclone Sidr, which killed more than 3,400 people and affected nearly 4 million others. Worst hit was the country's southern coastal strip, and many of our artisan partners have been severely impacted by the disaster - some have been made homeless. We have sent money to assist in rebuilding.

We are looking forward to a great 2008.

First Anniversary

We just celebrated our first anniversay with a Volunteer Appreciation Reception at the shop. We had a great first year. Our sales were is excess of $112,000. That is an average of over $2000 per week or $360 per day. We started out with less than $10,000 of operating capital. Most of our expenses are for goods which means we turned our merchandise about 10 times which is phenomenal.

Half of our sales were in the months of October, November and December. This is typical in the retail gift market. This means we are headed into a busy time. We have got in a lot of Christmas ornament and nativities and they are already getting a lot of attention.

Sailing Through Summer

We have been cruising along for the first six month of 2007 averaging about $1000 each week in sales but we may have turned the corner. We just completed a great week at the marketplace. The great article that Beth Thames wrote in the Huntsville Times on Sunday June 17th (see below) really brought out the shoppers. Our sales exceeded $3000 this week which is our best since Christmas.

We also had a great response at the ArtWalk/ArtStroll downtown around the square on Thursday night. We had sale of over $700 for this event. We will be participating is this event every third Thursday through September. I think we may be starting the downhill (or is it uphill?) run to Christmas. I heard a couple of shoppers this week say they were buying for Christmas presents.

Shoppers at this market also toss lifeline to poor

Sunday, June 17, 2007
Huntsville Times
Attention shoppers: There's an alternative to the mall, the big-box store and the chain shops. It's called Trade Fair Marketplace, and it's right here in Huntsville.
Linda Worley opened this non-profit gift store in the fall of 2006 when she learned about fair trade - a global movement that compensates artisans from all over the world for their handmade goods. Fair trade insures that workers net 15-to-20 percent for the baskets, necklaces or pottery they've made. If you live in a developing country, squeezing by on a dollar a day, that 20 percent may be your lifeline.

Robin Sells, a volunteer at Trade Fair, says all staff members work for free. "We work two four-hour shifts a month. We don't get paid, but we believe in what we're doing," she says. "This store has changed people's lives."

One example of a changed life comes from Uganda, where a widow living in a 5- by 10-foot home had to give up her oldest son to a children's home. She had no money to feed him. Through Beadforlife, a fair trade organization which claims to "eradicate poverty one bead at a time," she learned to make beads out of recycled paper and to craft bracelets and necklaces.
Not only was she able to get her son back (fair trade companies pay as soon as workers make the goods), she was also able to enlarge her house and make room for a baby that police had found in a dumpster. She named the abandoned baby "Gift from God."
The Trade Fair Marketplace is a colorful hodgepodge of silver jewelry from Bangladesh, pottery bowls from Vietnam, elephant grass baskets from Ghana, and children's puppets from Peru. Scarves, handbags and carefully crafted metal objects from Haiti (Haitian workers recycle oil drums and pound them into wall hangings, Robin explains) decorate the walls.
Not all of the workers represented are from developing countries; some are from right here at home: The Women's Bean Project, a fair trade company in Denver, sells bean soups, sweets, coffee and bread mixes. It gives poor women a chance to learn a trade, keep a job and, in come cases, come in off the streets and smell the coffee.
Some shoppers come in to buy end-of-year gifts for teachers. One bride bought her bridesmaids gifts at Trade Fair. "The gifts are unique, very inexpensive, and you're improving someone's life," Robin says. Trade Fair does not advertise - that's too expensive - so most shoppers find out about the store through the oldest marketing ploy in the world: word of mouth. Volunteers also take the handmade items to local civic groups, to the recent downtown Arts Stroll, and anywhere they can to let people know they are here.
It seems to be working. Last Christmas, the first holiday season the store was opened, the gifts flew off the shelves. "I'm the receiving department," Robin says, "and I barely had time to put things on the shelf before they were gone."
One new idea Trade Fair is trying is the Birthday Club. You come in, sign up, and when you get a birthday card from Trade Fair you will get 20 percent off your next shopping trip there anytime during your birthday month.
There is a sign outside the Trade Fair Marketplace. It reads, "Hope and dignity with each purchase." I'm not sure any other store in town can make that guarantee.
Trade Fair, located in the lobby of Classic Hair and Nails on Regal Drive, is opened from 9 till 5, Monday through Saturday.


Huntsville resident Beth Thames is a freelance writer and an English instructor at Calhoun Community College. You can contact her at Beth.Thames@knology.net. She is taking a couple of weeks off, but her column will return on July 8.


© 2007 The Huntsville Times. All rights reserved.

Trinity Marketplace

We had a booth at the Trinity Marketplace this past weekend. Our booth looked great and we had sales of ~$1300. Much thanks to Shirley, Alice, Barbara, Robin, Diane R, and Judy for manning the booth. The other good to come out of this effort is the exposure we received. We gave out lots of brochures and are already seeing an increase in traffic in the store as a result.

We have a new sign going up real soon. It will be under the signs of the other three tenants in the building and will be more visible from the street.

I know some of the volunteers have been a little bored since the pretty weather has begun. Slow retail is "par for the course" in the spring when people start working in their yards and doing more outside activities. When the temperature get up in the 80's and 90's, they will be back.

We have lots of pretty crosses, cards and ornaments for Easter. Keep spreading the word.

Linda

Spring is Coming!

Things are still going great at the Trade Fair Marketplace thanks to about 40 very dedicated and dependable volunteers. We have made a few changes and added some new shelves that my husband Eugene made. I have to give him credit so he will make some more later on.

Obviously sales slowed down considerable after the holidays. We averaged between $1100 - $1200 a week in January and it looks like February will do a little better.

We have signed up for the Trinity Marketplace the first weekend in March. This is a art/craft festival they have at Trinity Methodist Church each year to raise money for their missions programs. We thought it would be a good way to sell some products as well as spread the word about “fair trade”.

As you can see from the photos, we have some Easter things out. One of our new volunteers made the pictures.

We are working on getting a bigger sign for better visibility from the street.

Come check out our spring stuff.

Linda

Happy New Year

WOW, what a run we have had since our open house. We had $4000 in sales at our open house and it did not slow down until after Christmas. We ended up the year with over $56,000 in sales, not bad for a small new store.

The volunteers were all just wonderful and the customers seemed genuinely excited that we were open. I heard recently that shoppers want more than just to buy something, they want an experience. Hopefully we are providing that.

We are getting re-stocked and ready for Valentines Day and Spring.

Keep spreading the word and remember to check out the Trade Fair Marketplace when you need a gift.

Linda