Ethnic Supplies: Ethnic Supplies producers

Showing posts with label Ethnic Supplies producers. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Primark without the Ethical Tag

I watched the news about Primark on BBC news at 10:00 with interest. You can follow the rest of the story here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7824291.stm

I am not surprised that Primark finds itself in this situation. As someone that works alongside textile and handicraft producers in the developing world I can safely say that there is now way a company can churn out that amount /number of garments without someone somewhere being exploited.

In order to comply or call yourself an ethical provider you have to "police" your suppliers to ensure that they subscribe to your ethical agenda. Here at Ethnic Supplies LTD we do not work with anyone we have not met and even when our producers are required to prove that the work is there own. We inspect their workshops annually to ensure that for instance child labour is not used.

Flotea owner and founder of Marvelous batiks, our Textile producers in Tanzania

Marvelous Batiks workshop in Dar-es Salam

I remember in our first year of trading we met a woman in a handicraft market in Kampala Uganda. We bought a couple of jute bags from her that we thought looked really nice and very well made. She informed us that she was a partner of a Kikuyu woman based in Nairobi Kenya.

The bags were very well made and we had a feeling our customers would love them. We sent a sample to our contact in Nairobi and asked her to help us find the kikuyu woman who apparently made these bags before we could establish a working relationship with the woman in Kampala.

It took our contact nearly 6 weeks to get to the bottom of what was going on, but it transpired that the bags were actually made in Thailand and the Kikuyu woman was merely a distributor to others such as the woman we met in Uganda. Needless to say that was the end of that and it goes to show how vigilant you have to be in order to claim that you are an ethical company!

Friday, 19 December 2008

Cut backs at Rio Tinto, Implications for Africa

Rio Tinto, the mining giants announced last week that due to the current economic down turn they would scaling back some of their operations.
http://www.riotinto.com/media/5157_16956.asp

My reaction at such news was "oh that is a real pity for countries like Uganda who have only just recently started exploring their mineral wealth"

The main concern here is that although Rio Tinto extracts resources out of developing countires for (one could argue ) the benefit of the developed world they create jobs in these countries.

I understand that the biggest consumer of these resources China, has stopped spending in a big way thereby reducing the demand for these resources. Whilst on the one hand this means that resources such as precious metals do not live African countries by the bucket loads, on the other hand if this is a big source of income for an African government or a source of jobs for a given country clearly the ordinary man on the street is bound to feel a real pinch as result.

I remain hopefull that the downturn will be shortlived as the people who will suffer the most are those at the bottom of the pile.

Our producers here at Ethnic Supplies have already seen the consquences as the price of raw materials has gone but they are unable to raise the prices of finished products to match.