Fair trade store opens with excess of volunteers

Soon after Mustard Seed Fair Trade opened a retail store downtown, an enviable problem sprouted: there were more people volunteering to work than there were slots available.

Jessica Linneman, the executive director of the nonprofit organization and the only paid employee, said the community has responded enthusiastically to the store since it opened Oct. 11 at 25 S. Ninth St.

Mustard Seed started as an organization in April with the goal to sell handcrafted products made under fair conditions.

The retail price for the products in the store is set by Mustard Seed’s distributors: 10,000 Villages and Serve International. Everything these two distributors sell to Mustard Seed is fair trade certified, meaning artisans from developing nations are creating hand-crafted items, getting paid a fair wage and meeting standards of safe and healthy working conditions, environmental sustainability and business development.

“It’s things like that, that people in these majority world countries aren’t usually given a choice about,” Linneman said. “In an area where it would usually be the lowest bidder gets the product and then raises the price between a series of middlemen. With fair trade certified products, the artists are working directly with the fair trade organizations. They’re telling them what materials they bought to make the products, how long it took them, what kind of effort, all of the factors that are coming into play with the products. They are working together to determine what price is fair for this.”

In one corner of the store, customers can look at tablecloths, napkins and place settings from Indonesia. In another corner, the store showcased a set of Peruvian pan flutes. And then there’s the jewelry.

Linneman said customers come in expecting to pay big bucks for handcrafted items and end up pleasantly surprised.

“A lot of our jewelry, people are looking at it and saying, ‘oh my gosh. This is $18. Seriously? This is amazing.’ They’re really excited about it. So that’s been really fun.”

Linneman said she thinks the store will be a success because Columbians will embrace the idea of knowing where their possessions come from.

“Once people are given the option of thinking about where their products come from, they’re much more likely to want to keep doing that,” she said. “They want to think about fair trade as bigger than coffee and tea, and they want to think about it as, ‘what kind of gift could I get for my friend that I know for a fact it’s coming from this safe place, and that people aren’t being exploited?’ In Columbia, we embrace all types of thinking that you wouldn’t typically find in other places, and that’s what’s really great about
the community.”

For more information on Mustard Seed Fair Trade, visit their Web site, www.mustardseedfairtrade.org.