You don’t have to be a coffee drinker to recognise the Fair Trade Certified name. Despite being the industry of its origin, the Fair Trade Certification is today recognised around the world as holding the highest standards of worker and farmer rights across multiple disciplines, whether you’re into coffee beans or cotton.
Ten years on from the launch of the Fair Trade Factory Programme, working with early adopters such as Patagonia, Williams Sonoma, and prAna, the organisation is ready to expand its efforts further again. With a revised Factory Production Standard, the scope of the Fair Trade Certification is widening – and the team has its sights set on toys.
This week, Emma Schnee, the brand partnership manager on the Factory team for Fair Trade USA will be joining the Product of Change platform for a discussion on the next phase for the global programme – bringing its Fair Trade Certification to brands, manufacturers, and customers across the toys, games, and brand licensing industries.
Ahead of the guest speaker session scheduled for 4.30pm on Thursday, 23 February on the Products of Change platform, we chat with Emma with get an early look at the organisation’s big plans for the children’s market.
Hello Emma, it’s nice to catch up ahead of your talk later this week. So, you are the brand partnership manager on the Factory team for Fair Trade USA. What does that mean?
Hi Rob, looking forward to it. My job means I get to work with brands to evaluate how Fair Trade Certification can fit into their impact, sourcing, and marketing strategies. I have experience in the nonprofit space as well as marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the technology industry.
Now, many of us already very familiar with the name Fair Trade and the good that it does. What might we not realise about the work of the organisation and its impact?
Many people are familiar with Fair Trade in coffee, which is the origin of our organisation. But we have expanded and grown into many different categories since then. Just this year, we have released our newest Factory Production Standard, which previously was an apparel and home goods-focused standard. We’ve expanded the scope of the certification allowing for a wider range of factory configurations and product types. This sets a clear path for category expansion and we are looking to expand quickly into outdoor hardgoods and toys.
And before we dive into that, what is it that Fair Trade Certification does?
So, the base of our programme is factory compliance and ensuring that workers in factories are treated fairly and they are working in safe conditions. Building onto this foundation, brands pay a premium directly back to workers into a Community Development Fund. Workers propose and vote on projects which meet their community needs, creating a space for independently led and worker-voice driven initiatives.
In 2022, we reached $1bn of impact in the form of brands delivering Community Development Funds directly into the hands of farmers, fishers, and workers.
And that is some truly fantastic work. How are you now looking to bring this into the toy and brand licensing industries? Why will this be a game-changer for brands in these sectors?
With the new Factory Production Standard and our newly released pricing model, certifying toys factories is now possible. Many toy brands manufacture in shared facilities – so we welcome brand partner collaboration to certify their shared factories.
Fair Trade Certified is a third party social compliance partner to brands that has a widely recognised consumer facing ‘seal of approval’ to communicate the compliance and impact easily to customers.
We hope to partner with brands to bring the first Fair Trade Certified toys to the market very soon.
And that is a very exciting prospect! Why would these areas of industry work well with the Fair Trade name? Why are these important anchor points for driving positive social, ethical, and environmental change?
The toy space has a unique opportunity to have the Fair Trade Certification story resonate particularly well with its customers. Our standard ensures that factories are protecting their workers, for example that no child labour is occurring at the factories. For parents, having the peace of mind that the toys their children are playing with were not made with child labour is valuable.
Often times workers at factories vote to use their Community Development Funds to support local schools or pay for the workers’ children’s school expenses. Through purchasing toys made in Fair Trade Certified facilities, consumers could be contributing back to projects that are directly benefiting the children of the workers that made these products.
There is a lot of alignment with the toy industry and how Fair Trade impacts workers and their families.
Well, we look forward to hearing a lot more about the initiative when you join us this Thursday at 4.30pm on the Products of Change platform. Before you go, what’s the next big move for Fair Trade USA?
Well, we’ve carried out a lot of operational to redesign our programme – a new Factory Production Standard, new pricing model, country expansion – and this all sets our programme up to scale impact moving forward. In the first ten years of the factory programme, w certified just over 100 factories. In 2023 alone, with our existing partners, we have 60 factory nominations planned with more to come.
We are looking to partner with leaders in their industries to be the first to certify factories in their categories. We aim to have Fair Trade Certified toys on the shelves by the holidays.
Check out our Factory Web Page and get in touch with us, we look forward to working with new partners and with existing partners that would like to explore certifying additional product lines.
