Delicious Ambitious - inspiration for girls who are going places

Safia Minney, Founder and Director, People Tree (www.peopletree.co.uk)

May 15, 09:09 PM

Safia stressed that Fair Trade fashion is not just about ethical fashion. It’s not just about cleaning up factory conditions to meet the bare minimal criteria in terms of safety, payment of minimum wages, basic environmental standards. It’s about going beyond that to really contribute to the development of the community and the preservation of the environment.

We asked Safia how People Tree got started:
I was buying organic food. I was buying bits of Fair Trade food in Japan that existed and I was recycling. I was pretty environmentally friendly.

I couldn’t find the products I wanted in terms of clothing. So I started an NGO – called Global Village – with listings on organic food, how to recycle, looking at which environmental and Fair Trade initiatives were already there. There were very few so eventually we started a trading arm, called PEOPLE TREE.

We worked with 20 groups back then, 70 groups now. Then we were in two countries, now in about 20 countries. So it was really as a consumer to shop in a way that had maximum positive impact both to the envirnoment and to people.

One of the highlights of Safia’s role is the people she works with:

I’m very lucky because I work with incredibly committed people – our wholesale customers, our 500 shops we sell through in Japan. These people are incredibly committed, campaigning, committed to Fair Trade and promoting it, as are the organisations around the UK and Europe.

Also the people in the communities, artisinal groups, people working with artisans themselves or on the people side, running schools, working with water programmes, nutritional programmes.

These teams are very committed and they are making a huge difference.

Safia’s advice to women who are wanting to start their own business?

Safia desperately wanted to start her own business but wanted to try out whether she had the necessary skills. So, while she was working in marketing, she started a small business on the side, for a limited time to try it out.

It was a gorillagram company which used her actor friends as the gorillas and involved them taking flowers and chocolates to people on Valentine’s Day!

It was tiny and wound up after Valentine’s Day but Safia says: “It gave me the opportunity to test the skills I needed to run a business. Putting together products and services, fulfilling orders, delivery, meeting customer expectations, handling accounts / logistics etc”

TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION:
Safia Minney is the founder and Director of the Fair Trade fashion brand ‘People Tree’. In April this year Safia celebrated the 10th birthday of the first People Tree shop in Tokyo. In May she was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year. And popular London fashion destination Topshop has recently introduced elements of the People Tree range to its flagship store. We caught up with Safia in her London studio…..

*****

People Tree is a Fair Trade fashion label.

We work with small scale artisanal groups and farmers in the developing world – countries like India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Peru.

We look at using trade as a tool for development so we’ll be working with the most marginalised producers, looking at how we can empower them and give them control over the trading system, to help them to overcome barriers like quality management systems, capacity building for organisation, looking at more environmentally friendly production methods, and then building a market for them so they can sell their products at a fair price here in Britain.

*****

We Started People Tree 10 years ago in Japan, five years ago in Britain

At the time when we started nobody knew anything about Fair Trade fashion or organic cotton. People would say ‘you don’t eat clothes so why bother about organic?’ They didn’t understand the impact – the environmental impact and the impact on farmers’ lives of the chemicals and pesticides.

I think there’s been recently (in the last couple of years), there’s been a huge interest, consumer interest and media interest in the impact of fashion. Fashion’s a huge industry in Britain – probably the 6th largest industry.

So People Tree went into Topshop – we were welcomed in by Topshop – it’s a very interesting, very challenging market because it is very young, very design-led and the management have been really very happy with the sales. We’ve expanded the selling area to double, we’ve a lot of signage up there now which is really exciting

People are not only buying People Tree and Fair Trade fashion from the shop floor, we’re also getting a lot of our own customers who are coming in to buy the product to show Top Shop that this is more of what they want.

For People Tree it was really exciting to come into the environment of the high street. For us it was quite a challenge because we were looking at how could we get product there fast enough, while still keeping in place the fair trade mission.

All of the products for example are hand made, hand woven so you can’t turn around a product in six weeks which is typical of the conventional high streets.

I think what this does is that it shows that the high street are very excited about embracing the values of Fair Trade fashion. The product offering now is strong enough to sit in the high street and people will buy it. So that’s very exciting, a strong breakthrough for fair trade fashion.

*****
People Tree is endorsed by a number of people. Sienna Miller really during the last three years has been fantastic – she’s helped us with a photo shoot and been very supportive of Fair Trade fashion and People Tree. Woody Harrelson has also been really supportive which is really great.

It’s very interesting – obviously we’d like to work with celebrities and partners and well wishers who really understand Fair Trade fashion and the difference it makes in human rights terms and in environmental terms so we’ll be looking at who we can work with that really understands Fair Trade fashion deeply.

*****

I started World Fair Trade Day as an initiative about five years ago

We were meeting for a biannual meeting in Arusha in Tanzania. There were 260 people from 65 countries.

What’s of course very interesting is that we all have very interesting campaigns and activities in many countries. Fair Trade isn’t just an issue that is ‘developed-world’ based.

We have the Fair Trade mark, for example, which is on agricultural commodities which is wonderful, but what we need to be doing is we need to be lobbying more in the developing world as well for Fair Trade. We need to make businesses more aware of the Fair Trade principles and labour conditions, and environmental issues, and what sustainable business is.

I just thought it was such an important thing. We have Human Rights Day, we have Earth Day for example, we have a number of days but there’s nothing more important than Fair Trade, nothing more important than actually looking at the impact of trade and the present economic system on people and the environment.

What we wanted to do was bring an official international day to the calendars of every country, not just the developed world but also the developing world, to celebrate all of these really exciting events and initiatives in countries like Peru, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and just to give people a sense of how global this movement is.

It’s very exciting – you can access the website – www.wftday.org

You’ve information up there in English, also there in Japanese because People Tree is in Japan too.

Journalists are accessing it, Fair Trade town groups, university groups, very, very widely. Looking at what’s happening with this movement and understanding that it‘s an unstoppable movement, something that’s really reaching out to look at the systems that keep people poor….and can offer very practical alternatives to empowering people and building up community development and environmental protection.

*****

I started People Tree because I just couldn’t find Fair Trade fashion that was wearable and nice.

When we first started we looked at what was in the market and how we could work with these small scale groups to give them training in tailoring, help with design and product development. And it’s surprised me actually how far we have come in five years.

What it shows is that it is possible with small village based projects to actually produce something that is very commercial and very marketable, which is really exciting, to bring money into the poorest communities in the world.

I suppose as I’ve been travelling more and more every 6 months – I’m in India and Bangladesh, in the villages, working with the producers -you realise the difference that Fair Trade makes, you understand the positive impact of bringing regular orders to these groups.

For me personally that’s the exciting thing, that’s the motivator to want to do more and more and to introduce Fair Trade fashion to people.

*****

I suppose I call myself a human rights activist before an environmental activist but when you see how the two are so intrinsically linked, and how business sustainability is really such an issue of our time, I think that Fair Trade can begin to champion that whole thinking and that whole paradigm shift in the area.

*****

I think Fair Trade fashion is really demanding because you’ve got the Fair Trade standards that need to be met, you’re also looking at the environmental standards that need to be met, and there are of course, customers’ expectations that need to be met…. And how do you balance that whole thing – how do you, when the playing field for fashion is incredibly unlevel – how do you compete in that scenario?

I think that for us it was extremely difficult and still it’s not easy we have enormous cash flow issues – we’re paying producers 50% in advance on orders so clearly if we’re growing by 40% every year as we did last year there’s that much more money to be found eight months before you realise sales on product. So those kinds of things I think are very challenging.

But we are going that many more steps beyond with Fair Trade fashion to really use the product as a tool of development to create jobs for weavers in incredibly remote areas, to look at how community development schemes can be put together to educate hundreds of children in very needy areas – in Nepal and Bangladesh – literacy training, nutritional training, so it’s a very complicated business.

*****

I spend about two of every four weeks travelling overseas. I run People Tree both in Japan and London so I’m obviously between the two offices and working very much in India, Bangladesh, Peru, Kenya. So I’m not home for more than two weeks of every month.

When I’m home / or I’m office based – whether it be People Tree London or Tokyo– I would typically get up, have my organic breakfast. I’m vegetarian, never any time for any exercise! I walk to work.

I would start the day at 830 or 9 o’clock in the morning– meetings on the hour, every hour – whether it be design, sales, media, looking at how we overcome production problems, if producers face any particular issue or concern. Looking at the logistics management – moving the organic cotton to Bangladesh to put on the hand looms is taking an awful lot of lot of time recently.

Then when I’m in the developing world, working with producer groups I would be in the villages – waking up, having a delicious breakfast then working with the design team to help the build capacity within producer groups. Looking at how we can run workshops, teach producers how to hold an iron properly, or looking at upgrading sewing machines, how we secure better yearn from a supplier. It’s a very varied day.

I probably work until about 7.30 every night. I go home, have dinner with my kids put them to bed, then start at 9 and generally work until 1 or 2 in morning after that, so it’s quite a long day.

*****

There’s lots of best bits of what we do here, there’s so many…

Just watching the difference that Fair Trade makes on individuals in the communities where we’re working.

We’re working in KTS in Kathmandu in Nepal. This was a project that was set up for the most marginalised people in the community. These are street sweepers – they were an untouchable community 20 years ago. And because they are so marginalised we started by working to give them training to help with product development. There are now 450 knitters working in this community. We have schools that are financed through the Fair Trade profits and the premiums that People Tree pay – for about 300 children, again from this incredibly disadvantaged community.

What you’re seeing is that as people gather the economic way forward, at the same time the confidence and strength as a family and as a community, they’re pushing their children forwards.

It was lovely last January when I was in Nepal at KTS, one of the daughters of the knitters had decided to take up her nursing training and that would have been absolutely unheard of even 6 or 7 years ago so just seeing this upward mobility of people. And they’re not being stigmatised as they were – they were very much treated like animals 20 years ago – so you see this huge social development that has been possible through Fair Trade in that community – really exciting, it’s marvellous.

*****

As I go to India more and more I am aware that my thinking is very similar to Ghandian thinking – very much looking at how to promote self reliance and community development and a set of economics that is really human sized and sustainable.

*****

I think it’s really important to be entrepreneurial, I think it’s very important if you’ve got a good idea to try it. To have a good idea, to share it with people who can help you to make it happen.

I always feel saddened when people say ‘I would have loved to have tried that, but I didn’t have the confidence to ask’ and you think if only you’d proposed it….

*****

I think that boundless positivity can actually lead you into a lot of trouble!!

You can find yourself wanting to do so much in so many places at the same time

I think that you can overstretch yourself, I think to really focus, to set targets and to have a healthy realism also about what’s achievable and how long it might take to achieve it, is very important.

But being optimistic and really positive is very necessary for Fair Trade because there is so much work to do in this area.