“What’s
your favorite product you make?”I hear that question alot. I play alot of soccer, so to date it’s been a toss up between our futsal ball for indoor soccer, our Match ball for outdoor soccer, and our funky one-sleeve tee shirts.
Well, I officially have a new favorite just in time for a hot summer: our new performance tee shirts and tanks. They look cool, and they feel even better. Check them out here.
Published by Scott James June 16th, 2007 in Apparel: sweatshop-free.
Dear Scott and Susan,
While sifting through the Spring 07 Baylor Business Review, I happen to see that you had started a fair trade sports company in the U.S. Awesome stuff! I am so excited to hear about that.
While reading it, I wondered if it might be useful for us to be in touch with one another, although I am not sure eventually where it might go.
I am also a Baylor alumnus. My undergrad was a degree in Aviation (01), but I then went on to do an MBA (03) at Baylor before coming overseas to work as a full time volunteer at Crossroads International (www.crossroads.org.hk), here in Hong Kong.
Crossroads is a charity whose purposes revolve around helping resources get to different people who need them, both through physically sending containers of aid, and virtually through an online matching system called Global Hand (www.globalhand.org). However, we also run a small fair trade shop at our location in Hong Kong, and are involved with the emerging fair trade market in this city. It is interesting that Hong Kong, for all its strong history of philanthropy, has not had much fair trade activity to this point. However, we are working with a group of organisations in Hong Kong to try and change that.
A couple of things I thought might be worth exploring are: 1. How have you found the public taking to your fair trade products? I particularly wonder what kinds of strategies you found have to be effective in markets where fair trade has not had a strong history. I imagine that is the case with sports equipment, as it seems to me to be relatively new in the spectrum of fair trade. I wonder if there are lessons that we, here in Hong Kong, could learn from your experiences as we try to fan the fire of the industry. 2. How are you finding the fair trade process, and where to you see the company going? Are you finding the retail, wholesale, or private label segment to be particularly strong and experiencing more growth than the others? In Hong Kong, we have started with straight retail and we are facing the challenge of having such small volumes that it is difficult to keep fair trade products priced competitively. So if there is one segment of the market that you are finding is growing quickly, perhaps we could explore more that same segment here in Hong Kong to boost volume and lower prices before expanding the other two segments. 3. I am just curious as to the background of how you ended up in fair trade and, in particular, in fair trade sports. It seems a wonderful thing, and I’d love to hear a little bit of the journey that brought you there, if you have time to share it (no problem if not)!
Once again, I am not really sure where this is going, but thought it would be interesting to stay in touch with another Baylor alum, even if it is only for collegial support and encouragement. As the thought of your company has been on my mind now for some weeks, I thought perhaps it might be a good and right thing to do and see where it goes.
Best regards,
CROSSROADS INTERNATIONAL Josh Begbie Global Handicrafts