Glasshouse Partnership » fair trade

Starbucks fair trade commitment feels like window cleaning, not window dressing.

Tim Kitchin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:15:00 +0000

Starbucks will only sell fair trade coffee from now on…increasing its UK fairtrade coffee bean buying by 1600% and becoming the world’s leading buyer of fairtrade.

Good for them and I will personally consolidate my coffee buying (1-2 espressos and 4-5 cappuccinos a day).

In the wake of this announcement it’s fair to ask questions about the availability, liquidity of fair trade supply, and also to examine the real world impact of this supply. It’s also fair to question why this is not a blanket, world-wide commitment. But on balance this has to be very good news indeed. Howard Shultz is back at the helm and driving with conviction.

Firstly it send a strong signal to anyone considering retrenching on CSR, that ethical clarity and conviction remain a source of competitive advantage – especially in a downturn.

Secondly it shows the real power of CSR comes when it is embraced as committed corporate marketing – aligning organisational commitments to real stakeholder needs.

Thirdly, and most importantly, it builds on a strong and committed legacy of market-leading commitments and fair(er) practices than its unscrutinised rivals.

The fact is that ethical considerations in purchasing are alive and well, but our consciences will only be activated by companies that show they mean it – window cleaning; not window dressing. Starbucks next challenge will be to drive real customer engagement around their commitment through effective social communication.

Transparency. What to do about it.

Tim Kitchin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:20:10 +0000

The attached deck has a ‘dead’ conceptual’ front-end around transparency, and then some simple planning templates to help brands to think through their responses. I think it’s worth sharing more widely:

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We’ve written ad nauseam on transparency, but yesterday was a chance to move from thought into action beyond client work – our first stab at ‘mass-consulting’.

Organic Exchange asked us to present back to back ‘training’ sessions for European fashion brands on the impact of transparency and what to do about it. Yesterday was ‘T-day’.

Verdict: Tiring and only partially successful with such a disparate group (audience was spread from CSR and environment through ops and procurement, with a smattering of brand folk). Lesson learned: this stuff would be better tailored to a specific brand…but the frameworks do really seem to help people to conceptualise.

Need to do more of these, with more specific examples, but it will still be a challenge to answer really brand-specific consulting-type questions in an open forum.

Best news is actual brand custodians really ‘get this’ which is good news for the speech I am giving at the International Apparel Federation in October.

A Provenance Audit with your Latte, Madam?

Michael Hoevel — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:34:49 +0000

Here is another example of an organisation tapping into what they consider to be an increasing consumer desire to find out about the provenance of the products they buy. Crop to Cup â€“ which helps coffee farmers bring their products to market â€“ guarantees fair prices to farmers and reinvests a percentage of its profits to developing the local community.

But Crop to Cup is working to take the subject of fair trade a step further by introducing platforms which allow consumers to interact directly with growers in developing countries and ask them questions and learn about their farming practices directly and in richer detail.

As global markets become more transparent and interactive, technologies such as these seem poised to break open the opacity of supply chain and give end consumers greater ability to access work and environmental conditions for themselves.