Your source for information to grow your Fair Trade retail business. Covering strategies for social media, growing email lists and holding events.
Much has been written about how consumers engage with businesses that are active in cause-related marketing campaigns and its cousin, corporate social responsibility. Bottom line: it’s not whether a company decides to engage, since consumers expect companies to act responsibly and to see proof of their commitments, according to a 2015 Cone Communications / Ebiquity[…]
Most retailers know about Small Business Saturday, the campaign launched by American Express in 2010 to encourage customers to shop independent retailers the Saturday after Thanksgiving but there are plenty of other national campaigns worthy of a retailer’s attention. Doing so not only shows your customers that you’re supporting various causes, but it introduces your[…]
As our retailer partners find the lure of the Internet an impossible thing to resist, they face two choices with photography; use our image or take their own. Using ours is fine, but your site risks looking the same as all our other retail partners. Taking your own, well that can be just daunting. When[…]
Here at Global Crafts, we’re avoidists. We try to take the path of least resistance to keep our blood pressures low. So as we learned about the laws and regulations of importing and distributing products for children, we did what we thought we should do — run. Anything we had with small parts clearly were[…]
So you’re finished with Pinterest account setup. Now all that’s left is to actually begin marketing. Let’s start with the basics. Look at what makes any type of marketing strategy and any type of business successful. The single answer here is value. If you want to engage your audience, if you want to build[…]
At the heart of effective brand building will always be engaging storytelling. Storytelling enables your audience to understand why you exist not just what you sell. Consumers will struggle to build affinity with a product or company, but a great story can help solidify certain qualities that the brand represents and who has a better[…]
My 98-year-old mother, Bea, always told me to never leave the house without wearing earrings. Most mothers would say makeup but the women in our family have always had an affection for earrings. Bea loves Fair Trade earrings, the bigger and brighter, the better. When someone compliments her on her earrings, she proudly says, “These were handmade by women in Chile”[…]
It used to be that if you wanted to secure earned media coverage you’d send a press release to local reporters (or national magazines, depending on your reach) for consideration and if the reporter was interested, she would follow up with a request for an interview and/or product. Savvy retailers knew to get the attention[…]
In 2010, we met Arturo Buenrostro when we were traveling through San Miguel de Allende, a colonial town in central Mexico known by many Americans as a great place to retire. Many Fair Trade craftspeople worldwide have artistic skills and choose to make products out of discarded material like paper, tires, tin cans, bottle tops, seat[…]
I have a Fair Trade sensor in my brain. Every time I hear “Fair Trade” my ears perk up and I start looking around – kind of like when my dog hears the doorbell except I don’t generally bark. The radar’s been blipping a lot lately this presidential election season. Who knew that both the[…]