Fair Trade Jewelry Confusion and Throwing Fair Manufacturing “Beamers” at the Ethical Jewelry Summit
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Peggy Ussery, a journalist for the Dothan Eagle, a newspaper in Alabama, wrote a recent article about a fair trade store which featured several fair trade products. She included jewelry as one of the store’s third party fair trade certified products.
I emailed her, stating that there is no such thing as third party certified fair trade jewelry, to which she responded: “The jewelry in their store (which they carry very little of) is made following fair trade principles, but is not necessarily certified fair trade. The majority of items are certified, but some are not. Thanks for helping set the record straight.”
Here you see an experienced journalist writing to support fair trade products by giving good press who gets confused about fair trade jewelry. I could totally relate – it took me weeks to write the article “Is There Such A Thing As Fair Trade Jewelry?”
Unfortunately Ms. Ussery is not the only one who’s confused…
At day one of the Ethical Jewelry Summit, numerous references were made to “fair trade jewelry,” as if the concept did not already exist.
Certainly a few of us at the conference understood the distinction and are doing internet marketing for the actual term, “fair trade jewelry.” Ironically, for the mainstream jewelers the key words “fair trade jewelry” really refer not to manufacturing, but to components that make up jewelry, such as diamonds and other gemstones.
Yet fair trade jewelry is about JEWELRY, not just parts of jewelry. It is about manufacturing. It already exists in the market, falling under the criteria of the Fair Trade Federation. However, such jewelry is not “third party” certified.
Fair trade third party certification is owned by FLO, which was represented by Caren Holzman of Transfair USA. At the meeting I pointed out this confusion between third party certified jewelry and just “fair trade” jewelry. There was no confusion to Caren. If a product does not have her organization’s label it is not fair trade certified.
True enough—but that distinction is being lost right now not only to journalists, but also online. Go right now to the number one ranking site on Google for the term “fair trade jewelry” and look at the bottom of their site: http://store.gxonlinestore.org/jewelry.html. See the TransfairUSA label? It is at the bottom of all their pages. How is someone to know that those products are not third party certified?
Right now, Transfair USA is doing a feasibility study on Fair Trade Diamonds. FLO Europe has signed a letter of intent working toward third party certification gold. Transfair USA is not committed to going into this sector, and there are many, many reasons why it is tricky for them to do so. Jewelry is not like coffee, chocolate or textiles
Though diamonds and gold are not jewelry, the conversation on the first day at the conference in plenary took place without much of a mention of manufacturing. I understood why completely. The focus of the conference was on artisan miners. It makes sense to focus on components first which make up the finished product.
But at the second day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I realized I would spend another morning listening to talks entirely focused on gold and diamonds when the event was an extraordinary opportunity to consider manufacturing issues.
I stood up just before the first break out sessions (again emphasizing gold and diamonds) and spoke my first public words of the conference. “What about manufacturing?”
There was silence for a moment. I sat down.
Greg Velario leaned over to me with a sly grin and said, “You’ve thrown a beamer,” he said.
“Demos,” he whispered. Demos came over, “Marc just threw a beamer!”
Demos smiled like a coyote.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Illegal move,” said Greg. “It’s a cricket term.”
According to Greg via email, after the game: “For your info a beamer is a fast ball bowled at the batsman’s head. If you get confused, that’s ok. They are designed to confuse so as to get the opposition out.”
After I spoke up I remembered to my embarrassment that the agenda called for an open meeting that afternoon which would allow us to address manufacturing. But I had stood up mainly because the beamer tosser (should I say bowler?) in me felt that the structures of the conference were becoming too narrowly focused.
Truth be told, I have been throwing beamers all my life and it has gotten me into a lot of trouble. The genesis of this blog can be traced to a beamer. I sent to an editor of a major trade magazine a press release where I called “blood diamonds” a “red herring” because the real issue was fair trade. He accused me of “a slap in the face” to the jewelry industry. I wrote him back a two page single space rant to which he responded, “We need more people like you.”
His response set me free and soon after that I began the blog. Yet I have enough trauma around my “beamer nature” that when I sat down, I began head tripping myself thinking that I had really “fucked up.”
In this case, my beamer resulted in some discussion around the upcoming meetings which I believe was helpful. I ended up backing out of the next session to have a discussion with some people in the room who resonated with what I said about manufacturing issues.
I represented a minority view that was important.
In this meeting a group of us decided that we were going to start our own manufacturing working group that would look at standards and perhaps aim toward some kind of third party certification process. This was formalized at the end of the summit: a block of paper with a sign up sheet and the heading: Manufacturing.
The market is way too chaotic to wait for TransFair USA or FLO to consider manufacturing. These certification agents may never want to get involved in third party certification of jewelry manufacturing for plenty of reasons.
I don’t want to hit them over the head with a beamer, but I propose, rather, that we manufacturers, like the gold and diamond people, need to develop our own standards and ultimately… wind up to our own third party certification game, even if it might not be cricket.
I am going to put forth another post about this as we move forward.
In the meantime, to all those in the manufacturing sector who want to be part of this conversation, contact me. Let us look at this confusion in the market as an opportunity to really create structures so that when the gold and diamonds are ready, we will have third party certified manufacturing.
Let us be a group that is not afraid to give it our “level best.”
Marc Choyt: 505-988-7393 Ex. 12
