Ending Human Exploitation with Ethical Trade Company Co-founder James Ferrett

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Ethical Trade Company is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering artisans and farmers

who are vulnerable to exploitation. Guided by the tagline fair trade goods for a better world,

ethical trades carries a diverse range of items from over 50 countries in their store on

Madison's east side around mine and their web store. Here to tell us about the company, the mission,

the products is co-founder James Ferrett. James, welcome to maxing radio. Thank you for having me again.

Great to be here. Thank you. So what was the last country that you went into it?

I was in Poland last. Not counting England, but England is not really.

On that trip, I was more dover. I was in Poland and I was in Ukraine too.

Why does an England count? Because I'm from England. In my mind, it doesn't count. You guys,

it probably does. Now, James, before we find out about ethical trade company, what is your backstory?

You just said you're from England. Who is James Ferrett? I'm English from England. I've emigrated

here to the States about 16, 17 years ago, married with two kids. Love this town. What made you get

into retail? In some ways, it's a brutal business. It is a very brutal business. So I was working

with another nonprofit and we were visiting some, I would take in teams out to Asia to work with

women and children at risk and we were working with organizations that were working with exploited

women and we wanted to provide a marketplace for the goods they were producing. So we were doing

it short term and then we're like, how hard can it be to make this full-time gig? Turns out to be

very hard and quite expensive. That was basically the genesis of ethical trade. It's really the way

it's been and we've been doing it now close to 10 years, founded 2025 in February. No, 2015 in

February. And then you have a saying here that ethical gift giving, that sounds interesting. Tell

me about that. Yes, so it's all about looking about where your gifts come from. So who makes them,

what's the environmental impact about them, what's the person impact? Is that person being paid

a fair wage? Is that person being exploited? Generally, if something is super cheap, then either the

retail it is making a loss on it or the person making it made a loss on it. And I guess one more

question. Why should I have to worry about that? Why should I worry about that? Well, it's my personal

opinion that we share this planet with other people that are very similar to us. They may not

necessarily have the same accent or speak the same language, or even have the same color skin,

or we may not agree politically, but they are the same as us. We believe that everyone is made

in the image of the divine, whether you are black, white, brown, whatever. And we should be

taking care of our fellow humans. You're given someone empowerment to basically take control of

their lives and make a living for the craft or the arts that they create. Yeah, definitely.

None of us like to be exploited. None of us like to be ripped off. So why are we doing it to so many

other people? And no problem. You know, tell us about really, like, how, like, why you started

ethical trade company? Like, how did it actually get started? Because you weren't intending on

starting this. You were kind of on tour doing stuff. And it occurred to you that maybe you should

start this. Yeah. So we were, we were, when we visited these groups, we would then come back to,

it was mostly churches and do awareness stores, where we would talk about the plight of children at

risk. And mostly these were street kids. These were people that were women that had been abused

or had been exploited. And there was, there was such a heart, I guess, for to do something more

than just sit and listen. You know, like, I like to talk about that as being more like being

an armchair activist, where you can sit and post something on your phone and you can feel better.

But it takes more than that to make a difference. You have to, you know, have to change where

your money is spent. We carry, we have such a power in our, in our dollars by voting for which kind

of company we buy from without, with our dollars. So let's, let's, let's use that and make a

significant difference overseas. So what you guys do is go into these places, find these vulnerable

people who can be exploited, teach them skills to either create crafts or products. And then you buy

these products from them and resell them at your store and online. Yeah, that is pretty much

what happens apart from we're not the ones in country. We have products from well over 50 nations.

So we can't be in all these countries at the same time. You know, so we'd like to try and visit

people and we certainly used to do that pre-COVID. I haven't really been on, I've traveled to Europe

since then. But yeah, it's, we work with organizations that speak the language, that know the culture,

that know the right pay. So that way, we're not trying to duplicate their efforts. And then they

don't have to duplicate our efforts. What, what kind of feedback results positive or negative? Have

you gotten from various communities or countries or families that are selling stuff for you?

Yes, so we have, and we have a supplier that during COVID, he was, he made bags for us and he was

hurting pretty badly. And it was, I was getting regular messages like, can you buy more? Can you buy

more? Sadly, it was COVID. So we can buy more. So it was just difficult for that. But in, we've

also seen other groups, like there's a, in Nepal, there's a company called Perna. They run the

largest fair trade contract manufacturer in, in Nepal, they have just seen their growth year

after year after year, a single number of people they're working with is really encouraging.

All right, we don't necessarily, because of the connect, the disconnect with working with partners,

we don't necessarily interact with the people themselves, but they do. And that's, that's important.

Now, you have a physical location and an online store and the website location is www.ethicaltradeco.com.

And your real-tailed store is located on Eastmoreland Community Center on Madison's East Side at 35652

Lane Avenue. Do you have holiday hours? Oh, yes. So we are open Tuesday through Saturday 11 to 5.

And yeah, normally we're just open Wednesday through Saturday, but because of Chris, because of

the run-up to Christmas, it's the guest season. Yes, we threw in an extra day because, you know,

people are coming in. So also, I want to let you guys know that we are running a, we have a

promotional code for you guys to use. Oh, yeah. If you, if you use the code maxink on both our website

and in store, you'll get 15% off. 15% off. Wow. Excellent. Thank you very much. Like, what can we get 15% off?

On chocolates. We have, we have a nice range of chocolate, which by the way, if you want to watch

something about chocolate and exploitation, I'd highly recommend the John Oliver sort of episode

on chocolate. It's funny and be it's, I learned a lot through it and I knew a lot. Anyway, it's a coffee

chocolate. We have accessories. We have fashion clothing now. We have men's shirts,

fair trade men's shirts, fair trade fashion. The men is really difficult to find. And so we've,

we've been, because I'm a guy, I want to wear stuff that is exploitation free too. So we have

jewelry. We have, we have Indian spices. Yeah, we have a whole range of spices. Indian spices from

a company owned by an LGBT group. So which in India is difficult. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I love it. I

mean, if you're conscious and you want to be a good citizen of earth, it'd just be a good person,

I guess. Yeah. And you want to, you know, help stop exploitation of people and, and, and make a

difference with somebody because this stuff is coming, you know, you can go to ethicaltradeco.com

right now buy some chocolate, buy some coffee for a great Christmas gift. Don't forget to put the

max ink in the promo box to get 15% off. You can't go wrong. No, you can't. And you can even

choose to pick up and store and save the shipping. Love that. You got some events coming up at the

store? We have. So we're going to be the guava feed mill next weekend for that big sort of

winter market. And yeah, hopefully you guys made it to the fair trade holiday fair. That was

the day. That was an amazing event. Apart from that, we, we're just going to be open and let people

come in. That's fantastic, James. Hey, thank you so much for coming in today. Thank you.

Really appreciate you. I love what you all do. I'm happy you're back here at Maxing Gritio for

the Christmas season. We appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me again. Don't forget

ethicaltradeco.com put max ink in the promo box to get yourself 15% off. That's a good deal for

the holidays right here. You're making some a difference.