WalMart In Talks To Sell Fair Trade Goods

Despite its reputation for signaling the end of the "mom and pop" shop, Walmart may be embracing business model that has some small-scale suppliers doing a double-take. Walmart will begin selling one-of-a-kind handicrafts made by artisans in developing countries online at Walmart.com. The non-profit group, Aid To Artisans (ATA), has reached out to Walmart to include their organization as part of a new plan to bring fair trade to the retail juggernaut.

The Hartford, Conneticut-based Aid To Artisans has been working with a group of Wayuu artisans in Colombia to develop a line of cup and bottle sleeves woven from colorful yarn, which it hopes Walmart will include in its online store. This may be more realistic than it sounds after the Walmart Foundation, the charitable branch of the company, bestowed a $490,000 grant to ATA earlier this year. ATA hopes that this previous involvement with Walmart could improve the chances for this new venture, but official word is not out yet. "We have reached out to Walmart. We inquired and are waiting for a response," president of ATA, Alfred Espinosa told the Hartford Courant. "We are squarely in the target group they're trying to benefit," he went on to say.

ATA has previously helped artisans sell their products to Crate & Barrel, Anthropologie and Coldwater Creek, but this would be their largest retailer to date. "This would be a good fit and it would strengthen the work sponsored by the Walmart Foundation," Espinosa said.

"We have a relationship with them but we have not made any decision related to them," Deisha Galberth, a Walmart spokeswoman, said to the Courant. Despite the lack of an official announcement regarding ATA, by 2016 Walmart plans to offer up 500 producats made by nearly 20,000 woman artisans from 20 different countries.

Still, Walmart's reputation, stemming from the largest gender discrimination suit ever filed in the U.S., has many skeptics asking what the real intentions of such a venture could be. "They'll make some money with this, but I suspect that's not the main point — it's public relations to soften its image among urban liberals," Nelson Lichtenstein, author of "The Retail Revolution: How Wal-mart Created a Brave New World of Business"

Initial public reaction at the West Hartford Ten Thousand Villages—a fair trade store specializing in handicrafts—may indicate that fair trade retailers need not worry about losing customers to Walmart. "First of all I don't shop at Walmart, and I'm not sure what Walmart's agreement is with these women," shopper Sarah de Loizaga said at the Ten Thousand Villages store. "I like this store, I know what their mission is," she added.

Another shopper at Ten Thousand Villages, Kurt Moyer, was slightly more critical of the news. "I think it's offensive. Walmart has ruined many lives. They've very exploitive of their workers. They drive prices down and drive jobs overseas. They're only out for financial gain," he said.

Comments

[SevyaFairTrade]

12:33 PM on 11/17/2011

I hope it at least gets people to learn more about fair trade products. I think if more people understood it, that they would seek out fair trade as much as possible. It would be nice if people knew that fair trade doesn't always mean that a product will be expensive. http://www.sevya.com

[dbrett480]

07:43 PM on 10/12/2011

That's pretty funny. I guess WalMart is going after the yuppy liberal market. And the yuppy liberals will most likely forget the abuses of WalMart against it's employees.

[ELI SKATES]

04:22 PM on 10/12/2011

Wal-mart has made millions appealing to the lowest common denominator. I doubt people with any artistic thinking would put a penny into Wal-mart's sleazy pocket.

[dengal]

03:04 PM on 10/10/2011

watch the "high cost of low prices" - it will shed some light on the unfairness in all they do

[knewsreply]

10:31 AM on 10/10/2011

Now if Wal-Mart will couple their focus on developing nations with a major increased focus on buy USA. They could help strengthen manufacturing in the USA instead of China. Wal-Mart should return to the “highly publicized ‘Buy American’ campaign in the late 1980s and early '90s”, because now Americans need jobs.

[mendodnem]

10:07 AM on 10/10/2011

If one wants to buy artisan products, it is easier to go to the Rain Forest site:
https://www.therainforestsite.com/store/client-side.do?siteId=221&categoryId=284&adId=13297&placementId=221328&origin=www.theanimalrescuesite.com&sort=Most%20Popular
They carry all sorts of things from Haiti, Africa, etc. The profits go to
NON-PROFIT organizations for people trying to keep their lives going. Also: TheAnimanRescueSite.com carries Fair Trade products from same. The 2 sites are connected. Interested in dogs and cats? One can click on a box, no
cost, and it provides food for these animals that are rescued & in shelters.
This provides a no WAL MART in the middle getting theirs. They have more than
enough. I would imagine that people reached out to WM because so many people shop there. They put so many small businesses "out of business", that
many people have no choice. They started out cheap and as they became the
only game in town, raised their prices.

[Moti]

09:39 AM on 10/10/2011

In response to the front page headline - It's as real as Michelle O's foray into Target.

[see-ellen2001]

09:26 AM on 10/10/2011

WM is doing this to get shoppers in..all PR. Just wait...they will get fair trade dealers and the producers dependent on supplying WM, then WM will start to dictate how much they will pay for the product and who that they must supply WM exclusively.

[opinioned1]

09:03 AM on 10/10/2011

My first thought--What`s in it for Wally world?

These greed mongers do nothing that does not help the bottom line.

How about they actually give their full time employees more than a 35 hour week, with a fair wage? That just might help our economy more than their bottom line.

[KenInd]

08:27 AM on 10/10/2011

This is fine, but what about the thousands of struggling artists in America? Does Wal-Mart not care about this country?

Dickens said that 'Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.'

[LeftLeftLeft]

01:24 AM on 10/10/2011

Yeah, when I think of third-world artisans, Wal•Mart is the first thing that comes to mind . . .

[Annette Hammond]

09:18 PM on 10/09/2011

Walmart is getting nervous.Target is coming up right behind them.And they are starting their layoffs and picked up the layaway again.They can't stand missing out on the $$$$.walmarts ego has turned on them.

[Yorksgal]

03:20 PM on 10/09/2011

I hope this works - it is a start - and from little acorns mighty oaks grow.

[ComicClassroom]

02:41 PM on 10/09/2011

Aid to Artisans is a great organization - link below. The US is 5% of the world's land mass and 5% of the world's population -- creative, international collaboration is the only way we will survive. It is pure and simple mathematics. Walmart is in 44 countries and has near 2,500 stores outside of the US. We are not the center of the cosmos and thinking so is how we got ourselves in such damn deep do-do. Continued xenophobic hubris and jingoistic isolationism will take us down, down, down.
aidtoartisans.org/

[heartsmindsvision]

08:32 AM on 10/10/2011

You might be right and you might be wrong. I do agree with your analogy. The US should have broken up WM a long time ago.The only thing that kept WM going was thefascists in this country. The American people are hurting because of that. Thefascists created globalization/outsourcing and they can get rid of it. It sure didn't do the American people any good. We the American people are suffering. Sure, flush the American people down the drain, what do you care. A typical RW neocon repooblican. As you say , I love corporations and I ha_te the people.

[KenInd]

07:32 PM on 10/08/2011

Wal-Mart and Thomas Kinkade seem made for each other.

[Yorksgal]

03:19 PM on 10/09/2011

Someone gave me a Kincade mug - made in China.