Fair Trade Turns 15

TransFair, the German fair trade initiative, started in 1992 as a good idea with a confusing name. The Cafe of Small Farmers Consortium caused plenty of misunderstandings, said Dieter Overath, who has headed the organization from the beginning.

He was getting calls from small German farmers asking whether they could join the group. It became clear they needed a better name as well as a good logo, Overath said.

"There were no instructions how someone would build such an initiative," he said

After debate, they came up with the TransFair name and the logo. But they still had a big task ahead of them. How could one convince the fair trade skeptics? Would consumers willingly pay a higher price for coffee to help farmers in a country such as Nicaragua?

Initial skepticism

The first phone call to a buyer at a large chain was sobering. He said: "The German housewife will not pay a cent more than is needed. End of story." And hung up.

But the truth was the German housewife would pay more. At the Women's World Day of Prayer in 1993, Roman Catholic and Protestant women went to supermarkets in groups and demanded fair trade products. In February 1993 the German grocery giant REWE became the first supermarket in the country to offer TransFair coffee. Pretty soon, other supermarkets started selling it as well.

The demands of these women made the difference, Overath said. That was always important, since TransFair never had millions of euros to spend on advertising, Overath said.

"They showed the stores that there are consumers that want this and are ready to spend more on fair trade products," Overath said.

Quality important selling point

While fair trade started with coffee, they added new products in the following years such as honey, tea, orange juice, chocolate and sweets. The products tasted better and the packaging was attractive. But just as the demand picked up, new problems surfaced. TransFair had to enter into a difficult price war. Coffee sales stagnated. The first attempt at getting fair trade bananas to market had delivery problems due to Hurricane Mitch in 1998. The media also began criticizing the group.

News organizations drew attention to a report that was critical of how a cooperative in Ghana was spending its money. Public skepticism mounted. For TransFair that meant moving away from thinking exclusively about bettering the living conditions of the producers to thinking more about marketing and consumers.

Consumers don't expect to change the world when they go shopping. Finding a superior product is the important thing," Overath said. "(The consumer) has to have a feeling from fair trade that when he pays a little more, he will get a good product."

Along with doing a better job of marketing fair trade to current clients, there's also a move to large-scale consumption. Fair trade products are finding their way into company lunchrooms and university cafeterias and are also used by companies such as Air Berlin, Germany's second biggest airline.

A growth market

New products continue to surface: wine, roses, rice and even fair trade soccer balls. Fair trade has also profited in recent years from the boom in organic products. Last year in Germany, the market had a 100 percent growth rate.

More importantly, fair trade has proven it's an effective form of development politics. Fair trade cotton and cocoa farmers are not risking their lives on overcrowded boats to reach the Canary Islands, Overath said. The people are staying home and using their pay to finance better futures for their children.

Fair trade wants to strengthen its activities in Africa and also bring fair trade cotton to the German market. Men will soon be able to buy fair trade jeans.

Overath hopes that fair trade products will continue becoming part of the mainstream and become as normal for Germans as buying organic products has in recent years.