Transparency: Traidcraft's Promise To Do Business Differently

TRANSPARENCY:

TRAIDCRAFT'S PROMISE TO DO BUSINESS DIFFERENTLY

BY ROBIN ROTH

At Traidcraft we are trying to be the difference that we want to see in the world around us. This month we are pushing the boat out on being more transparent and our Black Friday statement is all about letting our customers know more about us, our costs and our margins.

WE ARE GRATEFUL TO ALL OF OUR SUPPORTERS. YOU GIVE US THE COURAGE TO BELIEVE THAT WE CAN STILL CHANGE THIS WORLD, TOGETHER.

There is something wonderfully Quixotic about it – a small company tucked away on a trading estate in Gateshead proudly going “full-on transparent”. It’s not that we are trying to change the world with a big bang. That is way beyond us, and we don’t harbour any delusions of grandeur. But we do want to change the way we do business. Transparency – or honesty in old fashioned language – is one of those things we prize in theory and eschew in private. Indeed, with our finely honed sense of irony we can sometimes – quite often unintentionally - muddy the waters between what we say and what we mean. At Traidcraft we have made a promise to ourselves to do business differently, and in ways that make us proud to work here. We talk a lot about transparency, but we are only just beginning to dare to be more transparent with each other. We decided recently that the minutes of Board meetings should be shared with everybody; we have a monthly session where everybody is invited to look at the accounts; all of our internal documents are shared openly and everybody can see everything, and we report weekly to each other in open meetings on all of our sales, cash and stock values. This is a good start, but it takes time for a new culture to take root. Time and a lot of trust. Our Black Friday activities this year are as much about building up trust with each other as they are about sharing things with the world. I am sure that a few people will be very interested in our cost structure, but to many it will just seem unusual. That’s ok by us. As we venture back into the pioneering role that we believe is our purpose we need to build, step by step a basis of being open with each other and unafraid of telling the truth. I suppose that if we can’t trust each other with the small stuff, then no one will believe us with the big stuff; we have to be different before we can really do something different. So this year, as we grow in confidence, we begin a new journey towards a different kind of fair trade. It was once all about doing something good to somebody in a far distant land. Today, in a country torn apart by its own home-grown inequalities, we need to start with trusting each other if we are to ever make the big differences we so desperately need to see. We are grateful to all of our supporters. You give us the courage to believe that we can still change this world, together.