Andean Collection is Now Faire Collection

The Andean Collection, recently renamed Faire Collection, still features the same striking designs created from natural materials, indigenous to some of lower elevations and rainforests of South America. Following fair trade principles, Ecuadorian artisans hand-craft each design. This stunning jewelry provides a sustainable economic alternative to the selling of their land--protecting their way of life and one of the world's most magnificent forests. No trees are harmed in the harvesting of any materials used in the production of Faire Collection's jewelry.
The Andean Collection's name change to Faire Collection is occurring due to the company's major expansions in their accessory line. This, along with the company’s acquisition of additional countries, provides resources for creating the designs while employing more than 225 artisans across Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam and Swaziland.
Our feature Faire Collection product is their new Gemma Necklace. This one-of-a-kind jewelry is available in the colors Incan Sun, Plum, and Quarry. Artisans carefully craft each necklace using Tagua Nut, Pambil & Acai seeds. A generous 20" in length, this necklace is not only stylish but fully adjustable. 
See the Gemma Necklace along with the rest of our hand-crafted jewelry line. Shop today for a unique piece while support local artisans.

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Four)

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Four)

By Niki

Amanda Judge, founder of the Faire Collection, an organization that works to raise artisans from poverty through the creation of sustainable jewelry and accessories, reflects upon her overall experience.

Though the Faire Collection has only been operating for five years, the organization already works with artisans across four different countries: Ecuador, Peru, Swaziland, and Vietnam. Awed by the company’s passion and ambition for making a difference through fair trade, I felt excited to discover the thoughts of founder Amanda Judge on her overall experience.

In the five years that you have been in business, what have been your greatest achievements and most difficult challenges?

When Amanda first started the Faire Collection, her greatest goal was to “bring fair trade into the mainstream.” Not only has the Faire Collection successfully accomplished that goal, but Amanda also proudly claims that, “At this point, we’re the largest fair trade accessories company in the U.S.” To top it off, the Faire Collection has worked with “twenty of the largest retailers.” You would think that the Faire Collection has reached the pinnacle of its success, but Amanda and her team still strive to expand and to bring fair trade further into the mainstream by “working with larger retailers.” Wow. 

Tasha models the Tagua Bib Necklace and
the Polished Tagua Bracelet. 

Interestingly, Amanda reflected, “Most of our challenges were not related to fair trade necessarily, but just running business in general. It was a difficult thing to do, having never done it before.” I had expected a response along the lines of gaining the trust of the artisans, or operating a worldwide organization. However, looking back on SFAC’s interview sessions with Katy Leaky and Samantha Morshed, founders of the Leaky Collection and Pebble Child respectively, I realize that they too struggled with the business aspect of running a fair trade organization. Amanda explains that, specifically, she had to deal with “manufacturing on a different level.” But she “learned along the way,” and now the Faire Collection and its workers reap the benefits of her determination and whole-hearted efforts.

Is it harder to work with some countries than others?

Since the Faire Collection is one of the few fair trade organizations operating in multiple countries, I was curious to hear Amanda’s viewpoint on accomplishing this feat. “Well,” she noted, “they’ve all been different. We adapt the model depending on which country we’re in…Ecuador is most extensive, so it’s most difficult, but there’s also most familiarity with it. I just came back from Vietnam, so I have a lot to learn about their culture and lifestyle…but it’s just different.”

Overall, I came out from the interview with Amanda even more impressed than I was originally. She has no regrets, and would do everything similarly if she had the chance to do it all over again. The Faire Collection is true to their words - “With one life to live, we intend to make the most of it and inspire you to do the same.”

Hi, I’m Niki, and I’m an intern this summer at Shopping for a Change! I’m a rising junior in high school, with a passion for singing and playing the piano. So far, I’ve had a great experience working, learning about marketing, reading inspiring stories, conducting interviews, and now blog-writing. Hope you enjoyed reading the installments of the interview!

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Three)

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Three)

by Ilana

In the third installment of our interview with Amanda Judge, Ilana talks to Amanda about the design process behind the creation of the Faire Collection's products.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview with Amanda Judge, Founder & Designer of The Faire Collection (formerly known as The Andean Collection). Wanting to know more about the Artisans and the process of handcrafting goods; my questions for her mainly focused on the company as a whole and the artisans she works with.

Lucy models the Faire Collection's
Accented Tagua Necklace in Lemon. 

The Faire Collection team likes their Artisans to be in charge of purchasing their own supplies to make products. According to Amanda,  "this empowers the artisans to learn how to manage their own business and creates a sense of independence for each artist."

When it comes to design, Amanda says they do so "with a New York customer in mind."  She went on to explain "We only source a few products from other parts of the world. Using mostly local ingredients for our collections, the artisans are able to produce products faster without with hassle of importing goods." 

The process from beginning to end in designing a new piece is fairly simple. First the Faire Collection team looks for inspiration. Gathering ideas from magazines, what they see on the streets, and Ecuadorian nature, they come up with a theme. This theme gets translated into sketches, and once completed they are sent to an artisan to make the first samples. The artisan revises designs and samples based upon the input received and their own capabilities.  Thus giving birth to a new Faire Collection design. 

Hi, My name is Ilana, and I am a senior in high school. My two passions are Fashion and helping others. While interning at Shopping for a Change I have gained insight in marketing , social media, interviewing, and now blogging!

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Two)

Amanda Judge Interview (Part Two)
by Jessica

In the second part of Shopping for a Change’s interview with Amanda Judge, the founder of the Faire Collection, you will learn about the business aspect of managing and expanding the organization.

Before interviewing Amanda, I had already done some research on the Faire Collection. Exploring its products and writing blurbs on various artisan groups had given me a fairly solid sense of what the organization was all about. Founded in 2008, the Faire Collection has come a long way. The organization now works with artisans in Vietnam, Peru, Swaziland and Ecuador, for a total of 225 artisans worldwide. The obvious question to ask was: how did the Faire Collection grow and reach such success so quickly?

To satisfy my curiosity, Amanda had given me some insight on what goes into the business aspect of managing the Faire Collection. Because the organization continues to grow and make new connections, the first task is deciding who to collaborate with next. Amanda chooses the next artisan group by “looking at a collection holistically and deciding what areas we feel are lacking in what our customers wants.” Then she goes looking for “countries and artisans that can produce the products to fill the holes.” In addition, Amanda enjoys taking inspiration from countries she has travelled to. “It’s really a combination of me traveling around the world as well as what’s right for the customers.” 

A stack of the Riverbed Tagua Bracelets by the Faire Collection.

After Amanda identifies with whom she wants to collaborate, she works to bring the first product into the market. This process can take from just 6 months to as long as 2 years. “It depends on if we’re working with artisans that can produce things pretty quickly.” Amanda then needs to determine what the artisans are paid for their work and what to charge the retailers. “We determine the retail price based on what we call “price to market.” Because the markets are always so different, Amanda looks at what similar products are being sold for and compares that price to what she would prefer to sell it for. As far as how she determines what a fair wage is, “all of it is listening to the artisans and respecting their ideas and what they have to say about their income.”

It’s no wonder that the Faire Collection is such a successful organization today. Amanda has done a great job in managing the organization – and it shows. If you want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes of the Faire Collections, read the rest of our interview with Amanda Judge.

Hey guys, my name is Jessica and I'm interning at Shopping for a Change over the summer. I enjoy writing these articles because it allows me to give my own take on conversations with people with fascinating backgrounds. I hope you guys enjoy reading my blog article and learn from it as much as I did!

Shopping for a Change Receives GuideStar’s Silver Award

Shopping for a Change is a proud recipient of the GuideStar Silver Award. This is an opportunity to show our commitment to transparency while ensuring that our institutional funders, donors, professionals, and the general public have the most up-to-date and reliable information regarding our nonprofit.

Shopping for a Change will now have a web page in GuideStar's database devoted entirely to our nonprofit so people can learn more about what we do. The majority of information available on this page will present data our organization submits to the IRS. Although not a complete picture of our nonprofit, this information will provide some data to  GuideStar's 22,000 daily visitors. As we continue to update our report, Shopping for a Change will reach GuideStar's 8 million annual visitors along with millions of visitors to such partner sites as Facebook Causes, Network for Good, Change.org, various donor-advised funds, and more.

This week, Shopping for Change would like to feature our fair trade home decor furnishings. Some of our top selling items include house pillows, bowls, coasters and placemats. We offer internationally crafted items from Asian, Africa, and South American countries which reflect stunning ethnic and contemporary patterns for your home. Utilizing sustainable, natural materials, including horn, grass, bamboo, recycled wood, ceramics, and cotton, our home decorations not only embody cultural identity, but are also eco-friendly and provide fair compensation for the artisan's work. Make a difference. Shop our home decor products today.

Amanda Judge Interview (Part One)

Amanda Judge Interview (Part One)

by Eleanor

This is the first of a 5 part interview with Amanda Judge, Founder of the Faire Collection.

This July, four other interns and I had the opportunity to interview Amanda Judge, founder of the Faire Collection via Skype. The Faire Collection (formerly known as the Andean Collection) is a fair trade line of jewelry and accessories founded in 2008. The Faire Collection’s first workshops were located in Ecuador, but they have since expanded into Peru, Swaziland, and most recently into Vietnam.

Amanda Judge wears one of the
 Faire Collection's own creations. 

The Faire Collection developed out of Amanda’s field research for her Master’s thesis on poverty reduction strategies in rural South America. Amanda’s goal was to devise a “sustainable project that an organization could do when they went into communities in Ecuador.” “Through all of that research what I realized the best project for someone to do would be to work with the women as they are providing secondary income for the households.” However instead of just writing her thesis on her discoveries, Amanda decided to “go ahead and really do the project that I was proposing in my paper.”

The Faire Collection, now established for five years, has “tremendously” changed the lives of its artisans: “In general when I first met the artisans they were very much living below the poverty rate and struggling to feed their families. At this point they are all contributing members of middle class society. They drive cars, they have TVs, [and] they have finished homes. It’s been an incredible change. Their incomes have increased about tenfold.” As these improvements continue and the women often become the primary wage earner, Amanda says the “men are really supportive of the women in their role.”

Amanda is “very involved in the artisans’ lives” and visits Ecuador, the site of the first workshop and home to the largest of the Faire Collection’s current operations, two to five times a year. Ecuador has a “staff of five on the ground that communicate daily with the artisans,” which number 108 around the country. There are “limited staff on the ground” in Peru, Swaziland, and Vietnam, but the Faire Collection is looking ahead with their continued expansion.

Hi! I’m Eleanor and I am a rising high school junior. I have two cats, I love drinking tea, and I’m obsessed with all the jewelry on Shopping for a Change (too bad I can’t afford it all). Interning with Shopping for a Change is an amazing experience filled with inspiring stories, great opportunities, and lots and lots of cheese provided by the founder Stacey. Cheers!

Beyond The Classroom—Life’s Lessons

Are you ready to go back to school? At age fifty-three I still consider myself a student—a student of the world.
If you are open to life's lessons they can come at any age. I understand now that I do not have to be Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King or Bono to have a major impact on thousands of people around the globe. With your help, Shopping for a Change creates jobs for thousands of artisans. Together, we can provide clean water for a community of over 400 who never before had tasted it. And your purchase provides teachers for Maasai youth eager to learn about Kenya and the world.
Do you need another incentive? Well, here it is—you also get to choose a partnering U.S.-based nonprofit to receive half the net proceeds from your purchase!
Shopping for a Change + the Faire Collection (formerly the Andean Collection), invite you to partner with us in our joint Nutritional Empowerment Project. Your 2013 purchase will help the hungry learn how to create their own food source. The Kichwa Tribe of the Ecuadorian Amazon will be taught how to develop sustainable garden plots that will create a brighter future for their families.  Read about the project here (PDF). 
Your support is vital to establishing a sustainable life for those in need.  Shopping for a Change fair trade accessories offer green shopping products from artisan communities located in Asia, Africa, and South America. Feel good about shopping our contemporary, fashionable, and handmade accessories today.

Shopping for a Change Receives Rave Reviews from MomTrends

Shopping for a Change was recently featured on momtrends.com.  Beginning in 2007, MomTrends is devoted to providing the latest news on things trendy & cool for moms.  Created to assist busy, style-starved women stay in touch with what’s hip and cool, Momtrends is packed with both fashion tips and trend reports. Moms will find ongoing wellness and motherhood tips along with profiles of inspiring Momtrenpreneurs, wellness links, fashion trend alerts and lots of fabulous giveaways and reviews.
MomTrends regularly showcases charitable causes with a fashionable focus, and especially loved the craftsmanship of Shopping for a Change accessories, jewelry and apparel.  MomTrends contributor, Serena Norr, notes her personal favorites--our Horn and Roses Necklace, Peruvian Embroidered Bag, Chelsea Handbag and Tallia Cocoon Cotton Sweater. For moms wanting to shop fair trade, Shopping for a Change is the perfect destination for one-of-a-kind handmade products that support artisans in developing countries.