Our Prices

We have come across two main types of reactions to our prices (after many years of working in open air markets).  Some of our customers have been surprised at our prices, saying they find them too high.  (Personally, we believe that this is due to some people getting used to artificially low prices on certain products in UK shops!)  Another reaction we get is when we hear other customers expressing surprise and asking, since we are Fair Trade, how can some of our prices be so low?

If you fall into this group, then we have the following three point explanation:-

• We are a very small company with dedicated and committed workers who have often given much of their time for free.  This comes out of our Christian values and is not done unwillingly!  The economic consequence though, is that we do not incur costs in areas that larger companies do.

• Since we started this work, we have also been greatly helped by what we regard as God-incidences. These are times that we see as God blessing on our work.  For example, we employed trusted friends in Addis Ababa to oversee the export of our goods.  Of course we paid them fairly for doing this, but the result of their dedicated service over many years (often going beyond their strict professional responsibilities), saved us significant amounts of money, so resulting in reduced costs compared to what mainstream companies would have paid.  Another example of cost saving is this very website which was designed at about a third of the cost of one of the quotes we were given.

• Most of our products only make us a low amount of profit.  We have made this decision on both business as well as moral grounds.  In business terms, we believe that our work will grow faster (and so positively impact more of our producers partners) if customers are attracted by our prices, and will then end up buying more of our products – as well as passing on their favourable experience to their friends!  And on moral grounds, we believe that Fair Trade must also be fair to the customer too!