GOOD BUSINESS September 2001

MESSAGE ON A BOTTLE

WONDERWORLD’s long planned co-operation with a leading Dutch fair trade company is now under way.  This autumn WONDERWORLD products are on offer to World Shops in Holland at the same time as we continue to present hand-blown Egyptian Perfume Bottles, sourced from Cairo by our  Dutch partner.  

FEEDBACK from those of you who have already acquired these well made artefacts has been very positive.   Shops  report both excellent sales and the bottles’ remarkable robustness despite their apparent delicacy.    Evidently the key factor for effective display of Egyptian Perfume Bottles is lighting.  

WONDERWORLD has good images of the production process and some background information for use at point of sale. Download this material from our website (www.wonderworld.co.uk) or contact us directly.

DEMAND for Egyptian Perfume Bottles is expected to peak at  Christmas.   Unfortunately we can already see that we are unlikely to be able to meet that demand due to the lead time required and our own cash flow limitations.   Therefore we emphasise that you should get orders in early to have the best chance of fulfilment.

OUR Dutch partner has a number of interesting projects in north Africa – we will make other interesting  ranges from them available in future. 

AVAILABLE IN ICELAND & SHETLAND

THIS summer WONDERWORLD has supplied orders to Iceland – and we don’t mean that shop full of freezers either.   Geo-thermally hot but cool in every other sense, Icelanders can now buy WONDERWORLD products through a retailer and wholesaler operating from a greenhouse in the town of Hveragerdi, about 40 kilometres from Reykjavik.  Hveragerdi is bang on top of the volcano strewn mid-Atlantic continental divide – hence free heat to grow bananas, grapes, palm trees and other exotic fauna you would not expect to find in the frigid north.   

WE have also gained a customer in Lerwick, Shetland where a new fair trade shop has been opened.    Added to our contacts in Orkney, all we need now is an outlet in the Faroe Islands and it can be safely said that WONDERWORLD’s north Atlantic distribution system is second to none.

READING REPORT

THE British Association of Fair Trade Shops (BAFTS) organised  a  conference in Reading recently.  Commendably they  opened up half the conference to non-BAFTS members to discuss, amongst other things, the establishment of a ‘UK Fair Trade Forum’, necessary because there is in fact no organisation yet capable of presenting a unified, inclusive face of the fair trade movement in the UK.

DURING the discussion a senior figure in BAFTS pointed out that fair trade importer/wholesalers needed to get themselves organised in order to be represented in any proposed national forum.   In fact various people in the fair trade movement have demanded that importers like WONDERWORLD give thought to forming a collective body capable of representing them in the national and global movement.   David Turner and some other importers have agreed to raise the subject with all fair trade identified importers to determine if some kind of collective body is possible and desired.       

AN opening enquiry signed by WONDERWORLD and three others will be circulated to over 60 fair-trade identified wholesale businesses shortly.

JUSTICE MOVEMENT

THE HORROR of September 11^th 2001 and the horror of what may be perpetrated in retaliation is very much on all our minds.  We can never totally defend ourselves against determined death cult extremists armed with little more than inhuman resolve.  Such death cults have always and will always exist in every faith, culture and civilisation.   In contesting their barbarity, let us not reproduce it.

TONY BLAIR said there was no moral equivalence between the terrorist attacks in the USA and US foreign policy.   True – but that is not to say there is no relation whatsoever. Our response should be to work at rectifying the very justifiable underlying grievances which feeds support for ruthless extremists.

AT READING we heard a great presentation from  Martin Drewry of  Christian Aid about the new Trade Justice Movement.  He outlined the real impact that the Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign had made on millions of poor people.   He then outlined how an even more substantial impact could be achieved by a simple rewriting of World Trade Organisation objectives. The Trade Justice Movement is an international movement with the straightforward, in fact rather uncontroversial aim, of forcing the WTO to include reduction of poverty as one of its aims.   More info at the Christian Aid Trade Justice Movement page.

AND ANOTHER THING!

BAFTS members are well aware of the arguments about the BAFTS Importers Directory.   WONDERWORLD has had a few things to say about it, the latest being a letter to Peter Collins, chair of BAFTS, regarding lack of transparency & accountability in  BAFTS conduct of the Importers Directory process.   The full text of our letter to Peter is available on the Letters page of the website, or available from us on request.  (APOLOGIES to readers who are not members of BAFTS for this item.)

HEALING INCENSE PROMOTED

TIBETAN Healing Incense is a popular brand of incense for many of your customers.   The success of this product has been largely based on consistent attention to quality by a highly conscientious producer.

OUR suppliers of Tibetan Healing Incense are the original manufacturers of this distinctive incense type.  Many inferior  imitations have been made but sticking rigidly to an exact recipe has paid our supplier dividends.   They are the relatives of the Tibetan doctor, at that time working for the Tibetan government in exile, who prescribed the specifications for combining 31 natural ingredients into Healing Incense.  He realised that a combination initially intended for use as an inhalant under the Tibetan medical system had broader  aromatic appeal.  

TIBETAN Healing Incense is produced at real cottage industry scale, a lean-too shed at the back of a small house near Swayumbunath temple above Kathmandu.  At no point in the process are powered tools used.   The only machine is a hand turned press which squeezes out the strings of incense.    The secret of the process is making up the precise recipe and then cutting & drying the strings carefully.  

ON this basis WONDERWORLD has promoted Tibetan Healing Incense up from our Prospects category to the main WONDERWORLD range which we believe can be purchased with confidence by fair trade and ethical trade shops.   Our perception of the producers of Tibetan Healing Incense is that they are good people and good employers.  At some time in the future we will commission a credible Nepali NGO to go and check if, in the overall context of Nepal, our perception is correct.

OLD GREY BEARD

Dave Hogg, a retailer of mature timber, offers good woody advice.

Chancellor Formecom Ltd send out brochures warning that unless we have up to date notices regarding matters like Health & Safety, Data Protection and so on we may be breaking the law.   They offer to supply relevant leaflets and posters for a charge of  up to £250 pounds.   All this information is available from HMSO for a nominal fee.