Here are my top learnings from our ninth (!!) year in business:
1. Meet the market where it’s at: custom products
It has been a weird year for retail as the behemoth Amazon continues to grow due to convenience. The biggest trend we’ve seen as a small brand – customization of products! We’ve sold tons of customized pins, quote cuffs, and other gifts in this last year. Local boutiques want to rep their cities, experience-based businesses want an easy add-on gift for customers to remember their adventure, and larger businesses are choosing to have custom gifts made for their employees that represent their values in sustainability. It has been complicated to add customization to our supply chains, but our artisan partners have been doing a great job! We’re still ironing out timelines, but we have many happy customers with their custom branded products… hooray!
2. Girlfriend, check your damn cash flow
This learning legit fills me with shame and guilt to even share with y’all, but it was a big (difficult) lesson for me this year. Cash flow is tricky with fair trade, as we typically pay artisan partners in advance, so we likely pay in February for products we aren’t actually selling until October. It’s part of our trust-based relationships with artisan partners, and it helps eliminate the need for them to seek (often super overpriced) capital in their own communities. After 8 years and finally feeling like I had a solid grip on cash flow, I messed up. I introduced a “luxe” line of really high-quality products, featuring precious metals and semi-precious stones, which of course come at a higher price point. My thought process was more “some people want to buy Fair Anita products and can afford to choose higher price point items!” and less “I have to pay for all the more expensive pieces now and won’t sell them til later on and this is going to create a cash flow gap” – which is ultimately the problem I ended up navigating most of the year (and am still dealing with consequences now). Don’t get me wrong, I loveeeee these products and sustainable luxury is a vibe, but I should have had a plan for cash flow before I got super excited. I just wanted to get y’all the pretty products ASAP 🙁 good intentions, poor big picture thinking by me (aka the one who should know better by now!).
3. Teams come in all shapes and sizes
I am so obsessed with our Fair Anita team – from full time and part time staff in Minnesota, to remote team members in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois, and the Philippines – we are all over the place. The diversity our team brings has been critical to our growth: experienced saleswoman Mary Lind has best practices to share, while our GenZ marketing team has new ideas based on what’s currently trending. Ethan joined our team (moved here from Ohio!) and has been encouraging us to style more masculine pieces, and Kam is championing size inclusion (when we’re looking at necklace/bracelet length, etc). I’ve become more comfortable with talking about Fair Anita as queer-owned, making sure we’re queer all year and not just during Pride month. Jocelyn runs fulfillment, but she’s also a computer science whiz and can answer any website questions. The many talents of this crew just makes me soooo happy, and I believe we’re in a great position to thrive in this upcoming year as a result. Nope, we aren’t your “typical” team – but we’re able to collaborate and make things work, not only for Fair Anita and our larger mission, but making things work in taking care of ourselves and our mental health, too.
This last year or so of fashion has been so entertaining to me: all of the products I design, I feel like I’m designing for my middle school self! Those GenZ kids are alright – bringing back some of my nostalgic fashion choices and standing up for equity and sustainability along the way. We see you, changemakers!
4. No replacement for in-person connections
Luckily, we got to fill this year with some face-to-face interactions with our lovely community! The Fair Trade Federation had their first in-person conference since 2019, and it was *magic* to get to see all our values-driven friends again, using our collective to dream about and plan for more equitable systems of trade.
I was also able to visit artisans again for the first time since early 2020, and *holy smokes* it was lovely. First, designing products and working alongside artisans is so much easier in person. And there is chai, which always helps. Being back in India helped me to recenter on the heart of the business – these magnificent communities of changemaking artisan partners. The way the workshops are filled with laughter and deep heartfelt talks. Seeing the women support each other through hardships, and walk each other home at the end of the work day. I doubt anyone is surprised that this is my favorite part of this biz: but, goodness, being able to be present in the impromptu dance parties and meticulous quality control, and being able to share this with another US-based Fair Anita team member (read Libby’s blog here!), was a highlight of the year for sure. If someone could figure out teleportation so that we could make this happen more frequently, that would be great.
Lastly, we continued to find a lot of value at in-person trade shows. I know this is not a shared experience for all small wholesale brands, especially this last year, but it sure was for us. And honestly, if it were just me at trade shows, they would almost certainly be a huge flop, but when you have a Sales Director like Mary Lind who is genuinely excited to see all our customers, old and new, she makes the in-person connections gained at trade shows worth it. And we all know it’s better to see the products in real life to make buying choices!
5. The right customers vs all customers
We had a number of big opportunities this year to share our values with a broader audience: from the Fair Trade Federation (FTF) to the Museum Store Association (MSA) to our brand messaging online and beyond. We were talking about equity, unapologetically, in some big spaces. Kam, understandably, panicked before presenting with Ethan to the FTF about making our fair trade brands more inclusive (size, gender, race– the movement won’t work if it’s built for just one type of person!). She was worried that something she would say could hurt Fair Anita sales, and I get it: talking about equity, especially in spaces with diverse opinions, can make people very uncomfortable, and it can be a hard thing to manage and facilitate. I had the same feelings when presenting to MSA about creating more inclusive retail experiences. In both cases, we had to center ourselves: we are firm in our values, and we can’t be afraid of who those values might piss off. We don’t need to sell to all customers, but rather the right customers – after all, building a community of changemakers is what this whole thing is about. And even though someone [anonymously] called me a “complete idiot” after talking about the impacts of colonialism, I’m learning to shrug it off and keep steadfast on my own journey of navigating how to champion these values (especially as a well-intentioned white woman running a fair trade business). The right customers for Fair Anita are the ones who are willing to learn and grow alongside us – that’s you <3
Grateful for another year with this social enterprise. Thanks for supporting us all the way to our big year 10!