April 24th 2020

Four weeks on lock-down and there’s been a lot of thinking time.

Seven years today since the garment factory disaster in Bangladesh and has anyone even thought about changing their fashion buying habits?

Probably not. But has it been forced upon them?

Now I’m not condoning fast fashion. I HATE fast fashion. But what about the people who make these clothes? Their jobs have disappeared due in part to companies cancelling their orders and to the lock-down situation in their own countries. I worry about them like I worry about my own team in India.

Ethical and Fair Trade Fashion is being hurt too…

I had originally thought… the high street shops are shut so people will discover that internet shopping isn’t so bad. But it seems that we’re all only interested in purchasing food and loo roll. I suppose a birthday gift of loo roll would be quite nice if you didn’t have an embarrassing stash of it when you panic bought 3 weeks ago?

So my thoughts of helping my partners in India with their wage bills while there’s no work happening by selling more online and passing on repeat orders with advance payment hasn’t worked. Not yet anyway.

So moving on, this calls for drastic action. I run an ethical and fair trade business and I support my Indian partners and I will not let them down when things are tough. There’s very little money available to pay the April wages and this is partly due to £200k’s worth of finished stock waiting at the workshop door, waiting to be shipped to overseas customers. The Indian government gave 4 hours notice to lock-down. There wasn’t time to ship the goods. There wasn’t even time to think about sending the workers home with some work they could possibly do from there.

They don’t have ‘rainy day’ money to fall back on when things are tough. They don’t even have bank accounts. They rely on their wages each week and each month to feed their families.

I am forming a plan and I hope you will consider helping me with it. There’s a big announcement to follow but for today, please remember the people who make your clothes, bags and other not so necessary things.

Thanks for reading.