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Anita Roddick admits it hasn't always been easy to run a successful, large-scale enterprise and maintain high standards of fair trade, but the success of the Community Trade programme shows that, with effort, big business can benefit the poor.
'Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard of decency should be regarded as contraband and ought not to be allowed to pollute the channels of inter-state trade.....' F.D.Roosevelt
Roosevelt made his prophetic comments on the power of trade over 50 years ago and today they are more relevant than ever. In this century, trade has brought huge power, increasingly held in the hands of a few large companies. It is a shocking fact that the world's 10 biggest companies have a larger turnover than the world's 100 smallest countries.
And recent statistics reveal the gross inequality faced by many - it would take an average fruit farm worker in South Africa or pineapple grower in the Dominican Republic 15 centuries to earn the annual £1.2 million salary of a major supermarket chain's chief executive.
I believe that companies that make a profit from society have a responsibility to return something to that society.
At The Body Shop we have always believed that business can and must be a force for positive social change.
We are committed to the principles of global fair trade which we aim to apply to all our trading practices - from purchasing raw materials to selling finished products - and this commitment is reflected in our Trading Charter, and more widely in our Community Trade programme, formerly known as the Trade Not Aid programme.
It began in the late 1980s when I came across people and products on my travels around the world and realised the amazing potential that existed if we were to trade with these communities.
I have often described our Community Trade programme as a journey - a journey into uncharted territory with no map, signposts, or guide to show us the way. We have led the way and have encountered unimaginable situations on our travels.
So what is Community Trade? Formally, it is a special purchasing programme that sources raw materials and accessory items from community-based enterprises around the world. Our goal is to help create livelihoods, to explore a trade-based approach to supporting sustainable development, providing a mechanism for communities to benefit through employment, income, skills development and social initiatives.
But it is much more than that. It is also about how people make their living, how they feed their families, how they educate their children. It is all about relationships; about listening to each other, learning from each other, developing a community's ability to stand on its own two feet. It has involved no end of reflection, no end of thought, no end of consideration, but most importantly no end of action.
In the last 10 years, the Community Trade programme has grown and been consolidated. Now 10 people work in our Fair Trade department and run the programme. At the end of the last financial year, Community Trade made up seven per cent of our total purchasing, with ingredients sourced from 22 suppliers from 13 countries. A year later, we are working with over 30 suppliers from nearly 20 countries around the world and our products range from cocoa butter to sesame oil and babassu oil, from massager rollers to hair accessories and woven baskets.
Trading with these communities has not always been easy and, particularly in the early days, we faced many unexpected problems, some of which attracted criticism. We've discovered that producers weren't always who they said they were, we've overestimated customer interest in Community Trade products and we've got carried away by our desire to help, leading to unfulfilled expectations. But where there have been difficulties we have persevered and worked with communities to find solutions.
In 1994, we established a set of guidelines to help identify the right conditions for trade, for both the communities and The Body Shop. By trading with these communities we can share our skills and serve as a training ground to other markets and customers. Often we are the supplier's first commercial customer and we do all we can to help producer groups to adapt to the huge demands of the commercial world.
A representative of a supplier group, CORR - The Jute Works, in Bangladesh claimed that through The Body Shop "The Jute Works has learned through a process, which has occasionally been a painful one, to handle large orders for a commercial buyer."
We believe in a better and fairer world and want poorer communities to gain and sustain access to the commercial markets but we do not compromise on quality. We know that our customers want good quality products. If products only sell because they are from communities in need and not for their quality and how they fit in the range, we are practising charity and not fair trade. We have sometimes faced criticism for not going far enough but we are committed to using our resources as effectively as possible - developing and sustaining these trading relationships takes time - and we would prefer to have 30 successful links than 100 which benefit no one.
We are also emphatic that our trade benefits not just the producers but also the wider community in which they live and work so that the impact of the trade is spread as broadly as possible. Community Trade suppliers in Nepal and India work on issues of AIDS and HIV and education; in Brazil, suppliers are fighting for land rights; in another area of India they are working to ban child labour. Some are involved in literacy work, others have built schools, others are involved in environmental action.
We are developing ways of measuring and assessing the impact of the trade on the suppliers and their communities. As a member of the Ñahñu Indians in Mexico said: "In my community every day the trust among the men and women increases. In the meetings they (men) were the only ones who talked. Now it seems that things are changing because it is us, the women, who talk the most now. It is nice to see how the women are waking up after so many years of being asleep."
We are aware that these initiatives alone will not transform the global economy - many structural imbalances also need to change, such as rising tariffs for exports from poor countries and massive debts that many of them face. However they do transform my company's thinking about our responsibility as a business. I would rather be measured by how I treat weaker and frailer communities I trade with than by how great my profits are.
We are proud to be the first cosmetic company ever to use fairly traded cocoa butter from Ghana. We would love others to join us. One of our aims is to provide a practical example of ethical trading to the business world, to show that ethical business can be profitable. Studies show that often much of the value of goods goes to the middlemen and although more direct trading necessitates more time and investment, the shorter trading chain can balance this out. A higher price to the producer does not necessarily lead to a higher retail price or lower margins.
Conversely some retail outlets could arguably afford to lower their mark-up - the top supermarkets make profits of between £1m and £2m a day and the top ten UK supermarkets have an annual turnover equal to the income of the poorest 35 developing countries.
Cafédirect is a prime example that ethical trading can pay and I have been delighted to see its success, cornering some three per cent of the UK fresh ground coffee market and over two per cent of the freeze-dried instant coffee market within six years.
We want our customers to understand their power to make a difference and that's why we are committed to informing our consumers, and the general public about the origins of the product, the story behind the label. Last year, we launched our first global Community Trade promotion, bringing the message of ethical trading to over 30 of our markets around the world in our shops, in magazines and newspapers and on advertising billboards.
The last few years have seen a tremendous groundswell of consumer pressure on companies for ethical trading. As more and more people begin to understand how the current trading system works and the exploitation it often involves, they are trying out and crying out for new ways. Supermarkets are signing up to develop ethical codes of conduct; the first global standard for ethical sourcing has been released for consultation; a partnership of charities, companies, unions and the Government has launched the Ethical Trading Initiative, aimed at improving the lives of poor working people around the world.
I believe that at The Body Shop we have demonstrated that ethical trading is possible in a commercial company. With commitment, patience, humour and understanding, businesses can trade in a way which gives people and the planet a chance to grow and develop and not be exploited and oppressed. My hope and dream is that eventually all businesses will internalise ethical trading so that it becomes a standard part of industry practice. Running an ethical business is not and never has been an easy process. However we feel we have no choice - we are doing this for life. If we can persuade other businesses to join us, so much for the better; it'll also be more fun.
Anita Roddick is founder of The Body Shop.
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