Handicrafts

`Ethical consumption,'' through which people can help the needy around the world simply by buying something, is spreading slowly to change the world. Now the new trend is even changing corporate behavior.

Beautiful Store (www.beautifulstore.org), which introduced fair trade to the nation five years ago with handicrafts from Southeast Asian countries, has been selling the fair trade coffee from Nepal at its online and offline shops. Its sales, which stood at around 36 million won in 2004, rose to 166 million won (roughly $175,000) last year.

Earlier this month, the non-profit organization began to sell a different brand: ``A Gift from the Andes.'' Grown in the high reaches of Peru, South America, the coffee beans are brought here to be roasted by local experts.

Fair trade goods are not limited to coffee beans.

FAIRTRADE KOREA, for example, sells about 120 different kinds of fair trade goods from teas and aromatic products to clothes, accessories and porcelain through its Internet homepage (www.ecofairtrade.co.kr).

Natural Dream (www.naturaldream.co.kr), a distributor of eco-friendly foods, also introduced a cacao product, which was made in a ``desirable way'' in Colombia, ahead of Valentine's Day earlier this month.

Corporate behavior has been affected. Starbucks, for example, struck a deal with Ethiopia in 2000 to offer more benefits to Ethiopian coffee farmers in the face of pressures from ethical consumers. Nike also had to admit in 2005 that it had profited through sports shoes made by children in underdeveloped countries.

Microsoft's Bill Gates described the social business as ``creative capitalism'' at the Davos Economic Forum in January, stressing the need for capitalism to find ways to help not only the haves but also the have-nots.

Posted in: Beautiful Store, Handicrafts