Eswatini Swazi Kitchen Tasting Packs

KIRI London Jewellery

Container well on it’s way

Buchanan’s Fairtrade sweets

African Futures
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ESWATINI SWAZI KITCHEN TASTING PACKS HAVE BEEN A ROARING SUCCESS!

Last month we launched our Eswatini Swazi Kitchen tasting pack. This has been a roaring success! The pack consists of: 6 jars from our Eswatini range (the choice is yours), a packet of oatcakes, tasting spoons & a product information sheet. We are so confident in the quality of the Eswatini range we believe that once customers taste the fantastic flavours they will be smitten and will want more. It also gives you the chance to sample some of our more exotic flavours that you haven’t tried before, like Kumquat Atchar, Tomato & Chilli Chutney or Guava Jam. Our loyal and valued customer have said the following:

Jan Tucker, from Fair Do’s in Cardiff has said “The tastings went so well on Saturday that we’re leaving the table up all week! A lot of people who taste, go on to buy, so we feel it’s been a great success. Thanks for offering the idea and the kit to go with it”.

Lynn Herron from The Fair Deal World Shop in Luton has said “I Just wanted to add my voice to the thanks for the tasting kit. We used it on World Fair Trade Day and it created a lot of customer interest and sales. We’ve done tastings of various products before in the shop of course but they often require quite a lot of organisation so it was particularly good to have pretty much everything we needed in this kit. This weekend a helper was due to run a cake stall at a charity car wash and had the bright idea of taking the tasting kit and, again it was easy to do and it created both interest and sales. One good outcome has been that we’ve always found it quite hard to sell the Marula Jam but several people who tasted the Marula commented very favourably on the flavour and then purchased a jar”.

KIRI LONDON JEWELLERY

We have just received a delivery of lovely gemstone products from India which are designed and imported by Kiri London – Alison Grant. Some of you will have met her over the past year at fairs and markets. We hope you’ll consider taking some of these. The frames are ideal for wedding presents and, later on, for Christmas gifts. The jewellery is very attractive and very reasonably priced and then there’s the purses and boxes!
This is slightly different for us: we haven’t done India before though we are selling on some African crafts to shops, which we bring in with our containers. The thought was that it might make sense for some of you to be able to order some of Kiri’s gem studded frames, purses, boxes and earrings alongside the other goods you get from us and that this might be a useful way of supporting the craft workers in India. We hope you’ll agree.

CONTAINER WELL ON ITS WAY

After all the frustrations with delays in the supply of rice over the past few months, we are now happy to say that the container with our rice left Durban on the 9th April on its way to Felixstowe where it is due to arrive on 2nd May. It had sat for weeks at Beira waiting for the feeder vessel to take it down to the port in Durban. Now suddenly things are moving and we are hoping for a smooth turn around in Felixstowe and looking to see the rice coming into the warehouse mid to late May.
We certainly don’t want to go through these gaps in supply again and we have a further container which is due to leave Blantyre, Malawi in the next couple of weeks. That should at least deal with our supply through the autumn but we are looking to raise more working capital so that we can place more orders and keep good stocks in the warehouse to guard against future delays.
We’ll keep you posted on the progress of the container and we’d be delighted if you could place orders in advance of its arrival so that we can get the rice flow moving again! If you want to follow the container’s voyage, click here

BUCHANAN’S FAIRTRADE SWEETS

Jan Tucker of Fair Do’s in Wales sells a whole range of our Just Trading Scotland fairly traded goods. We asked Jan what she thought about the Buchanan’s Fair Trade range and how she sold them. This is what Jan told us:
“We started buying Buchanan’s sweets from Golden Casket after Traidcraft discontinued some lines, for example Assorted Toffees and After Dinner Mints, as our customers missed them badly! We were really pleased when we knew we could order them from you, as Golden Casket required large orders, and multiples of 12, which meant we often ordered more than we actually needed. It’s great to be able to combine the sweets now with your other products.”

“About 40% of our total sales are to “sale or return” customers or at events where we run a stall. I think we sell a lot more of the sweets to “sale or return” churches than we do through the till. This means that there are lots of repeat customers, when people expect the sweets to be there on their monthly stall."

“We used to have poor sales of fair trade sweets until we got hold of a floor standing spinner with hooks on. Prior to that the sweets were on a wall rack which wasn’t very visible. Everything has to fight for space in our shop! The spinner now contains Buchanan’s sweets, plus Traidcraft’s sweets, and snack packs of dried fruit. I think it helps to have a big range for customers to choose from.”

“As far as I know, there aren’t many Fairtrade FLO marked sweets in the supermarkets, so this is something that we have a bit of a monopoly on, which could be a good reason to encourage your customers to try them. As with many fair trade shops, our sales of tea, coffee and chocolate has dropped as they’re now more available in supermarkets, so we try and push foods that people can’t buy elsewhere.”

To read more about Buchanan’s links with the Kasinthula Cane Growers Association in Malawi click HERE …

For information on the Fairtrade Foundation’s work with the Kasinthula Cane Growers Association, click HERE …

AFRICAN FUTURES

JTS has been learning the hard way: for the last month stocks of the very popular Malawi Kilombero rice have been dwindling away in the warehouse in Paisley and at the time of writing it seems that it will be May before new stocks arrive. We have hit more snags that we could have imagined possible since we placed orders last August. We are really very sorry about disappointing those who were planning to hold 90kg challenge events this Fairtrade Fortnight.

However we would like to offer the following alternative. We feel that this is an opportunity to help people understand just what are the challenges that smallholder farmers in Africa face and how much they still need the support of people like you who won’t abandon them when the going gets tough. As one of our customers said to us: ‘This just shows how much the farmers need groups like ours if they’re going to succeed!’

So what we propose is this. Hold an event entitled African Futures. You can invite people in and offer them African products for sale. The centrepiece will be a power-point presentation about the rice, how it is grown, what it means to the farmers in terms of enabling them to develop their livelihoods and provide opportunities for their families and communities; and then explaining the difficulties that we and they face in producing and marketing their rice.

You can then invite people to support them by buying tokens which they can present when the rice eventually arrives. This will be a benign version of the futures market in food which is beginning to drive up prices round the world. The tokens will say: ‘By buying this token I pledge to support rice farmers in Africa and help them build a secure future for their families and communities. This token can be exchanged for 1 kg of Malawi Kilombero rice.’

We very much hope that you will be ready to support us and the farmers at this testing time.