The human part of the economy

At age 27, Lori Ann has been running her own fair trade business for three years. Through her store, The Sedentary Nomad, located in Winnipeg's Osborne Village, Lori Ann provides an income to artists and communities in Kenya where she lived prior to opening the store, employment for people in Manitoba, cross-cultural education for both producer and consumer, and a positive view of Africa to those who visit her store.

Lori Ann says:

I think right now my biggest problem with the economy is the centralization of power. More and more companies are moving away from actually producing their own products to outsourcing their products and you're finding a really large gap between the producer and the customer. I think that has some negative impacts on both ends. Consumers really have no idea, and I really feel that in the business that I'm in. Where things are handmade, people have no idea how these products are made. They just want to buy things for the cheapest price and there's not that sense o, 'You made this so you're a person and I see you're a person and I can see why you need to make a living.'

Because of this separation between producer and consumer, consumers have less respect for the business end as well. People have the idea that companies make so much money and that they're really only out there for making a profit. They really don't care about the product or the consumer. So consumers go in with a really negative attitude which is justified in many cases. At the other end of the spectrum, because so many companies are outsourcing, they don't have that tie with their employees and with the producers, so they don't necessarily feel a responsibility towards them.

When we lose these links we're losing this human part of the economy. It's so far removed from Point A to Point B that we don't know who we're dealing with. Even a small example, in Winnipeg: people who make decisions about my loans, for my bank, they're made in Toronto.

Because we're losing that humanness or that person-to-person dealing, it feels like there's a lot of animosity at both ends. The businesses are going, 'Well the customer, all they care about is the lowest price, so I'm just going to try to get the lowest-priced item to sell to them because that's all they really want anyway.'

I think something that we really need to do is look back on the past, and what we need to take from the past is the dealing with people, developing relationships among people, and respecting people for who they are. Although, I know as a business owner, as much as I would love to do everything in my capacity to make my employees happy, I can't be giving bonuses every week. I can't be providing full daycare packages to any employee who has children and that's simply because of the size of my business. But I think businesses need to look at their size and they need to reasonably look at what they can provide for their employees as well as for their suppliers. I think that they need to stop and really go, 'I know that my customer can pay a little bit more so I'm going to pay my supplier more so that they can pay their employees more. I'm going to be fair to my employees because I know that I can get the customer to pay a little more.'

I think if a customer knows that there's fairness across the board, they're going to be more willing to pay a little bit more. If you really stop and think about your purchases, if the things you're buying are things that you need to buy, you probably can afford to pay 5% more. It's not going to kill you. You might not be able to buy as much but what you do buy, you can pay a little bit more for. That way it'll help make everything more fair along the way. I think that we need to look at the efficiencies that we have, but I think that we need to not sacrifice people for efficiency.

So I think that for me, that's the biggest problem in the economy because I see it really at a grassroots level. This business started out making a job for me and providing an income to people in Kenya, but it also came out of the feeling that there's got to be a way that you can operate a business both ethically and profitably. I am for profit, but I also like to think that I take other considerations into mind when I'm making business decisions, and I think thus far it's proven that businesses can do that. I don't make a lot of money and I won't ever make a lot of money, but I will make enough money to feed myself and my employees and have a comfortable living.

I have so much faith in purchasing power. I think that our dollar speaks louder than our vote. It really does. It's scary. But comparing two businesses with the same product, if one is more ethical, I think that people will choose the more ethical one, they will pay a little bit more. Businesses make decisions according to where they're making money and if they don't make money they're going to stop buying that product. Don't just go 'I'm not going to shop here' and leave. Say 'Listen, I like this product, I'd like to buy it but I have problems with this and therefore I'm not shopping here.'

With the amount of information that we have access to these days, it's easy to do research. I think that the problem that a lot of people have now, especially women, is that they are so busy they don't always have time to assess which companies are ethical, which companies aren't. I think that could be a barrier for women, but women make so many decisions in the household that impact the economy that if we would just stop and realize how much power that isÄ it's empowering just knowing that!

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