How to be a retail entrepreneur: founding a fair-trade fashion company

What did you do before you set up People Tree?

When I was 17 I started working in publishing and communications. I worked at Creative Review magazine as their circulation and marketing manager for four years – we increased the circulation ten times while I was there! I went on to work on several other titles and gained lots of PR and marketing experience.

After that I ran my own marketing consultancy for alternative magazines as well as working part time for Advertising Age, another trade industry magazine. I also got involved in consultancy work for environmental NGOs; for example, I did a project with Friends of the Earth on trying to promote recycled paper to ad agency print buyers.

Did you have any prior experience in retail and if so how did it help you?

When I was 13 I got a part-time job selling jeans on a stand in Bracknell market and I worked in an upmarket pottery arts shop a couple of years later. I moved to Japan when I was in my twenties and worked in the first Body Shop that opened there, while learning Japanese at college.

It was all helpful experience when I came to set up my own business, both in terms of thinking about customer service and the operational side of retail. One of the reasons People Tree has had such a high media profile is because we understand the importance of relationships with customers as well as with journalists.

How did People Tree come into existence?

In 1995 I was living in Japan and started an NGO called Global Village with a couple of friends and university students to campaign on environmental and social issues. We were all committed to recycling, organic food and fair-trade goods. We started off with researching and publishing recycling listings and lobbying local authorities to create recycling facilities.

We realised that very few fair-trade products were available. We then started to work directly with producer groups in developing countries to create products that were more suitable for the Japanese market and in 1997 we launched a fair-trade and ecological fashion line. People Tree grew from this and we set up in the UK in 2001, from a tiny service office in Victoria in London – where we packed the first orders for our service for two years!

What have some of the most important developments been at People Tree to date?

We’ve really helped to raise the profile of fair-trade fashion through building partnerships, for example with Topshop and Japanese Vogue. Recently we’ve been collaborating with four internationally renowned designers to make products from fair-trade organic cotton. And we’re currently making our third TV documentary for Japanese TV on fair trade and the environment. 

Who or what has been the biggest influence on your career so far?

'Understanding the relationship between what we buy and its social and environmental impact has been a huge influence.'

Understanding the relationship between what we buy and its social and environmental impact has been a huge influence. At People Tree we try to come up with solutions to poverty and build them into our products and campaigns.

Every time I visit villages where we work I'm inspired – it's so easy to make a difference though fair trade. We need to build a trading structure that will give livelihoods to the world’s most marginalised people and bridge the gap between them and our affluence in the West.

Do you have any advice for graduates thinking about setting up a retail business?

Running a business is difficult, so get plenty of experience and some hard cash first! If you want to do something ethical you’ll be competing on an unequal playing field with conventional businesses. You’ll have to be even better at business than them to make a profit.

Don’t be too idealistic about where you get your experience: you can learn from the best in a conventional business, not just in an NGO or a fair-trade organisation and then transfer your experience and skills into working for a social business or setting up your own.

Before you try to do it yourself you'll need lots of money – do make sure you write a business plan that underestimates sales and overestimates costs – not only a positive scenario. There are some things that may not be worth putting your home and family heirlooms on the line for. You could go into partnership to increase the chance of success.

TARGETjobs Retail would like to thank Safia for her involvement in this feature.

• For more information on ethical businesses, check out TARGETjobs charity and not-for-profit
• Have a look at how People Tree is doing now