Fair Trade Winds marketplace case study: book a demo to start yours
Fair Trade Winds is a store both in physical locations and online that focuses on selling fairly sourced and ethically made items, such as clothing, accessories, and home goods, in order to promote and assist artisans and communities in less developed nations.
If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Fair Trade Winds, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is the feature-rich Enterprise Edition cutting your time-to-market to a few weeks.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
The benefits of using open-source are numerous, including complete control and the ability to customize freely. However, these perks come with significant expenses. Crafting a fully functional marketplace solution is a lengthy and costly process, often spanning months or even years. This is a lesson we’ve drawn from various marketplace projects.
Unless you’ve secured a hefty amount of funding, opting for a pre-built, comprehensive marketplace solution like Vendo is a wiser choice, as advised by someone who has extensive experience in billing clients for marketplace development.
Back to the Fair Trade Winds marketplace case study
Fair Trade Winds, an online store founded in 2007, has a business model that cares about doing the right thing and keeping the Earth healthy. Three friends, Renee, Keely, and Paul, began this store in Fairfax, Virginia.
They aimed to connect skilled workers from different parts of the world with people who want to make ethical choices when they shop. Fair Trade Winds is not just a store; it’s a place where every product has a story about being fair, purposeful, and making the world a better place.
What sets Fair Trade Winds apart is their commitment to strict rules for fairness. They thoroughly inspect each product to ensure that workers are paid fairly and work in safe conditions. They also prioritize environmental care by using eco-friendly materials and methods.
When people shop here, they gain knowledge about the products and their origins. This helps them make choices that benefit both the Earth and the people behind the products. Family values and teamwork hold great importance at Fair Trade Winds. They treat their workers and customers like family and collaborate to bring about significant changes. They respect the rights of workers and use materials that are eco-friendly, contributing to environmental protection.
Fair Trade Winds also believes in providing fair wages. This means that workers can afford essential things like education and healthcare for their families, leading to improved lives and brighter futures. They offer a wide range of products that are both fair and unique, serving various purposes.
Fair Trade Winds has a substantial impact. When people make purchases from them, a significant portion of the money goes directly to workers and farmers worldwide. This promotes fairness and sustainability, enabling workers, families, and communities to become self-sufficient. Fair Trade Winds is a crucial destination for purchasing fair products and crafts, supporting workers and farmers in enhancing their skills, land, families, community, health, and education.
The story of Fair Trade Winds reflects the founders’ deep commitment. Their initial encounter with fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate through church projects inspired them to seek more fair products. They began by selling items at local events and churches, and now they operate three stores while collaborating with others to assist farmers, artisans, and the environment. Their dedication to fair trade principles remains unwavering.
How to emulate Fair Trade Winds marketplace success?
For a success similar to Fair Trade Winds, you might want to start your marketplace within weeks, not months. It’s important to see if your product catalog is what your audience is looking for and to modify your ways of attracting customers based on real results.
Test the market before you decide to fully build it yourself.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: Brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
