Fair Trade workshop for management of producer organization

The workshop was for mainly for the management of producer organization and I could not have found a better person than Mr. Vip Kumar, Associate WFTO and a resource person for the national network of fair trade in India (Fair Trade Forum-India. He worked for big corporates and has lots of experience in business planning/operation management. The topics for the workshop included:
- Information on WFTO/FTF-I
- Challenges and opportunities in fair trade
- Domestic marketing
-SFTMS
- Fair Trade brand in India

He has lots of information about WFTO and the fair trade in India. He shared information about new developments and challenges at the global level as well as future plans of the national fair trade network in India.
- The information on the difference between WFTO and FLO was explained using pictures on powerpoint presentation.
- He explained to us about the fair trade brand in India and showed us the logo which is yet to be finalized.
- The session on business planning was the most interactive and was found to be more relevant by the producer organizations. The resource person came out with different abbreviations and words during the workshop and emphasis on the importance of these key word in building a business and a good relation with our customers and consumers.
a) AAA: Affordability, Availability and Acceptability.
b) PDD: Product, Design and Development
c) SKU: Stock Keeping units
d) Bespoke Tailor
e) Digging or Building
f) Difference between Costing and Pricing
Each organizations were asked to do our own business planning which helped us know our fixed costs and income. Besides, it broaden our perspective towards our business.
At the end, the resource person gave us some valuable insights on doing a business and understanding our functioning. He said fair and trade complements each other and that it's rare to find people doing both. It is necessary to know how well we are functioning financially in our business in order to cater to the needs of the artisans and the community.
We learned one thing: We all need to revive ourselves and understand whether we are building or digging.

P.S. Will upload the pictures later on.

Tsering Youdon
Fair Trade Coordinator

7