Trade Aid to close stores: Business to focus on import, wholesale, online sales

A mainstay of sustainable and ethical trade in New Zealand is closing its doors because of rising costs.

Trade Aid is closing stores so it can focus on imports, wholesale and online sales.

The “difficult decision” was made “to ensure ongoing sustainability” as the business faced poor finances amid a cost-of-living crisis and low sales, Trade Aid said.

“Trade Aid remains committed to its purpose; to improve producers’ and farmers’ lives through providing them with a fair income and a way out of structural poverty, and to raise Kiwis’ awareness of fair trade,” the company said.

“[We] would like to thank staff, volunteers, and customers that have supported Trade Aid and the fair trade movement.”

Trade Aid marked its 50th anniversary last year.

It was founded by Christchurch couple Vi and Richard Cottrell.

The social enterprise worked with small food and craft producers around the world.

Chief executive Geoff White said the Cotterells returned from living in India and wanted to help those they had worked with there.

In 1973, the Cotterells gathered their friends, cleared space in their garage to take in artisan handcrafts from overseas and started Trade Aid as a social enterprise.

“This was before anyone knew what a social enterprise was and well before the term fair trade had even been coined. Creating fairness in trade had begun and the Kiwi public celebrated the style, craft, quality and social good that the humble bag represented,” White said.

Each Trade Aid was run by a local shop trust, which worked alongside the manager and volunteers.

White said Trade Aid had established its ideas on how to make a fairer world by 1983.

“We knew that to fundamentally change trade you needed to be involved with big-selling products that really mattered to every household, everywhere. We needed to think big, so we did. We took on tea, one of the biggest food commodities there is. Followed by coffee. Fair-trade coffee in this country was born.”

Trade Aid food products have expanded to many categories over the years, culminating in Trade Aid’s Sweet Justice Chocolate Factory, which White said made delicious organic chocolate that did not compromise on values.

Several Trade Aid shops around the country have closed over the past few years.