Fair Trade Certified makes its way into clothing

I don't think I would normally be this excited about a product, but it has been the focus of the last 18 months of my life, so I have to share...
I have to go back a few years. There has been a desire from customers to want to buy products that are made with high ethical manufacturing practices.  Many companies and organizations have been working on trying to bring that level of transparency, but with traditional manufacturing and spread out supply chains it is very difficult. Fair Trade Certified is label you see on products like chocolate, coffee, bananas, sugar etc. But in the past few years  Fair Trade USA had been working on project for Apparel.  To ensure to customers that the products are in fact Fair Trade they developed the Apparel and Linens standard and I got a chance to review it years ago.  The ideas were right, but there were too many questions with implementation.  However they listened to their stakeholders and continued to revise the standard to a place that as a brand it would be relatively straightforward to put into reality.
So when I started a new job with prAna in August of 2009, the values of social responsibility resonated with the brand, everyone at the company was on board to test this out.

I am writing about this now because finally you can buy prAna's first Fair Trade Certified product - the SOUL T on prAna.com

The process was incredibly interesting as prAna along with a small handful of companies were the tester brands for this new standard and I soon memorized the Fair Trade USA phone number.  The shirt was designed and developed by prAna's internal team and we worked with the Liberian Women's Sewing Project in Monrovia Liberia to make the shirts.  This is just one of many factories that have already been approved by Fair Trade USA to make Fair Trade Certified product.

When people ask me what is so special about Fair Trade Certified Apparel - it really is about having a transparent supply chain, knowing that there is environmental protection, direct trade, and getting fair wages into the hands of the workers.  We all feel this should always be the case, but it just isn't so. So to support a system that does this is incredibly important.  Ideally we would see Fair Trade attached to all manufacturing.

It is so inspiring to be a part of something that is bigger than yourself and that is what being involved in a project like this does.