The Fair Trade Shop, Ipswich
Making a world of difference
Opening hours
Monday -
Making a world of difference
The Fair Trade Shop
15 Orwell Place
Ipswich
Suffolk
IP4 1BD
Tel: 01473 288225
Our history
Fair Trade: it's a familiar term now, but just twenty years ago it didn't mean much to most people. It was a funny brand of coffee with a decidedly weird taste, mail order catalogues for the committed, and a few people who gave talks and sold jute crafts at coffee mornings.
Traidcraft, one of the earliest fair trade companies, was set up in 1979 as a response
to the poverty of so many and the unfairness of the global trading system. It sold
goods, mainly crafts, by mail order, and through a country-
Fair trade began to have a more permanent place in Ipswich in 1991 when a group of reps, overwhelmed by the number and weight of those mail order boxes, gratefully accepted the offer of a room in Christ Church, Tacket Street from which to sell the goods. It built up gradually from 2 hours a day at first, with a team of volunteers, then four hours, and finally in 1996 moving out to a 'proper' shop in Orwell Place, open six days a week 9.30 to 4.30, with even more volunteers and a couple of paid Saturday staff.
Since then, of course, fair trade has become much easier to find. While the Fair
Trade Shop carries a selection of fair trade crafts, jewellery and food that cannot
be found elsewhere in Ipswich, fair trade coffee has over the years become available
in nearly every supermarket and many speciality coffee shops as well. Instead of
the one or two coffees of those early days, there is a wide range of coffees, instant,
ground and beans, to suit every taste. Fair trade tea, chocolate, fruit and a whole
range of other products have also become more widely available. The Co-
Last year the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich became a fair trade diocese, with many Anglican churches signing up to serve fair trade tea and coffee. Other churches too, as well as schools, community groups, businesses and offices have begun to embrace fair trade as a sustainable way of life.
As the Council now goes ahead with its plan to seek fair trade town status for Ipswich, it will be endorsing something that has already become a substantial reality within the town, and encouraging something that is growing fast, so that even more producers can work their own way out of poverty, with just a little help from a trading system that gives them a fair deal.