Show your customers the beauty of fair trade personal care

Your customers already put fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate into their shopping carts. Now—thanks to Fair Trade USA’s 2008 launch of a personal care category—their socially responsible purchases don’t have to stop there.

“Since the issue of fair trade shea butter has emerged and [the ingredient] has been picked up by more mainstream lines, I’ve had customers ask which of our shea butters are fair trade,” says Annie Kuebler, body care buyer for Roots Market, a natural products store with two locations in Maryland. “This tells me that certain customers, who perhaps started out buying fair trade chocolates or coffees, have expanded their search to include fair trade–certified personal care items.”

These shoppers will find what they’re looking for at Roots Market. Because the store stocks plenty of fair trade products, including more than 10 personal care lines, sales have taken off, according to Kuebler. In June, about 25 percent of the stores’ 50 top sellers were products that are either fair trade certified or feature a fair trade ingredient.

Retailers across the country are experiencing similar successes with fair trade personal care. During the past year, sales of Fair Trade USA–certified aromatherapy and body oils increased 19 percent, while sales of certified skin care products expanded 32 percent. Oakland, Calif.-based Fair Trade USA is the largest American third-party certifier of fair trade goods. Total sales of body care products carrying any fair trade claim—including Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade Certified label—jumped 13 percent, from $20 million to $23 million, during the past year, according to Schaumburg, Ill.-based market research firm SPINS.

Two developments have contributed to the growth of fair trade beauty. First, existing fair trade ingredients, such as sugar, tea, coffee and olive oil, have begun to leap from the grocery aisles to the personal care section as manufacturers use them in beauty products. Second, luscious cosmetic ingredients like shea butter and baobab oil are now being certified fair trade, says Maya Spaull, director of new category innovation at Fair Trade USA.

Prior to the creation of the fair trade cosmetics category, shea butter producers—who, according to Spaull, include “some of the most wonderful cooperatives of women throughout Africa”—didn’t have a way to benefit from the fair trade system. “Now we can get these producers involved and really bring them into the fold,” she says.