I am really impressed with the writing of Marc Choyt of Reflective Images – you may be familiar with Marc as the voice of Fair Trade Jewelry – I recently stumbled across his blog from 2007 where he describes “The Circle Manifesto“.
“We have been purchasing recycled gold and silver for our production, using “green” paper and switching to non-toxic chemicals in our work environment. For components that we imported heavily, we work primarily with an international manufacturer that works on a Fair Trade basis. Most recently, we implemented a program with an environmental organization to off-set our carbon use. We just do these things because they are the way we do business, given our values. We did not even consider the marketplace.
Now that we have a firm idea of who we are, we must adjust our marketing to go after the customer who sees value in what we are doing. We must target this community: the same group of people who shop for organics, support environmental sustainability and fuel the growth of yoga studios throughout the land. These are the cultural creatives, whose values are in sync with our business ethics.
A few people in the jewelry industry are standing behind fair trade and socially responsible business practices. Industry leaders have called it a‘huge opportunity’. Though it barely exists to mainstream jewelry, I am willing to step into this wave. It is who we are already and that must be reflected in our marketing approach.
The lesson for me here is that a circle-based business has to have an alignment between resources, production and marketing. Our approach is to put our ethos into the center of our brand image to draw additional support from the community who see the value of what we are doing.”
