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Traditions has a wide range of crafts and products from over 50 countries. We carry jewelry, clothing, baskets, musical instruments, rugs, pottery, toys, candles, books, music, packaged food, household furnishings, cultural artifacts, holiday decorations, and more... All products are sourced through artisans and farmers in fair trade partnerships and worker-run or worker-empowered factories.
To order products on this page, please contact us by email, phone (360-705-2819) or by mail (address below).
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Yellow/black: $34

Red/blue: $34

Tall red/black: $34
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Sneakers from CUC
(Cooperativa Unidos por el Calzado)
Even before the economic collapse of 2001, there were many signs of
trouble in Argentina with numerous factory closings and high rates of
unemployment. One such factory that went bankrupt made shoes for
Adidas. Many of the workers had
been in the factory for more than a decade and were highly skilled so
they petitioned the courts and legislature and obtained the rights to
re-open the factory. The 190 workers in the factory could make
world-class shoes but did not have a brand or the capital to easily
develop a market. Even as they began production, they often had to
provide a sale price of shoes at 30% below market in order to get
advances to buy the raw materials. Such a situation put the new venture
close to bankruptcy. The Working World came along to offer capital and
consulting that is leading to a marketing campaign tapping supportive
volunteers skilled in graphics, marketing, and even sneaker design and
then to create space for C.U.C.’s own shoe line in ‘fair trade’ stores
and a hotel in Buenos Aires. Now negotiations are underway for much
more export of the shoes.
To order these products, contact us by email.

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Short-sleeve: $32
Long-sleeve: $34
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Shirts from CERES
Prior to the economic collapse, the seamstresses at Ceres suffered the
common abuses of the apparel industry. They worked for years in
difficult conditions with overtime at a fraction of their legal wages
and overall wages less than 10% of their contracted wage. Then when
the factory closed in 2001, the men and women of Ceres fought legally
to gain control of some of the equipment and the brand name. They
found a new home in another part of Buenos Aires and for two years
struggled to find buyers. With help from The Working World, including
working capital for raw materials, they gained a contract making shirts
for bus drivers in the city. They manage themselves democratically and
now are seeing a higher and more regualar income with the skills and
the potential to reach a wider world market. We are the start.
To order these products, contact us by email.
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Shoes: $64

3/4 height : $68

Boot: $72
(Shoes and boots also available in black)

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Leather Shoes from Desde el Pie
In one of the poorest neighborhoods in the sprawl around Buenos Aires,
nineteen men and women (mostly immigrants and minorities) formed a
cooperative business Desde el Pie - From the Feet. Instead of working
15 hour days with unpaid overtime that is the common lot for so many
shoe workers, the workers in Desde el Pie meet in weekly assemblies,
divide the returns from their labor equitably, and turn out quality
precision shoes of leather sourced from free-range cows. This project
was one of the results of an agency called CoopLabor formed in the
Laferrere slum after the 2001 financial crisis when unemployment was
overwhelming in the poorer parts of the country. CoopLabor was formed
in order to create jobs by creating cooperative enterprises and in
addition to Desde el Pie, a construction cooperative and a sewing
cooperative have been formed. Desde el Pie had been working in a very
tight space in the back of a house of one of the workers, but The
Working World has helped them build a bigger factory so they can expand
their range of products and their employment.
To order these products, contact us by email.
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Sneakers: $32

Sneakers: $32
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Sneakers from Pupore
Pupore is a very new cooperative. The workers were a part of Desde el
Pie but when the Working World gave the loan to Desde el Pie in order
for them to build a new factory, some workers stayed at the original
location and formed their own working group making sneakers. The
name, Pupore, is from the Guarani, the indigenous language still spoken
in northern Argentina and Paraguay, and it means “footprint.” They
came up with the name so that people might think of what their
footprint on earth is and what we each leave behind.
To order these products, contact us by email. |
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The Working World
www.theWorkingWorld.org
The Working World, was created as a non-profit to support and promote
democratic and self-managed labor throughout the world. Their base is
in Argentina and they became our contact in order to work with these
factories. These factories are especially in need of capital as well
as marketing of their products. The Working World has created a
cooperative fund in order to provide financing capital as well as to
help with networking between the factories, marketing of their
products, and now the actual export to us of their products. Their
goal is to assist in “the evolution of fair trade: alternative, moral
production of consumer goods within mainstream industry.”
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