World of Good continues growth
Apr 18, 2006

Contra Costa Times

Berkeley-based World of Good is on target to sell its goods in 1,000 stores by year's end.

The fair-trade juggernaut got its start in 2004 selling artisan goods from jewelry to handbags through an online catalog and colorful displays in upscale supermarkets, spas and salons, yoga studios and bookstores. Now Whole Foods has signed on as a national partner. Wild Oats has added World of Good kiosks to many of its stores. And the Follett Higher Education Group that runs campus bookstores across the country also is sampling World of Good products.

Founders Priya Haji and fellow Haas Business School graduate Siddharth Sanghvi have succeeded in blending compassion and capitalism to forge greater economic opportunity for 130 artisan cooperatives in 31 developing countries by reaching more American consumers and making them more aware of the fair-trade movement.

They have stuck with their original goals: to pay a fair wage, provide safe working conditions, build long-term trade relationships, engage in environmentally sustainable practices and provide financial and technical assistance to artisans whenever possible.

Doing well has helped them do even more good: World of Good has helped build a school in Guatemala, created jobs for the disabled in Cambodia and for HIV-positive women in Swaziland, provided tsunami relief in Sri Lanka and worked with a health clinic in India.

"It's starting to become enough to make a real impact and that's a really good feeling," Haji said.

World of Good donates 10 percent of its profits to a nonprofit group to build a stronger fair-trade crafts movement in the United States, promote clear international standards for fair-trade crafts and invest in economic and social development projects in those communities producing the crafts.

In the past six months, World of Good raised $250,000 to fund a free fair-trade pricing tool that calculates the fair wage for creating different kinds of crafts: