When did the first attempts to commercialize Fair Trade take place?

When did the first attempts to commercialize Fair Trade take place?

Sam Bills (Manager) gives expert video advice on: How did the Fair Trade movement get started?; How is the Fair Trade movement different now from its inception? and more...

The movement towards commercializing Fair Trade was away from some of the initial ideas of Fair Trade. In its beginning, there were products from disadvantaged producers, but in some ways the exchange was almost one of charity and the product was given almost as a token of a kind of donation. What you see in the '40s and '50s, in that post World War 2 era, are alternative trade organizations that began to see that this is just business. This is something that belongs in the market place, that these goods are something that would sell anyway, they are more than just a donation and that this relationship is not one of charity, but one of trade. These alternative trade organizations began a different way of doing business by actually setting up shops and selling these goods from third world producers in developing countries, and by selling their stuff creating a relationship of trade that was directed into these more developed markets.