Traidcraft’s purchasing policy can be viewed in full here.
Whilst Traidcraft has been affected by the global economic downturn we are aware of the impact a prolonged recession is having, or will have, on our producers. 2008 saw significant exchange rate fluctuations and price hikes in food, fuel and raw materials putting pressure on our producers’ businesses and escalating living costs for the farmers and artisans. Over the last few months the deepening recession has resulted in a reduction in orders for many of our trading partners, especially those with significant trade with the USA but increasingly Europe also. Unfortunately it is likely that this fall in trade will continue through 2009.
In recent weeks we have been in touch with our trading partners to better understand their situation and consider how Traidcraft can respond. It is very clear from our discussions that the most important support we can provide during this difficult period is to maintain levels of trade and we have made this our first priority. Inevitably we have seen significant price rises in both food and craft products and we are doing what we can to absorb these whilst working on strategies to design and develop our products in ways that still provide value for money for our customers.
Goals for 2009
For 2008/9 we set the goals detailed below. For clarity these have been categorised into the three main areas involved in working with our producers:
- Orders to suppliers
- Partnership Review
- Support
| Area | Goal | Status |
| Orders to suppliers | Continue to refine our approach to purchase commitments for non-food suppliers and further embed these into range development and product selection | Good progress made |
| Continue the development of sourcing plans for each of our key food products | Some progress made |
| Partnership Review | Develop a more robust review process to identify how far our producers are commercially sustainable, for trial during the year | Good progress made |
| Review environmental impact section of our evaluation and improve where appropriate | Good progress made |
| Give specific focus to how we monitor and support indirect suppliers | Some progress made |
| Review our practices in areas highlighted by our producers feedback and initiate changes where required | Good progress made |
| Producer Support | Increase Producer Support spend to £50k | £13k raised from sales of tissue products. This has been paid to Traidcraft Exchange and by 31st March 2009 £4,000 has been spent on producer support projects. |
Progress and approach
Stakeholder View
As outlined last year, our evaluation process is two-way, which means that suppliers are asked to evaluate Traidcraft against standards where we have a direct impact on the supplier.
Read our 2008/9 stakeholder feedback and our response to that here.
Our suppliers’ evaluation of Traidcraft assesses how Traidcraft measures up against each standard, using a traffic light system as follows:
- Green – the organisation meets the standard
- Yellow – the organisation largely meets the standard
- Orange – there are some major gaps
- Red - the organisation does not meet the standard and has no willingness to change
We have conducted 16 of these evaluations over 2007-2008 across South and South East Asian, African and Latin American based suppliers, including a higher proportion of food suppliers. In addition, suppliers backed up their assessments of Traidcraft with additional context comments against each standard or general comment about Traidcraft.
Our progress in addressing comments made by suppliers in the 2007 - 08 evaluations is detailed in the Partnership Review section.
Traidcraft’s comments on supplier feedback
Once again we are struck by the honesty and frankness of our suppliers which perhaps is an indicator of the strength of our relationships.
This supplier feedback relates to a completely different set of suppliers so there is no possibility to track changes to last year’s findings. This will be a key component of supplier feedback in next years Social Accounts.
Standards where Traidcraft has been assessed as orange from a significant number of suppliers continue to relate to communications. This issue emerged in last years Social Accounts and a more systematic process for feedback on sales and quality performance was put in place. It may be that the effects of this have not yet filtered through.
Capacity Building has significantly improved this year with only one orange highlighted. This is largely due to the mix of suppliers covered and the fact that some of our larger suppliers are featured rather than a significant improvement in our resources in our resources available for this work. Only one of the suppliers impacted by our Producer Support Programme features in the feedback
The more Operational aspects of our relationships - linked to trading practices – continue to be rated well by our suppliers
The findings of this evaluation will be disseminated and reviewed internally and issues relating to individual suppliers managed on a one to one basis.
Goals for 2010
| Area | Goal | Target |
| Orders to suppliers | Review all craft suppliers where order values typically average less than £10k pa with regard to assessing the mutual sustainability of relationships | N/A |
| Continue the development of sourcing plans for each of our key commodities/ingredients whether directly or indirectly sourced | N/A |
| Partnership Review | Finalise and roll out the new Memorandum of Understanding | To all suppliers |
| Review current situation of communicating information to producers across the organisation and develop/implement plans to improve this (recognising continued feedback in evaluations) | Plan developed and implemented by Sept 09 |
| Review our practices in areas highlighted by our producers feedback and initiate changes where required | N/A |
| Repeat producer feedback for those covered in 2007/08 Social Accounts to track changes | N/A |
| Producer Support | Develop and begin implementation of Producer Support and Development plans | For 10 key suppliers to be identified |
| Develop income/funding stream for producer support activities in 2010/11 | £75k |
