In helping facilitate mainstreaming fair trade, Traidcraft has already achieved its raison d'etre

I went to work for Traidcraft in the early 1980s not long after the move onto the Team Valley. I was drawn to the company because I wanted my day-to-day work to have a practical Christian focus and I saw Traidcraft as having a prophetic and challenging voice within the Christian and wider communities.

I became part of an embryonic Graphics Team responsible for the layout and production of the catalogues and the design of products, exhibitions and other promotional and company literature.

This team grew over the years and soon included an in-house print and paper product production unit. I left Traidcraft in the early 90s but returned several months later working with organisations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International developing fair trade mail order joint promotions.

During the 80s there was a real sense of "reckless amateurism" about Traidcraft; the David of fair trade was taking on the Goliath of established trading systems and attitudes. Only a few hardy and committed souls would have dared to consider that some 20-odd years later fair trade products would be widely present on the high street and in the supermarkets.

Traidcraft's role in this transformation cannot be underestimated, in fact some would say that in helping facilitate this change Traidcraft has already achieved its raison d'être.

I remember with fondness the annual Traidcraft pantomimes written and performed by staff, a coming together of the most unlikely people in the most unusual roles. Sadly they happened before digital cameras were widely available.

There were of course harder times too with unprofitable years that led to redundancies. In fact profitable years were uncommon and so Management By Objectives and Business Process Re-engineering were a "popular" staff past-time in an attempt to turn things around.

I am pleased to have been part of the broad church of Traidcraft. I left for the second time in 2000. The Graphics Team were a victim of down-sizing (it was either us or the Food Room) and we were encouraged to float off to form an independent graphics partnership.

GHP Design, as we are now called, still has very close links with Traidcraft and the message of fair trade still runs through our veins, to the degree that when discussing projects with Traidcraft staff GHP folk invariably still say "we" when talking about Traidcraft promotions and plans for the future.