Download Asha’s latest Fair Trade Report or read below for more information.
Dowload ReportOur fair trade supplier (Asha Handicrafts) works with independent craftsmen and women in India, providing fair wages, advance payments where necessary, and support and advice to reach export markets. Their aim is to increase the craftsmen and women’s quality of life in a stable manner, enabling them to take on their own employees, improve their living conditions, and send their children to school.
Asha Handicrafts is a not-for-profit organisation founded in partnership with Tearfund in 1975. Their profits are re-invested in building capacity, improving working conditions, and welfare initiatives for the artisans, such as smoke-free LPG cooking facilities, water filters, and educational assistance grants for the artisans’ children.
Most years we visit Asha and the workshops where our games are made. In 2012, we made an extended visit to the workshops without any representative from our supplier, just using our own independent interpreter. We interviewed as many craftsmen as we could, asking them about pay, working conditions, health, and lifestyle. Although we had some concerns about dust and electrical safety, our visit greatly increased our confidence in the fair trade credentials of our suppliers. Our concerns about electrical safety have been fully resolved, and dust levels are being reduced. You can read our detailed report about the visit here. Asha’s fair trade credentials have been commended to us by Ten Thousand Villages.
Fair trade means refusing to take advantage of people’s poverty and weak bargaining position to drive down their wages and working conditions to undignified levels. For many products such as coffee, chocolate, and bananas, acceptable wages and conditions are stipulated and audited by organisations such as the Fairtrade Foundation, which then licenses use of the fair trade logo. No such standards have been created yet for wooden craft items such as Pucket & Rollet. However, we are 100% committed both to the spirit of fair trade, and to transparency about what we are doing so that you can judge the standards yourself. We’ve also joined the British Association For Fair Trade Shops, for which we have been carefully vetted.
The wood is locally purchased sheesham wood from government managed plantations. Sheehsam (scientific name Dalbergia Sissoo) is not endangered, and is very fast growing.
In 2019, Dalbergia Sissoo became controlled under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). This is not because the wood is threatened in any way, but because it looks similar to other woods, and the authorities were afraid of unscrupulous traders passing off endangered wood species as Dalbergia Sissoo. As a result, all our shipments are now accompanied by “Vriksh” certificates guaranteeing the origin and sustainability of the wood.
We looked carefully at UK manufacture for Pucket when we were starting out, but the costs were prohibitive. We also feel it is worthwhile supporting Indian handicrafts. However, for each new game we release we look again at the pros and cons. Our strategy game Bridget, launched in 2013, was made in the UK for several years before the prisoner rehabilitation charity we were working with had to close their workshop – it’s now made in India like our other games.
We make Giant Pucket in the UK, in our garage.
