Over the years many young, talented Kiwi designers have worked in the role of Product Developer within our handcraft team. Each designer has brought their own style and flair as well as a good understanding of current trends to a variety of designs now on offer at Trade Aid. These designers develop and maintain constructive working relationships with our trading partners to bring New Zealand consumers beautiful fair trade products.
Our current in-house Product Developer, Emma Price has been working with many of our craft trading partners on new designs.
Emma’s designs are in tune with the growing needs of kiwi consumers, those who wish to access locally designed, fair trade products that are both beautiful and functional.
Our latest Leather Collection, a casually sophisticated range of soft leather fair trade bags and wallets, beautifully illustrates the partnership between Trade Aid and our talented partners.
A selection of the styles in our 2020 collection come from a skilful collaboration between the Trade Aid product development team in Christchurch and EMA (Equitable Marketing Association), an artisan co-operative based near Kolkata, India.
For this collection, Emma spent months working alongside the leather artisans who work with EMA to create these styles. Careful consideration was given to detailing, practical usefulness and high quality, sustainably sourced leather.
“It was during one of our regular trips to India to visit EMA that we discovered they had an excess of leather stock that they thought they could not use,” says Emma. “This leather had already been purchased by EMA, but due to a cancelled order from Europe, it was destined to go to waste. So we used this stock, which had gorgeous raw elements and earthy tones, for our collection. There was no need for EMA to order new materials for our order and it was a joy to work with EMA to help solve a problem and create something beautiful at the same time.”
We are delighted that this collection has come from one Emma collaborating with another – EMA. “Together, we’ve created a new leather collection that we hope our customers will love.”
