3         Collaborators

 

3.1     

 
ASHA Handicrafts (India)

 

ASHA Handicrafts is an Indian Alternative Trading Organisation (ATO) which markets handicrafts from over 36 producer groups (representing some 820 individual artisans, plus their families). Established in 1975, it is based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), and has an estimated turnover of $624,000 (2000/01). ASHA sells a very small proportion of products locally – but this is not a profitable activity. The organisation employs 30 staff (9 women and 21 men).
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sales figures since 1997/98 are as follows:

 

 

1997/98

 

1998/99

1999/00

2000/01

exports

$317,600

$432,200

$425,273

$615,620

local sales

$10,600

$7,600

$8,344

$8,504

Figure 1 ASHA Handicrafts sales 1997/98-2000/01

 

ASHA is primarily focused on exports (local sales accounting for less than 2% of total sales). Currently 60% of exports are to the USA.

 

They are a member of IFAT (the International Federation for Alternative Trade), and describe themselves as being committed to the following values:

 

·        Transparency or openness about business practices.

·        Ethical and effective work places.

·        Equal employment opportunities.

·        Concern for people and environment.

·        Education and advocacy of fair trade.

 

As part of their support for artisans, ASHA makes advance payments from its own working capital to artisan groups to help them purchase raw materials

 

ASHA exports a range of handicraft products:

 

Textiles

 

Handloom, Block printed home furnishing

Wood

Small gift items useful in homes and offices; toys, and furniture made from Sesham wood, Haldu wood, Mango wood

 

Leather

Embroidered bags, spectacle cases, chair backs, embossed coin purse wallets made from buff leather, nappa leather wallets and bags etc

 

Ceramic

Vases, candle holders soap dishes

 

Stone

Boxes, candle holders, animals,

photo frames, card holders, penholders

 

Brass

Vases, candle stands, bangles, boxes with

horn inlay and Dokra animals. Copper bowls and boxes.

 

Jewellery

Necklaces, earrings finger rings, bracelets etc

made with semi-precious stones, silver and German silver

 

Musical

Variety of folk musical instruments of  India.

Instruments mainly made with wood/ bamboo.

 

Textiles and wooden products represent 40% of their total turnover.

 

ASHA’s mission is to preserve traditional regional Indian craft skills, by buying products from all over India for the export market. Migration of labour from rural to urban areas in India has threatened traditional village industries, such as craft production. ASHA believes that by helping to promote and develop small businesses in rural areas, it is helping to prevent rural families being pulled to the cities, where they are likely to join the growing number of landless slum-dwellers. Thus they would describe their business activities as having a focus o alleviate poverty.

 

They recognise too that a significant number of the individual artisans who make the goods they purchase are women (in 2000, 187 of the 795 artisans purchased from were women); and that the extra income this provides to families helps them to survive. ASHA say they are committed to equal opportunities, and that female artisans are paid the same piece rates as males.

 

ASHA exports to a number of European and US fair trade organisations, including 10,000 Villages (USA); Tearcraft (UK); Oxfam Trading (Australia); Caritas (Switzerland). They are also one of the trading partners listed by PEOPLink (USA), though have sold very little via their e-commerce site to date.

 

They provide a range of services to both overseas buyers and local producers, recovering the cost of these by marking up products sold on to buyers. These services, as described by ASHA, include:

 

For overseas buyers:

 

1.      Locating Indian crafts made by producers who are paying fair wages to the artisans.

 

2.      Follow up with the producer groups to ensure timely deliveries.

 

3.      Quality assurance of crafts exported.

 

4.      Repackaging with appropriate packing for air/sea consignments.

 

5.      Consolidating shipments from different producers thus saving on their freight and handling costs.

 

6.      Craft information to help promote their products abroad.

 

7.      Liaison between clients speaking foreign languages such as Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, German and English, and craftsmen who speak different Indian languages.

 

Services to artisans:

 

1.      Marketing support for their products.

 

2.      Advice on reaching and maintaining quality standards.

 

3.      Inputs on systems of administration such as costing of products, personnel policies etc.

 

4.      Guidelines to practice fair trade.

 

5.      Product development and design inputs with certain materials.

 

6.      Financial support by way of advance.

 

7.      Market information.

 

8.      Improvement of working conditions.

 

9.      Financial aid for education and medical expenses.

 

10.  Grants to better producer organisations, family groups and master craftsmen.

 

ASHA, which means ‘hope’ in Sanskrit, also has a team of regionally-based welfare workers who help producers develop their small businesses, and could can also provide needy artisans and their families with medical help and educational grants irrespective of caste or creed.

 

A national co-ordinator supervises the work of the welfare workers, visiting the workshops of producers around India. ‘As a fair trade organisation, we are equally concerned about the working conditions of our craftsmen. We have begun a program to improve the working conditions in our producers’ premises. We have targeted wood workers in Saharanpur and stone workers in Agra, since there is lot of dust particles, by providing them face masks and vacuum cleaners.’

 

‘We have installed fire extinguishers in the premises of many of  our producers to make them safe from accidental fire. We hope to complete many more in phases.  Another project is to provide pure and safe drinking water for the craftsmen at their place of work.’[1]

 

3.1.1      ICT and E-commerce experience

 

For the purposes of this study, we define ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to include a broad range of electronic and computer-based communications. We primarily focus on the use of the Internet, email, computer and network systems, e-commerce applications, as well as the use of digital media (eg for photography, video, audio etc).

 

Two staff members have received training locally in digital imaging, and how to use PEOPLink’s new catalogue generating software CatGen (www.catgen.com), which ASHA believes will be of significant benefit to them (see section 9.1.2).

 

Although this is still under development, they are hopeful this will enable them to create a simple catalogue of products which can be used for promotion to buyers on and off-line, which will be easy for them to update regularly. However in common with a number of producers we spoke to during the course of this project, they were concerned about illegal copying of their designs by both other artisans locally, and by commercial companies in China and the Far East. For this reason ASHA plans to display only a selected range of merchandise publicly, preferring to deal directly with known buyers.

 

ASHA have a web site (as part of the PEOPLink web site), but are considering developing their own separate web site, using the independently registered domain name www.ashahandicrafts.org. They would like to develop their ability to communicate the stories of individual producers and their products for marketing purposes, and see the Internet (and possibly an email newsletter) as being a suitable vehicle for this.

 

At the same time they are wary of investing time and money from their limited resources on a web site which has so far delivered few tangible returns. Director Lucas Caldeira has previously investigated advertising through the Hong Kong company Global Sources Ltd (www.globalsources.com, see section 9.1.8), which runs a numbe