NODE: fair trade rugs
Im VERY excited about this… im co-founding a fair trade project called NODE. We’re launching it today.
We will make and sell fair trade rugs. We want to collaborate with great illustrators and designers and produce amazing rugs all through the fair trade group KTS in Kathmandu.
Last year i made some rugs in Nepal and they became really popular. My blog post on it was fwded around and ended up in lots of design magazines. I was then approached by other designers and illustrators who wanted to make their own rugs.
I thought this was a great idea, I was connecting great designers with a great fair trade group. We could even do an exhibition in London of the rugs we made.
There was a couple of problems though, the hassle and cost of doing small orders or one-offs with bank charges and shipping and import duty / declaration forms and all the paperwork put most of the illustrators off.
I also just didnt have the time to actually receive payment and organise shipments etc… the more i got into it the more complicated it got. so the whole thing was stalled.
Then i had a chat with with my friend Akshay Sthapit in Nepal who had recently set up harilo.com
Harilo is a bit like amazon for Nepal. They import and export. And do really complicated logistics so we had the idea of working together.
We have decided to call it Node. Its a point on a network but it also means ‘knot’ in Latin.
Node can help organise exhibitions and help designers to sell their rugs. But unlike a company we want to operate very transparently. We want to do some
thing new and self-organise, a group of designers making nice things that can be successfully scaled up and hopefully help KTS help out more and more people. Thats the plan anyway..!
thing new and self-organise, a group of designers making nice things that can be successfully scaled up and hopefully help KTS help out more and more people. Thats the plan anyway..!
At the moment we only have my rugs available to buy but we will be adding more soon
And next year we will be organising an exhibition..
Anyone who wants to get involved (whether designing or buying) please email me
chris (at) vegetablefriedrice (dot) com
have a look at the site…
