Shopping to End Poverty

San Diegans launch Exotic World Gifts to aid artisans in third-world countries

Del Mar residents Liz Allen and Mark Fangue left for Belize in 2006 celebrating six months of couplehood, escaping the Thanksgiving hustle and bustle of San Diego and looking forward to a tropical vacation. Driving along a dirt road in south Belize, Allen and Fangue unwittingly stumbled onto the next great event of their lives. On that back road near Monkey River, locals sold beautiful handicrafts, lovingly created products that would sell in any high-end gift shop in the United States. Here in Belize, the artisans were living in squalor, spending their time creating pieces of art and earning barely enough to get by.

As the owner of Instinct Marketing, a global marketing company, Allen was well-accustomed to traveling. But when faced with the world poverty she experienced in the places she visited, she wanted to do something more.

“In my travels,” says Allen, “I realized I wasn’t making a big difference, besides making money for me and the corporation.”

Allen and Fangue began to formulate a plan that could begin to eradicate poverty among third-world artisans like those they saw on the back road in Belize. Fangue, the COO Manager of Western Pump, regularly volunteered one night a week to a crisis hotline. He also had received training to counsel people in need.

“We both have tender hearts,” says Fangue. But they also had the corporate experience to formulate a plan that could guarantee sustainable incomes to some of the artisans living in poverty.

What these artisans in Belize needed was a company to guarantee them fair wages and to make their products available to a wide customer base. Allen and Fangue’s idea was to forge a connection between the artisans — the people who need resources — and customers in the United States — the people who have resources. They would do this by creating an online store where they could sell products purchased at fair prices from artisans in third-world countries.

Last January, a little more than a year after they returned from Belize, Exotic World Gifts was launched.

Allen and Fangue set out to reinterpret the basic principle behind the corporation. Rather than focusing on profit as the bottom line, Exotic World Gifts places equal weight on people, the planet and profits, creating a “triple bottom line.” This, they hope, will help them make a difference in third-world countries.

Allen has coined the term “compassion shopping” to describe what the company provides its customers.

“The message that we believe in is to connect people who need resources with people who have resources,” says Fangue.

Customers of Exotic World Gifts are “not just buying a gift, but buying a distinctive, authentic handcrafted product from around the world and making a difference in someone’s life,” says Allen. “It’s a value-added purchase.”

Exotic World Gifts abides by fair-trade tenets. These include safe working conditions, fair wages and a strict prohibition on child labor. To these principles Allen adds that the workers are treated with dignity and respect.

“It’s the opposite of free trade,” she says. “And it’s the only way to help people get out of poverty and give them a sustainable income.”

Fangue adds that “20 to 50 percent of the selling price goes back to providing sustainable lifestyles.”

“We’ve spent a lot of diligent time making sure the money gets to artisans, not to some middleman or head person who won’t distribute the money fairly,” says Allen.

Artisan stories are also an integral part of the company. Exotic World Gifts acquires and sells beautiful ceramic and woven bowls made by a group of women in Swaziland. The women use the money earned to support children orphaned by AIDS. Allen and Fangue are looking to help build a school for the children in the future.

The products are available at J Gallery in Rancho Santa Fe and in the Unity Center’s bookstore, but Allen and Fangue have no intentions to open their own retail store.

“We are not retail merchants,” says Fangue, “and I don’t want to be. We want to reach the artisans and improve their way of life.”

Exotic World Gifts' products can be found online at exoticworldgifts.com, at J Gallery, 16091 San Dieguito Road, Rancho Santa Fe, 858-756-8488, or at the Unity Center 8999 Activity Road, Miramar, 858-689-6500, theunitycenter.net.

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