Trade As One

December is not far away at all and that means that NOW is the time to buy an advent calendar.  The Divine Advent Calendar features an attractive picture on the front with numbered doors behind which are delicious milk chocolate hearts.  Open the door with the number of each day from the 1st-24th December and read a little more of the Christmas story behind each door every day as the excitement builds for Christmas day!

Parent advisory:
It is strongly advised to have 1 calendar per household member under the age of 25yrs.  Trade as One cannot be held responsible for the consequences if this advice is disregarded.

We love being part of the warm and creative community here in Santa Cruz! As you’ll have seen from yesterday’s blog post we are opening a retail boutique just one week from today (yikes!) and are busy getting the space all set up and ready. It’s a big airy room at 332 Ingalls Street and we’ve been scouring local salvage yards and garage sales for cool items that deserve a second chance as furniture and props in our boutique. Our savvy friends Anne and Ashley have a great eye for design and had a fun day shopping with Rachel for the store and it’s going to look fabulous. Here’s a photo of all the undeveloped potential! Thanks to the help of another make-things-happen friend, Aleta, the space is getting sorted and is starting to look great. I’m excited and I’ll post new photos soon.

Another really exciting project in the boutique space is a large mural that our friend Celeste is painting on a huge breeze block wall. Celeste is an intern at the nearby Vintage Faith Church and is an artist and a kindergarten teacher. We’ll let you see the progress as the work continues but it’s another cool project and we are SO grateful for the help of talented and generous friends. Here are some mural photos from earlier this week - once again I will be posting updates, so check back in a few days! Thanks so much everyone - it’s all coming together beautifully!

Are you within reach of Santa Cruz?  Then save the date and come on down on November 26th 10am-6pm.

Trade as One is a hive of activity at the moment, and when we say we’ve 24 hrs to get something done, the chances are we may end up seeing most of those 24hrs!

One new venture is that we are going to open a brand new retail Boutique right by our warehouse in Santa Cruz at 332 Ingalls Street on Black Friday, the 26th November.  We’ll be posting more details soon- but expect live music, fun for the kids, free sampling of chocolate and olive oil, and a chance to start/continue/finish your holiday shopping.

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I’m happy to introduce a brand new product exclusively designed and produced for Trade as One by a cooperative of talented women working in the slums of Mumbai:-  the double oven gloves.
We subjected the prototype double oven gloves to stringent kitchen testing until they were just so.  We even employed the services of Cath’s mom- the baker extraordinaire Grandma whose regular visits from the UK are eagerly anticipated (with a little drooling!) by our family, our boys’ friends, and the Trade as One team.
Double oven gloves are the norm in English kitchens but fairly unknown here it seems- so we decided to commission our own from Marigold who produce several of our new linen items.
What’s special about the double oven gloves?
- both hands are protected when carrying hot dishes out of the oven.
- no more struggling single handed with one regular oven mitt, and
- no hunting for the elusive second oven mitt that you know you put just there but has wandered off
- the glove ends are quilted and padded to protect you from heat, whilst being flexible enough to give you movement and control (this is starting to sound like a piece of sports equipment!)
- hanging loop for easy storage
- machine washable
- matching items available for the co-ordinated kitchen and chef- check out the apron, tablecloth and reversible napkins
vibrant organic cotton, traditionally screen printed and extremely well made.

Get cooking!

There’s been a lot of exciting things happening at the Trade as One warehouse these last few weeks, not least of which is the first full container arriving from India! It might not seem like a huge deal, but it’s important to us because it means that we’re now able to place larger and larger orders with our producers, which means more and more jobs created for the poor.

The container was full of some really cool new products (like silverware) which we’ll be uploading to the site over the next couple weeks. We were so excited about the container that we decided to film it backing up into our loading dock. As you’ll see below, Ollie, the office dog, was less than excited about this huge truck encroaching upon “his” office.