Business collaboration between big companies and local artisans

The world's largest manufacturer of modular carpets worked with social enterprises and sustainable design experts to come up with new ideas

The American carpet manufacturer InterfaceFLOR has been focusing on sustainability since the 1990s. The company's founder and then chairman Ray Anderson set the course for the whole company to become a sustainable company and an environmental leader. This challenge has become known as Mission Zero – the company’s commitment to eliminate any negative impact on the environment by 2020.

Working with external partners
In addition to its range of carpet tiles, InterfaceFLOR was interested in developing a commercially viable product that would have a positive social and environmental impact.  This is not about charity but about responsible business.

As a way of gathering ideas about how it could be done, InterfaceFLOR invited Indian design and sustainability experts  to attend a workshop, facilitated by Niels Peter Flint, a Danish designer. One of the ideas they came up with was to co-develop a product combining skills of local artisans with the design and textile expertise of InterfaceFLOR. This concept eveolved in to a new product category for InterfaceFLOR called FairWorks.

Outstanding craft traditions
FairWorks is about producing beautiful products that have social integrity, creating a successful partnership between big business and local artisan communities, while helping to improve income generation.
FairWorks products are made on the basis of three overriding principles:
- Use raw materials that are available locally
- Draw on the wealth of traditional handicraft techniques and find new ways of using traditional materials
- Increase earnings potential for local groups and enter into collaboration with local organisations and NGOs.

Labelling Scheme
The first product in the FairWorks category - Just™ - is made using natural materials such as reiver-grass, banana, bark, cotton, poly/cotton, coir, and natural latex compound, with a frame made from FSC-certified wood. It is made by a registered Fair Trade Organisation, Industree. The FTO mark means that Industree’s trading activity is sustainable and committed to continual improvement. As yet, Just™ doesn’t carry the Fairtrade label, the reason being that there isn’t currently one for flooring products. However, InterfaceFLOR is in contact with the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation and has approval from WFTO (the global network of Fairtrade Organisations) to use the term fairly traded in relations to FairWorks.