posted by admin on Mar 31
I know online shops are nothing new, and I know that you can buy ethical products in most large stores now, but this company bring it all together.
I only heard of them recently while researching fair-trade products for myself, and was amazed at their ranges and their prices. They are called PointOV and they are are coming in leaps and bounds from their early beginnings as a consultancy firm.
Not only do they offer all the usual products that your find in the high street, like coffee and chocolate - they also cover every eco-friendly and low-energy - from kettles to modern electrical equipment, toiletries to stationery to garden furniture. They also hope to allow producers to sell their products direct to other companies as a wholesale arm of the business.
The company is founded by 2 young men who have both have a substantial knowledge of the market and have years of experience in the ethical retail industry; one running his own retail premises as well as being a director of Traidcraft, and the other ran an ethical e-commerce site and consulted to the large ethical companies, including Traidcraft - which is where they met.
So, this is certainly a great concept - taken further. Not only are they helping people to earn a decent living in their home country along the same lines as Fairtrade, they are making sure that they are promoting the sale of 10 times more profit for that farmer or artist, or more. They want to become the ethical Amazon!
The problems I always had when trying to buy ethical products are numerous. I find that when I shop in a supermarket for foods, I have to try to find the best products myself from in amongst all the ‘normal’ products, making my job all the much harder and taking very much longer. Using this website, I can only find the products I like.
Shopping for electrical good has become more clearly signed now, but it was still a trip through the nice-looking but high energy consuming products to find the one useful item somewhere at the back. Household goods was a bit easier as you could find ethical companies easily enough, but different home catalogs specialised in different things, so I found myself subscribing to about a dozen or so of these smaller companies, comparing product cost and size, etc. and ordering a bit here and a bit there.
Using this site has another advantage over regular shopping - I don’t have to wade through hundreds of other people either, it’s all done online saving transport costs and energy, but also saving my time for more important things, like eating my Divine chocolate, or using my energy efficient coffee maker to create a perfect cup of fair-trade coffee for me and my friends……
A lot of people I know don’t buy online for some reason - they would rather touch things and read labels before making a purchase, however with all the information offered by this firm and the ease with which you can browse and purchase products - all that could change.
Why don’t you give it a try now, while you are online? Take this as your inspiration to make that change yourself: www.ethicalsuperstore.com
