Incomparable Buttons

Most of the Incomparable team had never held a paintbrush before they joined the company and are now absolute masters of their brushes and justifiably proud of their work.
The ladies sense of belonging within the company and skills as crafters not only gives them tremendous pleasure but also working under Fair Trade policies provides them with economic empowerment and has uplifted their families. Click here to be directed to the button department in the shop!
Quotes:
Thandi Motha
Working at the button factory has helped me to have housing and to send Sipho to nursery school . I have worked for INCOMPARABLE for about 16 years now.I have been the Personnel manager for the last 6 years.My sisters Maria and Pindi as well as my aunt Martha and her daughter Thulisile all work here. Thulisile has just got her drivers licence and she paid for her last year of schooling by working part time at our company.
Nokhuthula
I come from Swaziland and I struggled to find work ..I started working for INCOMPARABLE 14 years ago and have been able to send money back to my family every month.
Martha Shongwe
Me and my daughter Thulisile work for Incomparable. I have 5 children and no husband. I have supported them all to begin with from my salary. Now Thulisile works for us and my son Mandla also
Clementina Ipalleng ( Ipalleng means read for yourself)
Incomparable has helped me a lot. I am a breadwinner with 3 children aged 13, 4 and 1 year. I have worked here for 13 years and I am the painting Supervisor. I love my job very much. Miss Jen (our boss who started the company) is like our family. All our problems are on her head and she tries always to help us.I hope my children can work for her one day.
Martha
My husband died and I have 5 children none of them are working except Gladys who also works with me at INCOMPARABLE. I support all of them myself. I have been working for Incomparable for 15 years now. They help me with loans sometimes and also to support my family. I never want to work anywhere else.

Mothers for All

Mothers for All is a non profit organisation that supports the women in Botswana and South Africa who are caring for children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. The trust's primary focus is teaching income-generating skills to the orphans' caregivers- mainly women - often with little means, often caring for more than one child - thereby providing a sustainable means of support for them and their charges.
Mothers for All also aims to provide a social network through which the orphan caregivers can share their experiences, challenges and knowledge. Ultimately the women will be taught permaculture and food gardening and will be given environmental awareness training.

The picture shows Mothers from Bobonong in training
Click here to go to the bead department of the shop

Izimbali - the Flower Girls

Izimbali a Zulu word for Flower

The Izimbali group is a group of previously unemployed women working in Soweto South Africa.
The group presently consists of 2 full time and 5 part time “flower girls”.
The women undergo an intensive initial training period and thereafter work from home in their own time,which enables them to look after their children whilst earning an income. The flowers are all hand made from taffeta, silks and satins and organzas and the more goods we sell the more women we can employ.
Click here to be directed to their department in the shop

Iziko Lo Lwazi - Beaders and Papermakers

These ladies are from Iziko Lo Lwazi ( Centre of Learning) adult literacy project in Hout Bay Cape Town. They make wonderful paper from rooibos tea and seaweed amongst other things. Stunning beadwork is made into jewellery and they make our beautiful stitch markers.
Click here to view their stitchmarkers in the shop

Tugela Trading - Zulu baskets

Here are some of the artists who make Zulu baskets for us. Three villages have been regenerated through our basket supplier who, concerned that skills were being lost through the number of people dying of aids, has encouraged the older generation to teach their children and grandchildren to weave. He supplies the raw material (Ilala palm) and can be justifiably proud that he has been instrumental in helping these communities to earn a decent living in a very rural area where there is no other work.
Click here to be taken to the basket department

Original Tea bag Designs

It has been said that if you are cold tea will warm you; if you are hot tea will cool you.
If you are depressed it will cheer you and if you are excited it will calm you. For a group of previously disadvantaged people in Cape Town, South Africa one cup of tea has indeed provided community, love, excitement and peace.
One humble tea bag sitting in the bottom of an unassuming mug, joined by boiling water, milk and sugar and stirred to perfection was to become the inspiration for intricate works of beauty creating upiftment and self worth.
This tea bag was enjoyed, dried, emptied, ironed and decorated to become the first of its kind - an Original T Bag design Greetings Card. A group of three women, seeking employment were the first to discover the limitless possibilities that the small universal commodity possessed.
Patterns reflecting African heritage and present everyday life adorned the first batch of cards that were sold locally, mostly to tourists interested in supporting the initiative. As the designs became more creative and the production became more professional the cards were more in demand locally and further afield. The group of workers expanded as did the work premises.
Original Tea Bag Designs is now a registered company and boasts exquisitely hand made products ranging from the original greeting cards to coasters, placemats, boxes and more.
Jill Heyes, a teacher from UK who moved to South Africa, has been the driving force behind this very successful project which is going from strength to strength.
Click here to view these stunning products in the shop

Hatti Trading

At the Hatti production centre in Kathmandu, young women who had been trafficked as children and subsequently rescued by The Esther Benjamins Trust are employed under fair trade conditions. After a time of rehabilitation with the charity and as soon as there is a permanent vacancy, the older girls (min age 17) are offered the opportunity to work at the production centre. They are provided with safe, secure accommodation with a house mother to care for them and trained at the production centre. They are paid a good monthly wage, holiday, sickness, hospital fees and maternity pay and helped to adjust to life. This is a successful demonstration of Aid and Fair Trade working together to help change the lives of young women for the better, permanently. Fair Trade empowers disadvantaged young women to make choices. When these young women are initially returned from a horrific life of abuse, they find themselves outcast from their communities, branded ‘unclean’ and unwanted with no future to look forward to; they are at very high risk of being re-trafficked. However, through Fair Trade employment they often find themselves the highest income earner in a family and able to provide a valuable contribution, resulting in many of the girls being invited to live with relatives locally. The difference is that the girls are empowered to make a choice, they are no longer desperate for acceptance, they are valued and feel valued.

Whilst we normally deal only with South Africa as we like to get to know everyone at the projects that we support we feel that this is so very worthwhile and are proud to have added their beautiful hand made felted bags to our portfolio of products. Click here to be taken to their department in the shop

Cambrian Woollen Mill
The Cambrian Woollen Mill is on the outskirts of the smallest town in Britain, Llanwrtyd Wells in Central Wales. The mill lies beside the River Irfon on the edge of the Eppynt and Cambrian Mountains, with the Brecon Beacons and Carmarthen Fans to the south. This is where we buy our beautiful blankets and throws from. The welsh wool is spun in England and then back to Wales for weaving. The uplands of Wales are well suited to sheep farming, and where you have sheep you usually have weaving. For centuries weaving developed as a domestic art to meet the needs of the family, and later as a commercial enterprise. In the mid 19th century the Welsh woollen industry was comparable in size to that in Yorkshire. Today it is one of very few woollen mills remaining in Wales. The Mill has had long associations with the armed forces and the Royal British Legion. Since 1917 disabled people have been employed here, many the victims of foreign conflict.

Injabulo are proud to support the British woollen industry
Click here to be connected to the British Wool marketing Board website

Herdy

We have a strapline that wraps up our ethical position as best we think it can : ‘beautiful things with a beautiful intention’.
Everything we do starts with good design. Everything we do is socially responsible and everything we do is to the highest quality. We design everything ourselves from our base here in the Lakes. We use local printers, ethical paper stocks and vegetable based inks.
We try to keep packaging to a minimum and re-use packaging sent to us from our suppliers.
We use a local company for all our storage and logistics.
We support UK manufacturing wherever possible making use of precious skill sets like those of the fine bone china potters in Stoke on Trent.
We support the sustainability of the Herdwick sheep breed by making good use of the wool in our home furnishings. We make use of herdwick sheep wool and British lambs wool and we use local processors, spinners and weavers. We want our brand to support, represent and generate awareness of our region and we want our customers to love, enjoy and get a long life from our products. We’re not purists. It’s virtually impossible to be that, but we do our level best to maintain our core values and beliefs throughout our operation.

And Injabulo loves their ethical policy and their products
Click here to visit the herdy department in the shop