Joseph’s Coat has seen many changes and three different locations over the last 30 years, but what hasn’t changed — and continues to grow — is the store’s focus on fair trade.

Linda Marsella-Blair, Margaret Groesbeck and Shelly Osborne started Joseph’s Coat as a fabric and sewing store in 1980, but the store quickly expanded to offer far more than fabric.

“Linda and her husband traveled around the world, and she started to bring things back to the store to sell that groups of women or villages had made. Even early on we started selling other products in the store aside from clothing,” Osborne said. “Even then we leaned toward fair trade because everything she brought back was bought from the individuals who made them.”

Marsella-Blair’s habit of bringing back unique world crafts helped the fabric and sewing store survive even as the practice of repairing old clothes went out of style. Her collection of artifacts was so complete and unique that it transformed the store and even led to the creation of the Mariposa Museum & World Culture Center, which opened at the store’s former location.

Among the products Joseph’s Coat sells today are ornate baskets and purses handmade from the “ata” vine by workers in Bali, Indonesia. Store owner Françoise Bourdon traveled to Bali to meet the workers last year to ensure the store’s fair trade approach was actually working. After meeting with basket makers in Bali, Bourdon wanted to take the next step in the fair trade approach by giving something back to those workers. She worked with Wayan Suami and Dick Nevell of The Pondok, a fair trade business based in Hancock, to fund a visiting nurse program to ensure the workers in rural Bali had access to health care.

“We were trying to find a way to give back to them in a form that would be more direct than buying the products, because when you buy the products there are transportation costs, and other costs,” Bourdon said. “The weavers I met are fairly isolated, and many of the women have health issues, and, of course, pregnancy and child birth can be a problem. There is a health
care system in Bali, but they aren’t equipped to take
advantage of it because it is very rural and they can’t get to it.”

The Bali Visiting Nurse Service will compliment the health-care services that already exist and make it easier for the women to get the care they need, she said. It will now be more likely that a young future mother, for example, would have regular pre-natal care or good post birth care for the baby and the new mother.

“Part of the fair trade arrangement is that the artisans are helped in the sense that they can access the services they need,” Bourdon said. “There is a fundamental human desire to have a connection with the people making the products, and know they are working for a decent wage and their environment is not hurt. It’s just a different way of doing business.”

Throughout most of the ‘80s and ‘90s, fair trade was a term most people were unfamiliar with, but Joseph’s Coat has always been concerned about where its products come from, Bourdon said.

“I think the awareness of fair trade is growing, and more people are starting to value it,” she said.

As the store prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Bourdon said, it is that growing awareness that has allowed the store to survive, even through tough economic times because customers can more fully appreciate where its products are coming from and who is making them.

“Fair trade is a very rewarding way of doing business, because it’s not so much charity, its more that it values the work of the people and it brings them a positive sense of their worth,” Bourdon said. “It has kept people here in a job for 30 years, and I think it’s done a very good thing for Peterborough.”