Final film!

Mural in Aura's factory

new prints!

cotton plantation

herbal dyeing processes

dyeing ingredients

ocean

tetris

onion rings

Signage in Aura's factory!

The signage frames for the interior of the factory

The in-process sign of the vegetable garden ("ORGANIC VEGGIE PATCH")

For the stitching unit

For the marketing office

About 25 signs to make by the end of the year! Can I do it?
Time will tell.

Inspiration for the day

Why this video?

• It explains in a simplistic way some of the problems with production that Aura wants to emphasise, and detail-in.
•  It's hard to lose interest in this video.
• It doesn't dumb down information.

Though what the SOS campaign went on to do later, I'm still unsure of.

A Visit to the Farmer's Market: Report

As I was in Bombay for the weekend, Aura set me up on a quick task: to check out what could be a vital future marketing pitch for their future in the City of Too Much Noise.

 

The Farmer's market is a weekly fair on Sundays for sale of organic goods and produce.

The crowd and mood look something like this:

Sunday picnic with expats and people with a trace of hippie in them.

We found some really wonderful products on sale.

Organic vegetables

Organic vegetables and their dedicated customers

The stall on the right was perhaps my favourite: organic MAKE-UP.
With my newly formed understanding of the complexity of producing
organic stuff, I hope to collaborate with their work someday.

smart dustbins

chilling children

even organic cotton candy!

My sister's/ ruse-for-taking-so-many-photos is looking quite amused because I'm trying to click a photo of the birthday party behind her

The mood was really quite relaxed.

Should Aura hold a stall here?

1. The Mumbai Nature Park people are really interested in finding ways to engage all the people who come to the farmers' market into a kind of movement that helps the small organic industry and suffering business start-ups through awareness activities.
2. It will probably bring us faithful customers
3. The idea that people relaxing on a Sunday might consider Aura and take the time out to understand it, gets better the more you think about it.

Uncertain certification

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I am writing this post in response to a recent "fairtrade" inspection at Aura, on Friday, the 26^th of October.

I am somewhat deflated to say that I now understand and appreciate the complexity of whole trouble of certification.

First, the basics.

What is fairtrade?

Fairtrade is a certification for manufacturers. This certification verifies that the large-scale produce of a company is made based on a fair cost price, with fair salaries to workers, no child labour. These and other such parameters deemed important by Western countries over poor or developing countries, so that would some clue, I think, about the depth of understanding the investigators have in the first place.

Why do we need the fairtrade stamp?

It’s a useful stamp or qualification, maybe. About as useful as a degree, depends on how you look at degrees.

Why did we get an inspection done, then?

A company that we manufacture for works only with fairtrade certified manufacturers and they alleged an inspection in order to ascertain that the products they receive are fairtrade ones.

Why is it a bad idea?

Well, for one, we have to pay a high-end fee in euros just to get the certification saying that there is, in fact, nothing wrong with our company. 

And then we have to pay some more money annually  in order that we may retain this certification. So instead of charging fees off of people who keep a company going in unethical conditions, it's the good ones they charge.

This means that for those companies working within parameters appealing for the fairtrade certification, there is no incentive to go ahead and get the certification done unless they have a lot of magic money which they didn't earn in profit, because they were so caught up in fair-trade and making things better for their employees.

Moreover, the investigation as we observed it, was kind of lackadaisal. A few people dressed like tourists (note to say that they were actually Indian) came around and said "ah well, my friend wanted me to buy her one of those bathrobes, where can I get it?" asking absolutely no queations relevant to wages, cleanliness or dyeing processes.

Final reflection.

It's simple. The idea is to basically limit the need for external certification of our honesty by basically communicating effectively with the end user.

That will be the aim of the film and all our advertising/ marketing endeavours.