World of Good on ebay

"4 billion people—often in developing nations—earn $1,500/year, and most businesses traditionally view these people as customers. WorldofGood.com wanted to inverse this fundamental approach. “We flipped it on its head,” said Chatwani. “Instead of bringing products into those markets, we are pulling out products from those areas with entrepreneurs.” TriplePundit

Ebay launches World of Good, a marketplace for socially responsible goods and companies. Looks pretty good to me. Any one have any products on it? Any stories?

Technorati Tags: philanthropy, social enterprise

Comments

[Sarah]

This looks great! Thanks for the heads up!

[Seth McBee]

You mean we shouldn't take advantage of them, but maybe try and help them...

hmmmm

what a concept.

Will take a look, thanks for the info

[Der&k]

I've been selling WOG for two years as a retailer. Mission: Good but not the best. Product Quality: Varies. The trinkets have mostly been cheap, what you might expect from a Bazaar selling not so fairly traded goods. I have stuck to selling the bags, woven items and jewelry, the quality is more consistent. In the US and Canada we have another option with higher quality products with a similar, if not better in some ways, mission at tenthousandvillages.com. When I was living in NZ I found similar shops scattered around the north island with different names. Via the internet you can shop locally at etsy.com and from talented kiwi's at endemicworld.com, two sites that have intrigued me and others I work with.

[Bob Randolf]

Ebay made over 346 Million dollars in the last quarter of 2007. Why do they need a 20 cent listing fee form an artist living on $1 per day? Why does an indigenous person have to join Paypal at the premier level?

Why do Sheeple still fall for this kind of corporate "paint it green and call it green." PR? I call Shenanigans.

Ebay has the money make this truly revolutionary for these artists, but what they are really doing is putting a new skin on current listings and hoping to scam buyers into a guilt purchase in which they take all of the profit.

[andrew]

interesting . . thanks . . any other opinions and experiences?

[joe]

I'm with Bob and distrust large corporations. That said, we need more imagination to bring work to disadvantaged communities in such a way to ensure they receive a much bigger proportion of the sale price, and I am not sure any of the existing consumer models address that sufficiently. I really like models like etsy, and the growing movement in the US for regenerating clothing led by websites such as threadbangers.com. Ultimately, I think the movement is going to be towards more local production.

The difficulty is that whilst there is a growing number of producers who deliver products directly to consumers (which is obviously cutting out all the expensive shops and expensive middlemen), this has implications in terms of scale and efficient shipping of products. We would probably do a lot of good buying t-shirts directly from factories, but imagine all of the extra flights it would require.

[joe]

I'm with Bob and distrust large corporations. That said, we need more imagination to bring work to disadvantaged communities in such a way to ensure they receive a much bigger proportion of the sale price, and I am not sure any of the existing consumer models address that sufficiently. I really like models like etsy, and the growing movement in the US for regenerating clothing led by websites such as threadbangers.com. Ultimately, I think the movement is going to be towards more local production.

The difficulty is that whilst there is a growing number of producers who deliver products directly to consumers (which is obviously cutting out all the expensive shops and expensive middlemen), this has implications in terms of scale and efficient shipping of products. We would probably do a lot of good buying t-shirts directly from factories, but imagine all of the extra flights it would require.

[preacherman]

Wonderful!