About Us
Eileen's Imports
Eileen’s Imports was started by Eileen Kardos five years ago, with
a box of greeting cards and a small stack of shoulder bags. Now she imports
products from nearly twenty groups, primarily from south east Asia (Thailand,
Cambodia and Vietnam), but also from Africa (Zimbabwe and Kenya), and additionally
from Peru, and Nepal. Wholesale distribution extends to about fifty shops
around the UK.
She is an approved importer and member of The British Association of Fair Trade Shops (BAFTS), as well as an Associate member of The International Fair Trade Association (IFAT). All of the goods she sells are IFAT approved.
There are not nearly enough products in the world than can carry both ethical, Fair Trade as well as green and eco-friendly banners, but she seeks out as many as possible.
She is available to do slide-show talks (schools, churches, women’s groups, etc) drawing on her background in both photography and as an ex-comedienne. See Contact Us if you’d like to book an event, whether it’s combined with a retail event or a slide-show talk on its own.
A wholesale section of this website will be created in 2009. At present a catalogue mail order system is in use. Please contact us if you are a retailer wanting to receive a catalogue and our wholesale terms and conditions.
About Fair Trade
Fair Traders aspire to eliminate extreme poverty by doing business, as honestly, fairly, and respectfully as we can. See “Links” for further information.
We interpret Fair Trade’s basic principles as aiming:
- Wherever possible to engage in ethical business practices, to be generous with training and development, and to promote social justice.
- To pay workers a living wage.
- To promote safe working conditions and reasonable hours.
- To allow workers to form a union if they choose to.
- To not tolerate child labour which is unwanted and interferes with education. .
- To oppose discrimination to do with gender, sexual orientation, religion, politics, ethnicity, nationality or age.
- To endeavour to support those historically disenfranchised: women, the disabled, the uneducated, and those in neglected rural areas.
- To favour traditional, hand-made crafts.
- To protect the environment, using naturally sustainable and eco-friendly materials wherever available.
- To not flit from one supplier to the next, in pursuit of the lowest price, but to establish long-range relationships with trading partners, in aid of their stability.
- To educate buyers in developed nations about the above issues, and about the lives of those in less developed parts of the world.
- To operate at as modest a level as possible, and to re-invest profits back into the business rather than to shareholders.