IN Exchange Store Opens for Aware Shoppers

October 3, 2007

Mary Ann Travis
mtravis@tulane.edu

Recent Tulane graduate Erica Trani is the driving force behind IN Exchange, a new "fair trade" retail shop in the Lavin-Bernick Center that offers works by global and local artists. (Photo by Paula Burch-Celentano)

IN Exchange, on the main floor of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, is open for business. The store is stocked with global crafts from Bali, Brazil, China, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Mexico and Vietnam, but also carries work by New Orleans artists.

Erica Trani, who graduated from Tulane in May 2007 with a double major in political science and international development, is the driving force behind IN Exchange.

The seeds of the idea to open a “social entrepreneurship” store were planted when Trani saw the handicraft of Kallari sold in the United States. Kallari is a self-governed coalition of Amazon artists and organic cocoa producers. The Kallari craft cooperative sells organically produced original crafts such as jewelry, baskets, handbags and wooden bowls and trays.

Years later, Trani traveled to Ecuador on an honors program grant to work with the cooperative. When she asked the director of the cooperative, Judy Logback, how she could be more useful, Logback told Trani that she needed “more and more consistent buyers.”

“That moment,” says Trani, “was crucial in inspiring me to open a fair trade store.”

Trani anticipates that the store in the center of the Tulane uptown campus will attract plenty of buyers. Students are a good market, she says.

“The school is full of shoppers,” she adds.

With assistance from the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship at Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business, Trani received a grant from the National Basketball Association and Lenovo computer company for startup funds to open the store and to conduct entrepreneurship workshops for New Orleans youth, using IN Exchange as a training ground.

She also raised money at a promotional fair, where she sold donated items from New Orleans Magazine Street merchants in exchange for promotion of their stores to students. The Magazine Street merchants fundraising effort provided enough money to pay legal and administrative fees to establish IN Exchange as a nonprofit organization.

Most of the merchandise for sale in the IN Exchange store is certified by the Fair Trade Federation.

Fair Trade “means an equitable and fair partnership between businesses and organizations in the developed world and producers in the developing world,” according to the Fair Trade Federation website.

Members of the federation are committed to paying fair wages, supporting participatory workplaces, ensuring environmental sustainability, supplying financial and technical support, respecting cultural identity, offering public accountability and educating consumers.

Trani embraces fair trade principles as she searches around the world for bracelets, necklaces and other gorgeous things made from sustainable seeds and plant fibers.

After Hurricane Katrina, Trani expanded her initial store concept beyond selling only global crafts to also include the work of New Orleans artists. Trani sent out a call for artists who have lived for at least the last five years in the metropolitan New Orleans area and who have income less than 70 percent the median average for the area.

The creativity and vision of the local artists she’s discovered “blow me away” with their impressive work, says Trani. Two artists whose work is for sale in the IN Exchange store are Memise and Dudley Watson.

Memise is a versatile, whimsical artist from Folsom, La., who works in papier-mâché. Watson is a painter who, during the Katrina flooding, was stranded for two days in his attic and then spent another day clinging to a tree before he was rescued. During that experience, he vowed to paint, if he survived, as he’d never painted before. Watson’s abstract paintings suggest water imagery—and the joy of living. Watson has told Trani that he makes art now because he feels he must.

The work of Memise and Watson are among an array of items on IN Exchange’s elegant display shelves, showcased by museum-quality lighting. Goods for sale include paintings, gifts, jewelry, sun-catchers, folk art, paper beads, handbags, journals, computer bags, ceramics, mirrors and wall hangings.

“I strongly believe in social entrepreneurship,” says Trani. “And anyone who comes through the door [of IN Exchange] will learn about it.”

So, all you shoppers out there (you know who you are), check out IN Exchange, put your social conscience into action—and buy cool stuff in the bargain.