CHAPTER ONE

WEAR YOUR VALUES

Custom Products That Reflect More Than Your Favorite Logo

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In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

—COCO CHANEL, FASHION DESIGNER

On that first trip to India, when I visited Sari Bari with the McCain Institute, I also went to another extraordinary business, an artisan cooperative called Freeset. Operating just outside Sonagachi, the largest red light district in Kolkata, Freeset calls itself a “freedom business,” a company that helps create freedom for those who have previously been exploited. Freeset’s mission is to see the ten thousand prostituted women (and men) in its neighborhood liberated from the sex trade and free to do dignified work.

The artisans employed by Freeset upcycle sari fabric and sew custom jute and canvas bags, T-shirts, and key chains, which they screen-print with logos, quotes, and bold graphic images. Mrs. McCain and I went there with the team from the International Justice Mission, and when we arrived Freeset gave each of us a great navy travel tote. It had a cross-body strap and the phrase Be Free screen-printed on one side. I put my wallet and sunglasses in it, slung it over my body, and wore it the whole week (after I tied a red ribbon around one strap to make it feel more “me”). The ability to do custom screen printing differentiates Freeset from many other artisan groups. The jute bag was highly functional and so sturdy that I took it with me on another trip to India and Nepal a year later. But I had no idea at the time that the little bag would play such a key role in my future business.

Freeset’s building looked huge and drab at first glance, a multistory cement-block structure resembling a parking garage. But the color and activity inside were amazing. I stood in the central courtyard, looking up at just-washed, colorful sari fabric—manufacturing scraps, unsold yardage, and discarded garments—hanging from clotheslines strung between the balconies. The women there would transform these discards into beautiful new bags. I craned my neck to watch as several women in traditional dress, sitting on a floor high above me, carefully braided long strips of sari into handles and zipper pulls for cotton or jute bags.

Our whole group tramped from floor to floor, trying not to trip over one another as we navigated the narrow, steep stairs. There were workshops on every floor and storage rooms for heavy rolls of organic cotton. We stopped at the third level, and I peeked over the railing. I could see down to the ground floor, where two women sat on the chipped concrete floor next to a pile of fabric scraps in aqua, copper, mustard, and rose. One woman was leaning gracefully against a low wall, her legs stretched out before her, delicate ankles crossed, shiny black hair twisted into a low bun. She wore a white sari decorated with vibrant red and yellow flowers, the top draped over one shoulder, exposing a gold cotton-spandex shirt underneath.

The two women looked to be in their thirties or forties. I was struck by their calm focus and their elegance. Freeset employs many women in their thirties, forties, and fifties, giving them—like the fabric they sew—a second chance. It was an encouraging scene to witness, these two women working quietly together, transforming this traditional fabric into useful, appealing products. I smiled when I noticed that both women wore gold jewelry. Throughout many parts of the world, having enough money to buy a gold necklace or bracelet is a milestone, a signifier of financial stability. The fact that these women were sitting serenely in their beautiful dresses, working hard and wearing gold, indicated a level of economic security—and to me, spoke to the dignity that the opportunity to work afforded them.

Freeset was started by a New Zealand couple named Kerry and Annie Hilton. The Hiltons moved to Kolkata with their four children in 1999 with a vision of living among the world’s poorest people. As they tell the story, they rented an apartment that looked fine during the day, only to discover at night that it happened to be located in the center of the city’s largest red light area. Their new neighbors were the thousands of women forced into prostitution by trafficking and/or poverty.

The Hiltons, much like Sarah Lance, quickly realized that so many of the women yearned for an opportunity to earn money in some other way. They, too, got the idea of handicrafts. After experimenting with different products and testing the market, they decided to offer the women training in jute bag construction for the export market. They opened Freeset in 2001 with twenty women. Today, the two hundred plus workers can turn out one thousand bags a day, almost all of which are customized. They earn twice the going rate of other seamstresses in India and also receive health insurance and a pension plan, as well as health education, psychological support, and other social services. The products Freeset makes offer customers a consistent level of quality, a key to remaining a competitive, self-sustaining business.

The products were so well done that I wanted to take home more. I bought a pencil case and a few other bags printed with uplifting quotes, partly to support the co-op and partly because you never know when you need a gift. I didn’t realize these bags, along with my new navy travel tote, would wind up serving as samples for my yet-to-be-envisioned company—or that customization would play such a huge role.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO FIGHT IT

Sonagachi, the most infamous red light district in Kolkata, is maybe a square mile, but Freeset estimates that more than ten thousand women live there, most working in the sex trade. The neighborhood is loud, dirty, and chaotic. Thousands of men visit daily. Many of the women in Sonagachi are from Bangladesh, Nepal, or rural India. Most have been trafficked—lured by false promises of good work or marriage—or even kidnapped or trafficked by a relative. For most, including mothers driven to prostitution to feed their children, poverty has left them without any clear alternative or way to leave.

The term trafficking basically means “to trade or exchange,” and it’s used to describe all kinds of illegal trade, including of drugs, weapons, and people. If human trafficking, the buying and selling of people, sounds like slavery, that’s because it is. The International Labour Organization estimates that human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and that an estimated forty million people are living in modern-day slavery in this way.

Both adults and children are trafficked for sex, hard labor, and warfare. Regarding sex for money, anyone under the age of eighteen is considered a victim of sex trafficking according to U.S. federal law, because it’s happening below the age of legal consent. A runaway who winds up on the street, turning tricks to survive, is considered a victim of sex trafficking. Sexual exploitation has devastating consequences on children, including a higher risk of carrying infectious diseases, malnutrition, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide.

Labor trafficking describes adults and children forced to do various types of work against their will. As with sex trafficking, victims are held through coercion, fraud, force, or the threat of force; they’re often lured by false promises of decent work, then forced into inhumane conditions and hours, and prevented from leaving. They may be barely compensated and forced to pay a high recruitment fee, which places them in debt bondage. Traffickers often take their passports and money, and make threats against them or their families if they leave.

Child labor trafficking plagues many of the products we use today. The U.S. Department of Labor lists 136 goods made in 74 countries that are at significant risk of being made with child labor, including tobacco from Brazil and cotton from Burkina Faso.

The rate of forced child soldier recruitment has risen alongside ongoing conflicts in Africa and Asia. Children as young as eight have reportedly been used by the Taliban, Congolese, and South Sudanese militias in the last few years, while the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has developed targeted programs to forcibly recruit child soldiers, dubbed “cubs of the caliphate.” This trafficking has also resulted in young men and some women fleeing their home countries out of fear of forced recruitment, leaving them alone and vulnerable to other kinds of exploitation such as labor and sex trafficking.

There are so many great organizations working to end human trafficking. A donation to any of these is an immediate way to fight back:

• CAST, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery, is a twenty-year-old group dedicated to ending trafficking in Los Angeles, one of the largest centers for human trafficking in the United States.

• ECPAT International uses a network of local civil society organizations in almost one hundred countries to help counter child sex tourism.

• Free the Slaves works locally in vulnerable communities, with programs that help impoverished Nepalis spot international traffickers posing as foreign labor recruiters.

• Freeset Trust teaches women in India skills that are necessary to truly experience freedom, including reading, writing, budgeting, and basic health care.

• Human Rights Watch does major advocacy work on behalf of child survivors and victims of forced labor, lobbying governments and the public to have zero tolerance for issues like children working in cotton fields.

• Humanity United works very closely with businesses to help fight labor trafficking, including investing in technologies that give more supply-chain transparency.

• International Justice Mission helps to eradicate trafficking through the justice system, operating as a kind of pro bono global law firm for the poor. They’ve helped free labor trafficking victims from brick kilns, quarries, and mines.

• The McCain Institute works on anti–sex trafficking legislation, as well as labor trafficking in agriculture, in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. I sit on the McCain Institute’s Human Trafficking Advisory Council, which includes leaders from the for-profit and nonprofit world.

• Polaris Project operates the United States’ National Human Trafficking Hotline and has helped to set up other nations’ human trafficking hotlines.

• Sari Bari USA is a U.S.-based nonprofit that helps fund the training, health services, HIV/AIDS support, and school program of Sari Bari India.

• Thorn, known as the Digital Defenders of Children, uses technology to deter predators, identify victims, and disrupt child sexual exploitation platforms.

THE QUEST FOR INDIVIDUALITY IN OUR HYPER-CONNECTED WORLD

When I was growing up, we had small, personalized items commemorating special occasions around my house, and I always loved them. I had a round, silver jewelry box that my grandfather gave me when I was born, with my initials and birthdate engraved on the lid. I still have this box in my living room. My grandfather has since passed away, and seeing this box on my end table every day makes me think of him, and feels very special.

We also had inexpensive customized objects in the house, and these, too, felt meaningful. My brother and I shared a bathroom when we were kids, and my mom ordered each of us a set of bath towels with our first names (so we wouldn’t fight over washcloths or bath sheets). His were red while mine were navy, both with white lettering. After my sister was born, she got in on the act (white towels, navy letters). It felt very sweet and homey to have my own towels, and I have continued to order the same style, from the Company Store, into adulthood.

Personalizing products—from monogramming towels to engraving the back of an engagement ring to customizing keepsakes—has a long tradition. In Western culture, the idea of carving initials to show ownership or origin dates back at least to ancient Greece. Greek coins often had the first one or two letters of a city engraved on one side, or the name of a ruler, and a profile on the other. The word monogram, in fact, comes from the Latin “mono,” meaning “only,” and the Greek “gram,” meaning “unit.” (You can see these early monograms at coin shows or in catalogs of rare coins.)

In the Middle Ages, merchants marked their goods with a type of monogram, or added a seal with their initials or other personal marks. These seals were a precursor of today’s trademarks, a way of showing origin or uniqueness. Artisans, tradesmen, painters, and publishers also used initials to identify their works or their guild. The kind of personal monogram we tend to think about today really took off in Victorian England. The rise of a moneyed merchant class brought with it the desire among these newly rich to distinguish themselves, to appear upper class and refined. One popular way to assert status was by monogramming linens, lockets, shirts, and seals. A wealthy, non-noble family couldn’t have a royal crest, but its members could display their family name or initials in ornate letters. Many of us grew up with these kinds of monogrammed articles around our homes, and we still give and receive them.

The desire for personalization has really intensified in recent years, certainly among my generation. A lot of my friends design sneakers for themselves on Vans.com, Newbalance.com, Adidas.com, or Nike.com. You can choose wacky color combinations and even add your initials or upload an image. I’ve ordered custom sunglasses for bachelorette parties, screen-printed T-shirts for church outings, and personalized birthday cakes for my husband, Nate (including one with Oscar the Grouch climbing from a garbage can, because Nate runs a waste and recycling company).

For my thirtieth birthday, my friend Natalie gave me a pair of TOMS shoes that had been hand-painted with Disney princesses by someone she located on Etsy. She knows I love everything Disney—the parks, the movies, the company’s story. To get these shoes made, she had to scout out my size, find an illustrator, and choose which Disney princesses to include. Her effort meant so much to me, and I love the fact that no one else has these shoes.

Not everyone wants Disney princess shoes, but we all use clothing and accessories to make a statement about ourselves. When I started looking around, I noticed my peers were personalizing all kinds of products, in new and novel ways. Some people give monogrammed journals and ties, cover their arms with tattoos of special words or images, or plaster stickers all over their MacBooks—all attempts to stand out and be unique.

Many people feel increasingly compelled to establish and assert their own personal brand, for a variety of reasons. I think we’re seeing a huge uptick in customization because of this, and because it’s increasingly difficult to make any kind of unique, personal statement through clothing bought off the rack. The Internet has made style more universal, and it’s easier than ever for factories to quickly replicate a high-fashion garment at a low price with fast-to-market production.

Meanwhile, the expansion of international distribution routes by new and existing carriers has turned those living in formerly inaccessible nations into viable (and eager) purchasers. We have global style leaders, and anyone can copy them. That’s always been the case somewhat, with ready-to-wear brands copying haute couture, but not to this degree, not as quickly, and not all around the world. (I read a hilarious op-ed by the investor Lawrence Lenihan in the Business of Fashion about the ever-shrinking time line of the fashion cycle. He notes the speed at which an on-trend item now goes from being introduced by a “cool kids” brand and selling at high-fashion stores to becoming the equivalent of “dad/mom jeans” sold at Kmart.)

WHAT “CUSTOM” MEANS NOW

There are so many ways to make something yours (or “theirs,” in the case of a customized gift) beyond initials or a wacky design. You can buy the change you want to see by taking a broad view of the idea of customization. In the case of a gift, I really like including a note sharing why the business I bought from is special.

Choose How It’s Made: You might buy from a company producing in a zero waste production facility or that specializes in low-environmental-impact production. You could choose to purchase products made by hand, for both the unique, personal feel and because you value artisanship. You might love fabrics that have been woven or dyed in a traditional technique, made by a community keeping that skill set alive. You could choose agricultural products like coffee or chocolate that are shade grown (rather than cultivated at a massive, clear-cut farm), or free-range chicken or beef.

Pick What It’s Made Of: Your products might speak for you through their constituent parts. Vegetarian? You can buy on-trend “vegan leather” bags from small-batch maker Matt & Nat, or vegetarian leather from high-end label Stella McCartney. You might look for T-shirts made from recycled plastic bottles, scout out furniture and paper made from sustainable wood or fast-growing grasses, choose stemware made from recycled glass, or snag a party dress at a vintage store.

Decide Who Will Make It: You can customize a blouse or bag by buying one made by someone in a community you want to support, such as workers in the United States or in a specific union (look for union labels). You might want to support people with autism or a physical disability, and your customization could mean buying from companies employing those groups. If you’re focused on criminal justice reform, you can buy from a prison program; for more than eighty years, the Maine State Prison Showroom has been selling amazing handcrafted wooden gifts made by inmates, including rocking horses, Adirondack-style chairs, and beautiful, intricate model sailboats. The nonprofit Fashion Revolution has started a campaign called #whomademyclothes, which allows workers and brands around the world to post pictures of their workers that are captioned “I made your bag.”

Identify Your Ideal Seller: You can buy from companies that source ethically, or from local, independent grocery stores or food cooperatives. You might customize by shopping at a business started by a mom (or dad), or from a parent or neighbor trying direct selling through a company like Avon, Noonday Collection, or Sseko Designs. You might choose to support the entrepreneurial endeavors of an older adult or a recent grad. You might also focus on the give-back component: Does a potential seller donate a portion of proceeds to veterans, marine research, animals, or something else you care about?

All these factors mean that a company like the Gap can sell the same skirt in multiple nations, and that a shirt you buy at a store like JCPenney might show up halfway across the world, with some small change to the design, at a store selling it for a third of the price. In today’s hyper-connected consumer environment, it feels like everything is everywhere.

I was in Asia in the summer of 2017, touring factories that produce apparel and shoes for the fashion conglomerate VF. (I’d recently begun serving on VF’s Responsible Sourcing Advisory Council.) I saw seamstresses and shoemakers at a factory in Cambodia dressed in jeans and fitted T-shirts that could have come directly out of my own closet. To the Market also has a partner cooperative in Cambodia. There, I met with a young, upbeat co-op manager and jewelry maker wearing a ruffled denim miniskirt, espadrilles, and a black-and-white gingham shirt with two cotton lace ruffles down the front. I would wear any of those pieces, which she might have bought in any of the local boutiques in Phnom Penh. I’d felt the globalization of fashion but hadn’t yet considered how it might help vulnerable communities.

I was also aware of a growing trend in customizing products through how we purchase them, not just what we buy—the basis of the conscious consumer movement. Recent Pew research on millennials found that members of this generation will pay more for eco-friendly products and that we believe our values are reflected in the brands we wear and carry. Ordering T-shirts screen-printed by at-risk youths in the United States, for example, feels like an increasingly relevant way to make an important statement about ourselves, to say that we care about others and that we want to make a positive impact. This rise in conscious consumerism was evident among my peers, and among businesses I’d studied in business school and those I’d read up on since.

Like individuals, companies are working harder than ever to stand out. Companies need to create positive brand associations, and to make their values clear to consumers. This effort really matters in today’s increasingly crowded global marketplace, and in response to growing scrutiny from consumers, investors, and employees about business practices. Increasingly, companies are seeking to tell stories about themselves that show they are being “good citizens” in the world and that showcase their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. In 2015, more than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies published CSR reports, compared to only 20 percent just four years earlier—a sign of their focus.

Standing in the screen printing room of Freeset on that first trip, I had an immediate sense that its customization capability could be hugely marketable. I hadn’t yet connected this capacity to the economic and social pressures on businesses, nor did I have my own company at the time; I’d just begun working for the McCain Institute. But I was aware of the increasing drive to say something unique about ourselves and our businesses. At that moment, the fact that Freeset could add a custom logo to a product made by a survivor of human trafficking felt like a double incentive for a potential buyer—and got my mind working.

When I returned from India, I couldn’t get Freeset and Sari Bari out of my mind. I began thinking about how I could add value to the work they were doing. How could I create more opportunities for the women employed there? I knew their products were well made and could compete with those of traditional manufacturers. But their story was a hundred times more compelling—if people had a chance to hear it.

I started researching the artisan industry. I read about the economies and market dynamics dominating the developing world. I talked with founders of artisan businesses to better understand their struggles and the most promising directions. I thought about the future of consumer behavior, and researched the product categories that were currently selling well and the types of retail businesses that were flourishing.

I’d launched plenty of initiatives at the State Department and the McCain Institute, but I’d never started a business. I knew I had an affinity for creating new projects, and a comfort with tapping into my network to locate the people and resources needed to make them work. I’d spent a decade learning how to identify the decision makers within an organization and fine-tuning my natural skill at rousing enthusiasm for a new idea that challenges the status quo. I’d also grown accustomed to looking for people’s personal motivations, and I largely accepted the reality that most people will support a new initiative or make real change in how they operate if they can see how it benefits them.

I bounced various business ideas off my friends and co-workers. I’d often show people the bags I’d brought back from Freeset and Sari Bari as a way to help illustrate the story and demonstrate the quality of their work.

I was thrilled to see how much people got it, and how easy it was to communicate my excitement about the founding and vision of these businesses. I knew I was onto something.

By the end of 2013, I had an initial outline of a business plan—at least the first iteration of it. I would connect with a couple dozen cooperatives employing vulnerable communities around the world, including Sari Bari and Freeset, and launch a website to sell their products to consumers here. None of these groups had an easy way to reach people in the United States. Even if they put up a website, they lacked the marketing budget necessary to help people find it. I’d do the promotion on the U.S. side and work to expand their market. I really believed there was a huge opportunity to increase the distribution of the two groups in India and others like them.

I made a few key decisions about my business structure right away. We would be for-profit. I felt strongly that if my message to vulnerable communities was about the dignity of work and the power of economic opportunity, my operation needed to be sustainable on its own and generate profits for itself, its employees, and its investors. Our social impact would come from who we employed and how they were employed, rather than through a give-back model. I was driven to start this company by my deep-seated belief in the transformational value of work—so evident on that first trip to India. All products we sold would be made by groups employing vulnerable communities in an ethical way. Our partners would be on the ground in these communities, paying a fair wage and offering safe working environments. I wanted a business model that would help vulnerable people to regain—or gain for the first time—their agency. I wanted to be a part of giving them choices.

In December 2013, I left the McCain Institute to get started. I spent the next nine months building up the back end of what would become To the Market’s direct-to-consumer website. My goal was to launch the site in time for the holiday shopping season of 2014.

I had a huge amount of work to do, from building a website, to figuring out pricing, to creating a distribution system, to finding the ethical producers whose work we could sell. I put the word out to people I knew and trusted. I told them about the business and that I was looking for groups to represent, specifically those that employed survivors of human trafficking, sexual assault or domestic violence, ongoing conflict, natural disasters, or stigmatized diseases. I got referrals through friends and colleagues, and made time to visit or asked friends to visit these groups. People really went out of their way to share the news about my developing company, which felt incredibly encouraging. I was so passionate about this idea and about my personal role in helping create economic opportunity. I think others stepped forward to help in response to my heartfelt commitment.

WAIT! THERE’S A BUSINESS FOR THOSE BAGS?

We launched our consumer website in November 2014, as planned. Right away, something surprising happened; we began to get inquiries for custom goods from nonprofits and businesses. We had nothing on the site about custom orders, no subsection for corporations and nonprofits. But people reached out to request information about custom products for their organizations. They saw connections between their work and ours that I hadn’t recognized—whether they worked for groups that supported women, fought trafficking, worked to end conflict, focused on international development, or promoted economic empowerment.

Corporate swag, it turns out, is a huge business, with more than $20 billion spent on it annually in the United States alone. The combined business expenditure on logoed products in the United States is more than the total economy of many countries, as I soon learned. I hadn’t fully recognized the scope of the custom goods space at the business and nonprofit level. I’d worked in the public sector for most of my career; there’s not much room for swag in the government. Sure, the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol would occasionally order messaged giveaway items, but the government doesn’t have a major marketing arm, and there are important regulations around gift giving to avoid the appearance (and reality) of favoritism or bribery. Businesses and nonprofits, however, have a huge need—and often a serious budget—for logoed products that promote their brand and tell a positive story about their work and their values.

My first order came before I’d even launched the site, from the McCain Institute, which focuses, in part, on fighting human trafficking in the supply chain. A former colleague needed two hundred bags for a conference and loved the little jute travel tote I’d shown her from Freeset. She thought it would be great to purchase bags like those, screen-printed with the conference logo. These would be bags whose very creation supported the McCain Institute’s anti–human trafficking mission.

Immediately after I launched the site, the mother of my friend Kelly, who is involved in the University of Texas’s Center for Women in Law, connected me with their conference organizer. She thought that, given the center’s focus on women, it would make sense to have bags made by women for that year’s annual convention. These, too, were screen-printed. Then an order came in from Humanity United, a large private funder of anti–human trafficking work in the United States. They wanted custom screen-printed tote bags to give to members of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST).

Once I launched my company, this happened again and again. Despite our online focus on direct-to-consumer accessories (and our truly minimal outreach to promote custom goods), there was ongoing interest from people working at organizations who saw connections between our work and their mission, or our vision and their customers’ interests, or our producers and their stated CSR aims. Some requests came from employees who had taken that next step in their thinking about swag, realizing that the products that bear their organization’s name could, and should, reflect the values they espouse. Even small- and medium-size businesses buy branded merchandise, participate in marketing events and recruitment fairs, and order client gifts and orders came from them, too.

Businesses today need to show that they are doing good in the world, and to focus like never before on branding. Businesses are facing what I have come to call a “trifecta of pressure and interest” that didn’t exist as recently as ten years ago. The first part of this trifecta is growing consumer demand to know more about how the products they buy are made, particularly among millennial and Gen-Z shoppers (but also among Gen Xers and even some baby boomers). We don’t trust large corporations as much as people did in the past. We’re skeptical, questioning, detached. Technology and the mass communication that has come with it have made us more aware of the importance of safe working conditions and a fair wage; we’re far less comfortable buying goods that may have been produced in unsafe or inhumane ways. As consumers today, we ask ourselves: What had to happen at the factory for this shirt to cost only two dollars? Companies are increasingly being challenged to answer these kinds of questions.

Investors are also demanding answers. In the past couple of years, showing good corporate citizenship has become increasingly important because a growing number of socially conscious investors are screening potential investees through a lens of environmental, social, and/or governance standards, often called “ESG.” These kinds of considerations are becoming serious factors in billion-dollar-plus investment decisions. Pension funds, for example, are shying away from companies with poor ESG, such as those that dump hazardous waste or buy from dangerous factories.

The second part of the trifecta is increased scrutiny by the press, investors, employees, and amateur investigative reporters. Companies can’t really operate in a black box of secrecy when it comes to sourcing anymore because people are asking questions, sharing information, and applying pressure on retailers to make a positive impact on the world.

New regulations are the third part of the trifecta. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, which went into effect in 2012, requires retailers and manufacturers that do business in California and have worldwide gross receipts of more than $100 million to report on their websites their actions to eradicate slavery and human trafficking in their supply chains. As the state’s resource guide on the act puts it, “An estimated 21 million people—11.4 million women and girls and 9.5 million men and boys—are victims of forced labor around the globe.” California, which boasts one of the country’s largest consumer bases, has a unique ability to make demands on business. But Californians are not alone in using information about sourcing practices to make purchasing decisions; as a recent survey of Western consumers revealed, many people would be willing to pay extra for products they could identify as being made under good working conditions.

In Europe, the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015 is designed to tackle slavery in England and Wales. Companies cited for slavery, human trafficking, and exploitation can have their assets confiscated and be required to make reparations. As James Brokenshire, then the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Crime and Security, put it, the act will “send the strongest possible message to criminals that if you are involved in this disgusting trade in human beings, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted, and you will be locked up.”

It’s so important for CSR (and ESG) objectives to be sustainable. Sadly, if there’s no clear business case for them, those programs can be the first to get cut if sales are down, leaving that charity or group in the lurch. Companies have begun to recognize that they need not only to have viable social good goals, but also to ensure their continuity. One of the best ways to guarantee a social initiative’s survival is to tie it to the core business interests, which logoed merchandise clearly can do. If a company buys bags from Freeset, a type of purchase it is going to make anyway, it can say to the world, “Look at our social responsibility. We support women-owned businesses and source products made by vulnerable communities with 100 percent organic cotton.”

Not all corporations are looking for ethically produced swag, but I think they should. This money has already been allocated; it’s just a question of changing where it’s spent. If your company focuses on the environment, and then hands out plastic key chains that people immediately toss, there’s a disconnect between your mission and your method that undermines the authenticity of your message. If people throw out that key chain or magnetic calendar (with your business logo on it), they’re figuratively trashing your company and literally making you contribute to the proliferation of waste. Customizing in a way that aligns with your company’s values, on the other hand, gives a far better return on investment. It’s also easier, and often less expensive, than you may realize. If you think about your organization’s marketing goals and CSR objectives, then consider the variety of techniques that can be used to decorate so many different things, ideas will come to you—as I was seeing. People at every level of an organization have power to harness the market to make change in this way. You may be in charge of a small, regular purchase at your company—such as speaker gifts or office supplies—and that decision-making power can have a big impact on someone else’s life.

HELPING A BIG BANK MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

At the end of 2016, a friend connected me to someone who worked as a vice president in marketing and events at the Manhattan headquarters of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). The banking industry struck me as the perfect partner for To the Market. Banks host numerous large-scale events, tend to want upmarket gifts for attendees, and usually have fairly progressive corporate social responsibility goals. Also, the quantitative focus of a banking industry event can be pretty dry; a gift with an uplifting story would be a welcome addition to a day-long meeting or statistics-heavy conference. A bag sewn by the women at a cooperative like Freeset would also let the bank create a more personal connection with attendees and share its social values.

CLASSIC CUSTOMIZATION

PUT YOUR STAMP ON IT, LITERALLY

While the ways in which we customize have expanded, many of the techniques and materials used to add monograms or logos remain the same. Here are some options.

Screen Printing: Each individual screen allows a different color of ink to seep through onto a material, adding up to one beautiful image. The more colors an image has, the more individual screens have to be created, and the more expensive it becomes. This is the most popular customization option for To the Market’s clients for bags and T-shirts because of its vivid colors and durability.

Heat Transfer: Similar to screen printing but less expensive, this method of transferring an image or logo from one material to another works well for vinyl tablecloths (think trade show coverings) and cotton bags. Heat transfer requires high temperature and high pressure and allows for complicated images, like a photograph, to be transferred to hundreds of pieces—though that heat-transferred picture on the back of your T-shirt may not last through repeated washings as well as a screen-printed one would.

Embossing: Great for adding a name to a set of thank-you cards or a logo to a leather-bound journal, embossing is a high-end, understated way of personalizing by creating a raised image on the material, without additional color. Debossing is basically the same idea in reverse: a recessed relief image.

Embroidery: The art of writing with thread, embroidery is an elegant way to add your name, initials, or logo to fabric. Embroiderers use colorful silk or cotton floss, or even gold or silver thread, and write in a variety of stitch styles. The backstitch creates one long line, as with a pen, while the satin stitch fills in a large area with color. This traditional craft your grandmother might have enjoyed is often done by a machine today. If you buy a pair of Mickey Mouse ears at Disneyland or Disney World, you can watch the embroidery machine add your name to the back while you wait (I happen to know.)

Engraving: While I think of silver as the classic material on which to add a monogram, plenty of companies engrave glass, wood, or even stationery. Engraving means cutting a design into a hard surface, from initials into a tree with a pocketknife to a logo onto a glass with a laser engraving machine. Early printing was basically engraving; the text or image would be cut into a plate, which was inked, then pressed against paper.

Giclée: If you’ve seen those personalized prints on canvas of your friends’ kids or dogs that look like they were painted, you’ve seen a giclée print—basically a high-quality inkjet print done on canvas. The creation of super-high-quality printers, often using archival-quality ink, has allowed for these one-of-a-kind art-quality prints.

Wax Seal Stamps: A wax seal—melted wax that is stamped with a metal, wood, or cork die, then hardened—once served as an authenticator, much like a signature today. Mentions of wax seals can be found in the Old Testament. This method of signing a document fell out of favor as literacy, and the ability to recognize a signature, became more widespread. Today, wax seals are a sophisticated addition, used to close an envelope elegantly, or as a decorative embellishment on paper, wine bottles, or ribbon.

On a chilly Wednesday in December, I took the train from Washington, DC, to New York. The UBS building is in the heart of Midtown, a soaring black glass tower near Radio City Music Hall, connected to the underground shops and restaurants of Rockefeller Center. The building itself feels like a branding statement. The huge floral arrangements on the receptionist’s desk, the solicitous security guards, the key card to enter the elevator banks—all these things say: this company is successful and elite; it recruits and retains the best talent, it’s a best-in-class organization. Just entering the building reminds you of your value. The lobby seems to proclaim, “You’re in an important place. You matter!”

These huge corporate headquarters can also feel, well, corporate—massive and impersonal, with cubicle after cubicle on floor after floor. This feeling made me more even excited to share our story, because one individual employee at a place like UBS can make a procurement decision that touches real people in a real way. I felt sure employees would welcome a chance to do something outside the ordinary at work.

I checked in at the desk, and the woman I was meeting, Letitia, came down to get me. We sat together in her cubicle, and I explained that I saw an opportunity for UBS to showcase its values through the products it already buys. I explained how making even small changes in the supply chain, such as by procuring ethically produced swag, would be a great, easy, visible way to promote the company’s social responsibility objectives. Businesses have largely been in autopilot about swag, but UBS could spend money on customer recruitment in a way that reminds potential customers, investors, and employees of its values. I articulated my vision to UBS.

I got the order immediately. It was for thousands of screen-printed bags for conferences throughout the coming year, which would mean thousands of dollars to Freeset. The bags would be high-end, made of 100 percent Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)–certified cotton. They would be lined and zippered, have three pockets, and be printed with the UBS logo. That one decision by Letitia and her team was incredibly valuable to Freeset. The order helped the artisans pay rent, send their babies to the on-site day care, and provide schooling for their older children. This order, and others like it, continue to help break the cycle of poverty, which can otherwise persist for generations.

The order gave me a huge shot of confidence. It was exactly the kind of proof of concept you look for when starting a business or pivoting to a new line. For me, it was a sign that even massive companies can source differently. We can disrupt the supply chain (as so many in the agricultural space are already doing). The scale of possibility at corporations was thrilling.

During our first two years in business, my business model began to shift more and more toward disrupting the supply chain of multinational corporations. It became increasingly clear to me that the custom goods market could play a far larger role than I’d originally planned.

The idea of starting lean—as in, not investing too much in a certain product or direction until you get feedback from the market—was really ingrained in me during business school. We were taught to put out a minimally viable product to potential customers and then pivot based on their feedback. I was glad to have this mind-set, which enabled me to seize upon the interest at the corporate level. This could be the real opportunity for these ethical producers, I realized, and for my company.

UBS presented the first batch of bags to executives attending a consumer retail conference on March 8, 2017, which coincided with International Women’s Day. The conference was at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston, and UBS invited me to attend, and displayed a big vertical poster about To the Market in one of the networking areas, near the food, where attendees hung out. I was so encouraged by their desire to highlight our work and their own corporate responsibility efforts.

Later, one of the women from the marketing department told me that non-executive attendees were asking about the bags. Where could they get them? This validated the idea that we can change how we purchase supplies. People were so excited by the quality and the story that they went out of their way to inquire about carrying a bag with someone else’s logo on it.

WEAR YOUR VALUES 2.0

I had a business, I had orders, and I’d recognized a whole vein of potential customers to tap. Now I had to see if I could get more orders from big corporations—including those where I hadn’t personally worked or didn’t have a friend of a friend, or know someone’s mother.

In the beginning, I was ordering all the custom tote bags from Freeset. But our partners around the world were working in all kinds of materials and making so many things. Couldn’t other groups do custom corporate products? How could we match what they made with the needs of companies? Unusual items that probably had never appeared in a corporate context began to seem possible, and relevant—and special. Take an oil and gas company like Shell. Wouldn’t holiday ornaments made from upcycled oil drums (by one of our our partners in Haiti) be a more compelling investor or employee gift than, say, a phone charger that might well break within days (as happened on a great Portlandia episode)? The opportunities suddenly felt boundless. There was so much room for creativity, for our partners and for To the Market.

HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES IN LOS ANGELES

Homeboy Industries sits on one of the most forlorn corners of downtown Los Angeles, a concrete patch near Chinatown, facing a silent school bus depot and a section of the elevated train. Muscle-bound men pass in and out of the front doors and stand in groups on the sidewalk, most in T-shirts or tanks that display the tattoos circling their arms and rising over their shoulders, marching up their necks, and stretching across their shaved heads. Yet there’s a feeling of safety on this corner, an invisible bubble of peace that can only be explained by the work being done and the power of the person who started it. Homeboy Industries is one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry programs in the world.

Thirty years ago, Father Gregory Boyle, an ordained Jesuit priest, began serving the men and women in the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. This was in the mid-eighties, when gang violence exploded across East LA. Father Greg (as he likes to be called) realized that young people in his parish needed a viable alternative to gang life, and came up with a novel approach: offering compassion and a job. This grew into Homeboy Industries as it is today, complete with psychotherapy and weekly math and reading sessions, drug and gang members anonymous, classes in parenting skills, anger management, domestic violence prevention, and meditation—all part of a comprehensive eighteen-month program designed to heal individuals from the inside out. The philosophy is simple but rarely seen put into action so effectively: a therapeutic environment and supportive community trumps a gang—and helps people envision a way out of violence, addiction, and incarceration.

The free tattoo-removal clinic also helps people start over. Tattoos can put a person’s life in danger if they signify the wrong gang. They might indicate that a person has been trafficked. They can turn off a potential employer in an instant. On average, more than a thousand people—both trainees and members of the broader community—head here each month to sit for the painful treatment. Doctors zap at the marks of an earlier life with a laser. It takes repeated sessions to break down the ink into small enough particles for a person’s body to metabolize it.

The services are expensive, and Homeboy Industries is able to absorb the cost thanks to grants, donations, volunteer medical professionals, and nine social enterprises that generate about 30 percent of the organization’s annual revenue and employ nearly three hundred people each year. Screen printing and catering are the most successful of its businesses, but they all provide training for future employment, either here or elsewhere.

To a customer, what also stands out about these enterprises is the quality of the products they produce. Take the tacos. The on-site Homegirl Café serves farm-to-table Latin-inspired fare from a takeout counter and a large, comfortable sit-down restaurant.

On a typical weekday it’s busy, but not so crowded that you can’t get a seat. Four LAPD cops in full uniform drop by for lunch, waving to one of the cooks visible behind the curved half wall separating the open kitchen from the diners. The cops settle in at a table with the air of regulars placing their usual order. They’re as muscle-bound as the trainees. It’s not hard to imagine these same officers of the law running into the waiters or cooks under very different circumstances. In here, they’re all part of the same vision of rehabilitation through support and training.

If you sign up for a tour, one of the trainees will give it to you—perhaps Mark*, who has tattoos down his neck, including one that says “R.I.P.” in big, black letters. Mark is thin and energetic, springy as Tigger. To start the tour, he stands outside on the sidewalk and points up at a huge mural of a butterfly painted on the concrete wall. The words tenderness, freedom, hope, and love are written in lilac and sky blue on the wings.

As Mark gestures at the mural, he tries to explain why he loves Homeboy Industries. Father Greg sees your value, he says, something that no one did, as far as he could tell, from the time he was born. Mark came here after spending eleven years in jail, finally getting out, and then finding himself bounced back in for a domestic violence incident. “That’s all I saw growing up,” he says. “Then I saw on the back of a T-shirt, ‘You are exactly what God intended when he created you.’”

The idea behind that message—that he was intended, not a mistake, that he had worth—completely flipped him out and transformed his worldview. It made him come to Homeboy Industries and stay.

Mark knows everyone in the building and jokes with them in English and Spanish. While touring the classrooms on the second floor, he stops at a bulletin board with a list of grades of fellow trainees now attending college. He points to an A gleefully. “It’s like it’s contagious, seeing someone get an A in history,” he says. “One of us, from our circumstances, got an A. It’s so inspiring.”

Later, back out on the street, Father Gregory Boyle arrives. He swings past the restaurant in his loose gait. He’s wearing baggy khakis and has a thick, white, neatly trimmed beard and a round, smiling face. Father Greg is far younger looking than you’d expect for someone who has such a huge presence in the city, and who has made such a big impact on the lives of so many of Los Angeles’s most marginalized communities. No one is beyond hope to Father Greg, as the title of his best-selling first book suggests: Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.

In Homeboy Industries’ screen-printing facility, trainees learn to create silk-screened custom logos and images for corporations, schools, nonprofits, churches, and government. You can get a quote online or buy various logoed items at the on-site store. As when buying from Freeset, wearing a shirt or carrying a bag customized by the men and women at Homeboy Industries makes a statement about your belief in the power of personal transformation. Each order also helps ensure that the programs and services remain free.

Today, Homeboy Industries is helping other groups in other cities replicate their model of support, training, and earning for marginalized populations, including the homeless, people with mental health problems, and those in addiction and recovery.

(*name changed)

Almost as soon as I began thinking about these kinds of product extensions, I began to get orders. The American Red Cross, a group that has done a great deal of work in Haiti, ordered wineglass charms made from upcycled paper from an artisan group we work with in that country. Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth, which focuses on moving people from poverty to prosperity, placed multiple orders for corporate gifts for high-visibility events such as the World Economic Forum. These gifts reflected their brand identity and advanced their core mission of sustainable economic empowerment. Today, we’ve expanded our custom ethical supplier base to more than one hundred partners in over twenty countries, and most can make products for businesses. It’s become the core focus of our company, far bigger than direct to consumer. It’s also the track that is making our company stand out. Working with corporations means larger orders, making it a better financial model for us, and more lucrative for our producers. We increasingly distribute orders for our most popular items to a handful of cooperatives to provide steady work for many—rather than subjecting one producer to a surge in orders, followed by a fallow period, forcing it to lay off workers.

We’re continuing to develop a sales strategy that will let us act as a matchmaker between the capabilities of ethical producers and the mission and needs of various companies. Shifting the business this way has allowed me to think differently about artisanship, workers, and materials. I try to find the compelling attribute about a product that makes it a great fit for a corporate or nonprofit client.

I was at a female founder retreat sponsored by a law firm I use and love (and have turned into a customer), Fenwick & West. I was talking to another attendee, Kara Goldin, the founder and CEO of the San Francisco–based company Hint, which makes unsweetened flavored water and has an environmentally progressive ethos. Goldin asked if we could make our market tote bags in a fabric created from 100 percent recycled plastic bottles. Hint sells water in fully recyclable PET plastic bottles, and it made sense to have bags fabricated from the same material. I was delighted with this request. I’d just connected with a supplier of fabric made from 100 percent recycled plastic bottles. It’s a great new product, and learning about it had already started me thinking of ideas for companies that use plastic in packaging or in their core product. This is another level of customization we offer, the fabric itself.

It’s exciting to see how we can expand our impact by piecing together the different narratives and asking these questions: Who made it? How is it made? What is it made of? All these things are additional layers of customization. I think this is where consumer and corporate products are going.

We’re also switching our own marketing materials to 100 percent recycled products. To the Market is constantly going deeper in terms of aligning our own business to our mission. As the ethical fashion nonprofit Remake says, “Wear Your Values.”