Cooperation instead of exploitation
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia. Industrialization has progressed only slowly in this mountainous region between India and China; access to international shipping is limited, and air travel is severely hampered by the mountains. The country's greatest asset is the labor of its millions of people seeking work to earn a living for their families.

For Westerners like us, the country's economic structure is difficult to grasp. Anyone traveling to Nepal is therefore immersed in a different world. The breathtaking scenery of the Himalayas, the traditionally colorful clothing of the Nepalese, and the carefree laughter on their faces are impressive. But alongside these exotic impressions, one mustn't forget the poverty in the country. Here you find people like the young taxi driver who drives a tiny, rusty taxi that wouldn't have passed a vehicle inspection in Germany for decades. He harbors the great dream of being able to buy such a taxi in ten or twenty years and become self-sufficient. Here, people who can work as day laborers in a factory, earning about one euro a day, consider themselves fortunate. It is primarily the women who support their families in this way.

We don't want to exploit this poverty. From the very beginning, we have carefully selected our suppliers. It wasn't just about a low price, but above all about ensuring that the pashminas we purchased were produced under traditional, humane conditions. Working in a shawl weaving mill is hard enough: the men sit for hours at the loom, weaving in the traditional way, while the women painstakingly twist the fringes, iron, wash, and pack the finished pashminas.

How we advocate for good working conditions
We are not satisfied with a favorable description of the production conditions; we visit the sites as often as possible to see the working conditions for ourselves. We reject the employment of day laborers and seasonal workers because it offers them no long-term prospects. For this reason, we don't order just once a year, but regularly several times a year. This ensures that the workers have employment for as long as possible.

We don't demand the impossible from our suppliers. This applies especially to price: Western buyers, who constantly push for price reductions, spread fear and panic in Nepal; however, this is less true for the wholesalers than for the workers, on whose backs the price cuts are usually borne. Moreover, in such cases, the producer usually responds with substandard cashmere products.

Perhaps one more side note on this topic: When we started trading in cashmere products, we repeatedly heard the well-intentioned advice that we should be as tough as possible on our producers in the developing world. Following the old colonial masters' approach, we were advised to keep the manufacturers on a very short leash, to tighten the screws on their prices in order to earn the respect necessary for trade. Fortunately, we didn't follow this advice. And this approach has paid off: our suppliers reward us for a fair, open, and professional approach with outstanding quality. They know that we value their work and that we demand everything humanly possible from them, but nothing impossible. This reliability has earned us a great deal of respect and, above all, excellent products.

We owe our workers and suppliers too much to treat them badly!