Every fair trade gift that Ethiqana sells positively impacts communities on two sides of the world – supporting skilled craftspeople in India and Bangladesh at one end, and employing adults with learning disabilities through its UK fulfilment partner at the other. That’s no easy feat!
Arshad Khalid, founder of Ethiqana, a BAFTS member since 2022 and current Treasurer of the BAFTS Board, takes building a principled value chain very seriously. Arshad tells us how Ethiqana came to be.
The Origins of Ethiqana
What’s the story behind the name Ethiqana?
When I started out I wanted a name rooted in ethical trade that reflected the ethical handmade gifts, because ethical trade is just common sense to me. First attempt was “Ethicological.” It didn’t take long to realise that wasn’t going to work!
I landed on Ethiqana instead. It’s a play on words like Africana, Americana, Mexicana – names used for cultural artefacts from a place. Ethiqana is meant to read the same way, except the “place” is the ethical way of doing things. Why the Q instead of a C? Honestly, because ethicana.com was too expensive to buy at the time. So the spelling found me as much as I found it.
The Artisan Relationships
You work with over 100 artisan partners across Channapatna, Kashmir, and Bangladesh, and visit them annually. What have those relationships taught you that you couldn’t learn any other way?
I visit at the start of every year. If I genuinely can’t make it, I send someone I trust in my place – never skip it entirely.
It’s not a formal audit, it’s tea and biscuits. It’s sitting with people, talking, watching how they’re getting on. What comes back to me – the warmth, the genuine affection – is something I can’t really put a number on.
What I’ve learned: you can be very academic about fair trade, but it tells you nothing about what it actually means to sit with someone whose grandfather did this same craft, in the same workshop, and to watch them decide whether their own child will carry it forward. Seeing artisans not just surviving but training others, passing the craft on – that’s the part that makes it real for me.
Can you tell us a bit more about the training programmes you offer your artisans?
Honestly, there’s no single curriculum – it’s more organic than that. Some training is set up formally with the organisations we partner with. In Channapatna, for example, there are workshops aimed at giving more women economic independence. In Bangladesh, there are sewing workshops.
The Value of Craft Preservation
Many of your products use techniques at risk of disappearing. Can you tell us a bit about one of these crafts and why it matters that we keep it alive?
It’d be easy to say wooden toys, since that’s where Ethiqana started – our Wooden Pull-Along Dog is one of Ethiqana’s most-loved fair trade gifts – and a perfect example of how traditional technique and modern ethics can sit comfortably together. But honestly, it’s Kashmiri craft that means the most to me.
I grew up around Kashmiri handicrafts at home. My aunt used to travel to Kashmir University for her academic work, and she’d bring back papier-mâché pieces, embroidery, and other handicrafts every time. There’s something genuinely mesmerising about Kashmiri papier-mâché specifically. The fact that it’s a craft rooted in upcycling and natural materials, recycling waste paper into something beautiful, makes it the one I love most. As an example, I love this Vintage Art Storage Display Box.
Other training is much more informal – Kashmiri papier-mâché artisans taking on students who want to learn the craft, the way it’s probably always been passed down. We support both kinds.
Image 1 – Training workshop for new toy artisans
Image 2 – Colour expert mixing and making colour sticks by melting lac resin and natural dyes like
turmeric, indigo & lime
Image 3 – Kashmiri papier mache artist
The Ethiqs Behind These Fair Trade Gifts
Ethiqana is both BAFTS certified and a Social Enterprise — how do these differ, and why are both important to your business?
I think of them as two sides of the same coin. Both are rooted in doing business better – caring for people and planet, not just profit.
You can’t call yourself a social enterprise unless you’re genuinely committed to a social or environmental mission, and you’re reinvesting 50%+ of profits back into that mission. You can’t be a fair trade business unless you’re following the ten principles of fair trade. They’re different tests, but they’re testing for the same thing in the end.
Holding both gives our customers something to actually check, rather than just trusting our word. It says: we’re not here to make money and call it ethics afterwards.
On the Ethiqana website you talk about modern ethics. What does that look like and why is it important?
We live busy, time-poor lives, even with everything modern convenience gives us. And convenience is addictive – global retailers have built that expectation into us so deeply we can’t imagine going back.
But that convenience has a cost most of us don’t see. We’ve lost touch with how things are actually made – what they really cost to produce, who’s getting paid pennies, who’s being exploited so we can have it cheap and fast.
That’s what Ethiqana is trying to push back on. Not the convenience itself – that ship has sailed. But showing people there’s an alternative: natural materials, handmade, rooted in fair pay and respect for the maker.
The Importance of Value Chains
Fair trade products are sometimes perceived as more expensive than mass-produced alternatives. How do you handle that conversation, and what do you wish people understood about what’s in the price?
There’s a speech in the BBC series Years and Years about the £1 t-shirt – the idea that it’s all our fault, because we buy into the system with that £1 t-shirt, without asking how someone got paid pennies to make it. It’s a question every fair trade gift retailer is asking: how do you explain what’s really in the price to someone who’s used to paying £1 for a t-shirt? The programme is worth watching if you haven’t seen it.
As for how I actually handle it day to day – my existing customers already care about handmade, ethical things, so the conversation rarely comes up with them. With new customers, I don’t lead with ethics, fair trade, or impact at all. I lead with the quality, the natural materials, the fact it’s handmade. The ethics become the nice bit underneath, not the headline.
If someone values that, brilliant. If they don’t, that’s fine too – not everyone has to. But if someone asks me for a discount, the answer’s a flat no, even if it costs me the sale. I won’t undermine the work and skill that’s gone into the piece just to close a deal.
Your fulfilment partner, Mail Out, is itself a social enterprise employing adults with learning disabilities. How did that partnership come about?
Before Mail Out, I worked with a few different fulfilment companies. Our impact has always been overseas, but I wanted something here in the UK too.
When Mail Out was mentioned to me, it was a no-brainer. They’re a social enterprise employing adults with learning disabilities. It meant the ethics ran all the way through to the person packing the box here at home.
The Future for Ethiqana
If Ethiqana achieves everything you’re hoping for in the next five years, what does that look like?
I live in hope. If everything goes the way I want it to, the business is bigger and properly stable – and that stability goes straight back to better outcomes for our artisan partners.
I’d also like to expand the product range. We already do this in a small way, but not yet at a scale that makes a real difference. “Surviving to thriving” is the phrase that captures it best – for the artisans, for the crafts, and for the business itself.
Find out more about being a BAFTS member here.
Is this for BAFTS members info only?