Doing business with principles

For Richmond Kelly a business lunch means sitting outside a mud house eating Tibetan dumplings with his hands.

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Dealing directly with traditional craftsmen and family businesses in remote corners of the world is part of the "Culture with Conscience" philosophy of Friendly Planet Trading Co., which sells handcrafted items from around the world. Kelly and his partner, Heather Conlin, opened the import shop last month in the Senate Building on Franklin Street.

Wood floors, Tibetan carpets and a sofa give the new store a warm feeling, more like a living room than a shop. Kelly is waiting for more stock to arrive, but a preopening party was packed with locals.

"It's very good karma," said Bern Savikko, who attended the preopening. "The whole thing just feels right; most of our shops are so tourist-oriented."

Savikko bought a Tibetan carpet and handmade paper cards.

"I'm just thrilled they're in town, because there's no other shop like that in town," Savikko said. "What amazed us about it was their environmental concern and then they extended it beyond that to social ones. ... They care about the people, their situation, their work conditions."

The Friendly Planet philosophy is to do business in the most ethical way possible. The owners make a point of paying fair wages and returning 10 percent of the profits to improvement projects in the communities with which they trade, Kelly said.

"We don't feel like we should stand out. This is the way business should be done," Kelly said. "If we succeed we're going to succeed with these high environmental and business standards."

Kelly had thought about starting an ethical import company for years, but the idea jelled when he was hiking near Mount Annapurna in Nepal shortly after Sept. 11. He and Conlin were almost alone in an area usually heavily trekked by tourists when he found a community of Tibetan carpet weavers who had escaped over the border. The Tibetans use the carpets to walk on, sleep on, sit on and sell to tourists.

With few tourists after Sept. 11, the Tibetans were desperate to sell their carpets and Kelly decided it was time to start his business. The carpets are made from Tibetan wool, packed over the Himalayan passes on trade routes that have been used for thousands of years, Kelly said. The wool is hand-spun, dyed, and then knotted into carpets. A single 3-by-6-foot carpet takes three months to make.

Kelly could have gotten a really good deal, especially considering that the average Tibetan makes about $200 a year, but he wanted to be fair. When Friendly Planet bought its first shipment of carpets, the income was enough for the entire community to live on for a year.

"It's kind of what we would pay if we paid someone in the U.S. for the same product, but their economy is factored in," Kelly said. "We try to keep everything within 50 percent of what we sell it for, which is normal retail pricing."

Kelly sought out other sources of unique handicrafts - colorful bead work and bracelets made by the Huichol people in Mexico, hand-thrown pottery by a family in Sicily, teapots from craftsmen in western China, pottery from a cooperative in Argentina and Chile, scarves from Nepal, and handcrafted paper from a women's group in Ecuador.

"We like to get to remote areas where people are living the way they live, without it being affected by tourism or whatever," Kelly said. "That's where you find a lot of the beautiful, handmade creations in is remote areas."

He also works with a few companies within the United States that provide environmentally friendly supplies, including clay-based paint.

"There's all these beautiful things out there that are made in ways that are coexisting with their environment, that doesn't hurt anything," Kelly said. "It's just proof that that can be done."

At the end of the year, 10 percent of the profits will be returned to the craftsmen's communities, supporting improvement projects there, he said.

"People ask us, 'How do you make any money?' We say, 'We make enough,' " Kelly said. "But then, my partner Heather and I, we don't live in excess. We live in a boat."

The whole thing sounds a little like a hippie's pipe dream, but Kelly and Conlin have master's degrees in business administration from the University of Phoenix. They started with a business plan, written almost entirely on napkins during their travels. Conlin also works at the Alaskan Brewing Co., so they have one salary while the business gets established.

Treating workers well helps businesses survive in the long term, said Lance Miller, executive director of the Juneau Economic Development Council.

"It's become more publicized and maybe it's more common," Miller said. "But the companies that have been around for a long time, I think the reason they're around for a long time is that they've learned to treat people well, so this isn't anything new."

Stuart Cohen has been in the import business since 1984 and knows what it takes.

"The people who can survive year-in, year-out have to not only treat their people well, but they have to have some marketing expertise," Cohen said.

He travels regularly to China, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador to find the sweaters, scarfs and jewelry he sells at Invisible World Trading Co. on South Franklin Street. Like Kelly, he deals mostly with family businesses, but some of the families run small factories. The factories can provide a greater quantity of sweaters in consistent quality and style than an independent craftsman can.

Expertise and patience are needed when working with small suppliers in distant countries. This summer Cohen had to wait for some of the sweaters from Ecuador because the workers were busy harvesting corn.

"It's a job people can do in their spare time while they are watching their children or watching their sheep," Cohen said. "I'm fortunate because I feel that what I'm doing does benefit the people."

So does Kelly, and he hopes to be successful enough that other businesses will follow his example.

"This should be something that everybody expects out of a business," Kelly said. "The more people buy, the more this will become the norm.

Kristan Hutchison can be reached at khutchison@juneauempire.com.