Our 5th Year in Business Serving Our Customers!!!! 

Fa La Lo in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire sells beautiful products ranging from women's clothing to furniture and kitchen ware, but what we are especially excited about this shop is that ALL its products are made Locally or by Fair Trade organizations.

Fa La Lo, which stands for Fair Labor and/or Local, is owned and run by two Portsmouth residents, Scott Segee and Liz Wright.

Our store began when Liz had a guest on her co-hosted Portsmouth Community Radio program (which focused on local non-profits) who talked about her fair trade organization, Handcrafting Justice. A professor at Rivier College in Nashua, NH Liz knew about the importance of fair trade and told Scott and her sons about the organization. They volunteered a few times with Handcrafting Justice, bought some items, and fell in love with the whole idea of how fair trade creates mutually beneficial situations for the creators and purchasers of the goods.

When Handcrafting Justice decided to sell its products wholesale, Scott recognized a chance to achieve his dream of owning a socially responsible business. Expanded to include locally produced goods and other fairly traded products, Fa La Lo was born one evening over a bottle of wine.

Attempting to also practice sustainability, Scott and Liz try to use local, fairly traded, or recycled furniture, appliances, office supplies, etc. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. But they keep on trying.

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade is a force for protecting the environment while promoting sustainable development. Fair Trade favors the sustainable use of natural resources and production methods that are not capital and oil intensive, favoring hand production and organic agriculture - to reduce the carbon footprint. Because Fair Trade is committed to paying a living wage and works in long-term partnerships, it enables producer partners to invest in environmentally friendly production. In turn, these initiatives promote environmental awareness locally and internationally.

Products

Currently, Fa La Lo sells products from several fair trade organizations such as: Escama Studios, Handcrafting Justice, Ten Thousand Villages, Global Goods, Avatar, Rubia,  Hopecraft, Rain for the Sahel and Sahara, The Emancipation Network, Equal Exchange and growing. In addition, they purchase products directly from some craftspeople in developing countries.

Through these sources, Fa La Lo sells such items as hand woven shawls from Thailand; unique bags from the Philippines and Cambodia; artwork from Haiti and Kenya; linens from Madagascar; baskets from Uganda; bracelets from Colombia, India and the Palestinian territories; Judaica from Israel; furniture from El Salvador, Vietnam, and Peru; stone work from Pakistan; bead work from Mexico; nanduti,  and hand carved leather bags from Paraguay; pens from Chile; dolls from South Africa, Peru, and Rwanda; statues handcarved from volcanic ash in the Philippines; kites and jewelry boxes from Indonesia; chess sets from Nepal; and much else.

The local products sold by Fa La Lo include reusable sandwich bags made by Green Samaritan of York, purses and accessories by Transformations by Helga, cut stones by Inner Earth Creations of Rochester, baskets by Loon Lodge of York, jewelry by Jill D'Angelo, recycled scarves by Lenny Girl, and art work by many local artists.

 

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