Posts by vic

A beautiful handmade basket featuring a traditional African zigzag design motif:  the perfect centrepiece for your dining room table found in the Ethical Superstore Christmas catalogue.  But delve deeper and you’ll discover the story of basket producers Gone Rural, members of the World Fair Trade Organisation, who have been working to change lives in Swaziland for over 20 years.

Read the rest of Gone Rural Swaziland – The Story Behind the Products »

On reflection, 2010 was a great, yet challenging year for all of us here at Ethical Superstore. 

Read the rest of A New Year Promise for 2011 »

Dear Santa…

My Name Is Vic Morgan, But you can call me Vic.

Read the rest of Vic’s Christmas Letter »

Happy New Year!

We work hard to provide the best possible online shopping service in the ethical products world.  In response to popular demand, we’re happy to introduce 2 great new money-saving services for 2010 developed with our frequent shoppers in mind.

Read the rest of Our Customer Service Resolutions for 2010 »

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If you’re looking to express your Christmas spirit differently this year, consider being a secret Santa to a friend across the miles.  For ideas, visit www.intelligentgiving.com

If you have any other ideas to share, please comment below…

To celebrate Chocolate Week 2009 we’ve teamed up with Divine Chocolate to give away 5000 packs of delicious Fairtrade Chocolate worth over £10,000! All you have to do is place your order at EthicalSuperstore.com between the 12th and the 18th October and we’ll pop the chocolate in your parcel*! *while stocks last

It’s Chocolate Week from 12-18 October and the Academy of Chocolate is giving us even more of an excuse than we already have to celebrate all things chocolate. I’ll be pledging my support in defiance of my nutritionist who has held my sweet tooth captive to an extreme elimination (of everything tasty) diet to combat an irksome illness I’ve had for most of the summer. You know you’ve been on the wagon for a while when the food flashbacks kick in, like remembering one of my childhood dreams which was to be Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – how cool it would be to have my own chocolate factory complete with chocolate rivers, everlasting gobstoppers and glass elevators to fly about in…

As an all American boy, I grew up on Hershey chocolate and M&Ms and I can remember their brainwashing slogan “they melt in your mouth not in your hands” that had my brothers and I testing bag after bag to prove one way or the other. The chocolate I grew up on most Brits can’t stand the taste of, and 7 years after immigrating to England I can now understand why – you guys have been keeping all the yummy chocolate to yourselves!

The history of chocolate starts sometime in the negative calendar years i.e., BC with the early Cocoa, or Cacao crops which were native to Mexico, Central and South America, and originally used both as a beverage and as an ingredient in foods. Over the years, more than 80% of the world’s cocoa production moved to West Africa and along with it the unfortunate development of the slave trade and unfair trade and working conditions imposed on growers. To help combat this problem, in 1994 the world’s first Fairtrade certified product was born as Green & Black’s Maya Gold Chocolate made with cocoa from Belize guaranteeing a fair price to growers.

Then in 1998, Divine Chocolate became the first Fairtrade chocolate brand to have its cocoa growers, Kuapa Kokoo a co-operative of cocoa famers in Ghana, own shares in the company making the chocolate bar. How great is that, the Divine Chocolate farmers get to own the chocolate factory! When I went home to visit my family last Spring, I was pleased to see Divine Chocolate in shops providing Americans a taste of Pa Pa Paa or “the best of the best” as the Kupua Kokoo famers say.

So if you’re going to do one thing in support of Chocolate Week, bite into a Divine Chocolate bar knowing that each one is wrapped in a golden ticket in which you win a heavenly bar of chocolate and Kupua Kokoo famers win a better life for themselves and their families.

We work hard to provide the best possible online shopping service in the ethical products world.  To help us make our product range more complete and our services even better, we invite you to share your views by taking part in our Ethical Consumer Survey.

We’re running the survey until the 20th of May, following which we’ll share the results on the EthicalSuperstore.com website, as well as start working on the suggestions we receive!

Complete our survey and you’ll be entered into our competition to win a £100 gift voucher for shopping on Ethicalsuperstore.com!

Click here to take The Ethical Consumer Survey 2009 »

Since we posted an open invitation for ideas on how we could improve our service in 2009, we’ve had some great ideas posted on our blog.  We’re already hard at work on lots of your ideas, and we promise to not stop until people start thinking we’re called Ethical Super Service!

Many of you have shared how much you love our free delivery offers, and while we’re working on our full set of service improvement ideas we thought we’d get the ball rolling with free UK delivery on orders over £15. Happy shopping!

Ecover is one of the true pioneers of the ethical products movement having recently hit its 25th birthday, famous for its green cleaning products and for building the world’s first “ecological factory” in Malle, Belgium, in 1992.  When I was invited by Ecover to visit in November, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity – it almost felt like receiving a golden ticket to see Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory (if only the Wonka Bar was Fairtrade!)

Read the rest of Inside the Ecover Eco-factory »

I posted my vote for you October 25, as one of more than a million Americans living abroad who voted in the Presidential election decided today in the early hours of the morning. Congratulations, we won! At my election party in Newcastle-upon-tyne, England, you had the united support of my British colleagues and my partner from Indiana, who also voted for you.

By any definition it was a record voter turnout, but an even bigger turnout could be counted at the parties and public gatherings like mine around the world, where the not-so-silent majority were rooting for you. True, you’ve won the vote of Americans, but the real landslide is that the world has voted for you. This is perhaps no more apparent than in the impoverished country of Kenya, where your relatives and supporters danced in the street to celebrate your victory – Kenya has even declared a national holiday in your honour.

People around the world feel you are part of them in some way be it a multiracial, multiethnic, or multinational dimension. Please make the most of the hopes and dreams of all of us who have voted for you and lead as President with the world’s collective interests in mind. For starters, America’s economy needs saving, but please don’t forget the critical need to expand Fair Trade with the poorest countries, including paying it forward to those same Kenyans who celebrate you. And you must challenge the world to end war, perhaps you could substitute a global green revolution in its place – I wouldn’t mind if we were all fighting for a more sustainable world.

Please do your best to make the dream a reality. We’re here to help.