25 years of CARE & FAIR
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, CARE & FAIR presents intertviews with important supporters and donors.
These interviews were carried out by the Carpet! Magazine, Hamburg
This time we have talked to Kenneth Nielsen, the managing director of the Danish supplier Linie Design. The company has been supporting CARE & FAIR since 2006 – also by sponsoring an entire school in India.
Carpet! Magazine:
You have a long-term cooperation with the aid organization CARE & FAIR – what convinced you to support this organization?
Kenneth Nielsen:
Linie Design has a long history of supporting schools in India – this was before we supported CARE & FAIR. We used our various suppliers to help pointing out which local schools needed funding and help, it was everything from providing new books, tables, chairs. Even electricity – some of the schools had no lighting. Despite our determination and good intentions, it was an unstructured way of doing good. The help we provided was unsystematic and it was hard for us to measure the outcome of our support. We needed to organize it even better.
We were convinced that our resources would be put to better use through CARE & FAIR, a professional organization with great experience within this field. Luckily, we were right. Furthermore, with this registration it became quite easy for us to get all our suppliers to become members, too: It was now a necessity for Linie Design to require this from our suppliers in order to get the CARE & FAIR label on our handmade rugs.
Carpet! Magazine:
In what way have you been supporting CARE & FAIR and how has the cooperation influenced your business?
Kenneth Nielsen:
We have been supporting CARE & FAIR since 2006 with a yearly contribution. Besides, we got all of our Indian suppliers to become members, too, and thus to donate 0,25% of the total value of their export invoices to the organisation.
We know how hard it can be for NGOs to collect and rise money. This was the reason we developed a system especially for CARE & FAIR, which allows them to keep track of our quarterly numbers. This way CARE & FAIR always know how much money can collect from our suppliers. We are certain that this has caused a good income to the organization hroughout the years.
It’s hard to tell how much impact CARE & FAIR has had on our brand and business – but we haven’t communicated this important matter much … until now, that is. 2020 is the year when we are going to brand and communicate our initiatives even more within this field. It is inevitable in these times not to do so. Especially since we know that we have influenced many of our competitors and customers to commit to CARE & FAIR. Furthermore, I do believe that the CARE & FAIR labeling has influenced some of our many consumers as well, in their purchasing process of a Linie Design rug.
All in all, I’m quite positive, that we are going to experience great results from communicating our involvement with CARE & FAIR in the coming years. Hopefully this will inspire even more companies within the industry to commit to this important cause.
