Fa La Lo

Fa La Lo stands for fair labor and/or local

Grand Opening for Downtown Portsmouth Store
Selling Only Fair Trade or Locally Produced Products

Portsmouth's newest downtown shop, Fa La Lo, is having its grand opening celebration Saturday, May 24 from 6-9pm.   Fa La Lo, which stands for Fair Labor and/or Local, will have music, snacks, artists, and an amazing balloon man (who is not a clown) in its tiny site for this grand opening event.  Ten percent of the sales from this opening day will go to St. John's Episcopal Church in Downtown Portsmouth.  

Selling women's clothing and accessories, as well as art work, pottery, fine linens, cards, tee shirts, jewelry, and many other items, Fa La Lo elegantly packs a wide range of products into its tiny space as it hopes to extend opportunities for Portsmouth locals and visitors to have socially conscious shopping options.

For this event, Fa La Lo is joining forces with its next door neighbor at 10 Ladd Street, Bead Shine. Robbin Levin, owner of the shop, is celebrating her store's tenth anniversary and will be having a celebration event that coincides with Fa La Lo's grand opening.

Fa La Lo is owned and operated by Scott Segee and Liz Wright, long-time Portsmouth residents, who are excited about this new opportunity.  "This shop started from a combination of my work as a professor at Rivier College and as a co-host of WSCA's weekly show Portsmouth at Large," says Wright. "Thinking about issues of social justice, my Rivier colleagues and I developed curriculum that taught students about the treatment of workers at sweatshops.  The students responded, 'Okay, we get it.  Sweatshops are bad, but how do we go about buying products that don't come from sweatshops?'  The reality is that there have only been a few fair trade options.  When Portsmouth at Large had a guest from a fair trade non-for-profit, the synergy began!"

Portsmouth has been fortunate.  Many other Portsmouth shops, such as Me and Ollie's and Breaking New Grounds, sell fair trade food items.  Fa La Lo hopes to provide another option, providing non-perishable items that are either locally produced or produced in developing countries by workers who are paid a living wage.  "At times when the economy is having difficulty," says Scott Segee, "it is especially important that people think about where their dollars go.  Shopping locally or through fair trade organizations ensures that the dollars either help the local economy or help people in other countries develop better living conditions."

The Shop Local Movement is strong in the Portsmouth area, and increasingly strong is the Fair Trade movement.  The two work together well.  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.

(Posted May 26, 2008 by lela)