Bizstartup.ie -

Having been involved in the Fairtrade movement for around eight years, Alan Clayton saw an untapped opportunity in the marketplace. “What you tend to find is companies such as Divine Chocolate only selling Fairtrade-certified chocolate or big companies like Nestlé only doing one Fairtrade-certified product. Wish 4 Fairtrade is in the middle: we sell a number of different products, but they are all Fairtrade-certified.”

Clayton started working on the idea a year ago and came across an investor by “coincidence”, which has allowed him to spend time developing products. “It took nine months of sitting down and thinking about product categories that would work. We don’t sell coffee because lots of other companies do. However, there are very few selling confectionary and snacks, so we started there and will soon be launching juice drinks.”

Having now lived in Ireland for 15 years, Clayton used to work for Asda in the UK, a market he decided to target from the outset. “It became clear to me that to really get a business up and running, Ireland is quite a small market. I talked to five bakeries about making a Fairtrade fruit cake or slice, but they either weren’t interested or couldn’t do it for the price I needed. So I decided to work with manufacturers in the UK and look for distributors there at the same time as doing it here.”

The first distributor in Ireland is Bewley’s in Cork. “Colleges such as Waterford Institute of Technology, University College Cork and Cork Institute of Technology are enthusiastic about the products and they’re also available in Nosh+Coffee coffee shops.”

Before setting up Wish 4 Fairtrade, Clayton was involved in launching a venture called ‘Chocaid’, which sold luxury chocolate with a portion of the revenue going towards hunger relief.

“It was a great idea but I couldn’t make it pay. We were effectively giving too much money away. After that I could see a big opportunity for Fairtrade products in Ireland and my idea was to establish a Fairtrade category in supermarket chains. With that business I only ever acted as an agent and had to find a distributor so it got complicated. It occurred to me that the market for Fairtrade was growing fast and the next thing was to establish my own brand, but this time across a wider product range.

"I expect Wish 4 Fairtrade to be commercially viable within a year as we are talking to big players such as Compass, the biggest catering company in Europe as well as Sainsbury’s in the UK.”

Fairtrade Fortnight takes place from 22 February to 2 March. For more information, click here.

Pictured: Cane cutters in Malawi, the source of the sugar used in Wish 4 Fairtrade products