On Friday 4 November, the team at Shakti Man, the Island’s fair trade store, are throwing a party to celebrate the opening of the new and greatly expanded shop at 18 Parliament Street in Ramsey. By happy coincidence November 2016 also marks 12 years since Shakti Man first opened for business, giving the team another good reason to party.

The opening day celebration is from 3pm to 8pm, with local band Loose Crew playing at 6pm. There will be drinks from the Apple Orphanage, savoury macarons and veggie sushi from Vivaldi Catering in Bride. The opening will give everyone a chance to explore the new shop, laid out over three floors of a painstakingly restored and beautifully reinvented Victorian building.

Shakti Man’s founder Leni Lewis says, “As well as giving all our products room to be properly appreciated, our beautiful new store has much more scope for individually showcasing the artisans we work with around the world. Behind each product are many life stories; stories of vibrant creativity, incredible skills, families and communities transformed. It’s wonderful to be able to share this deep insight into the many reasons why we love what we do. We’re so excited about our new space – and also to be celebrating twelve years of doing beautiful things.”

The restoration of Shakti Man’s new home was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ramsey Regeneration Scheme, as well a range of private investors who believe in Shakti Man’s win-win-win business model: the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Also integral to the project were the engineering and building team who have brought the building back to life with great sensitivity and vision. And of course, the ever-committed Shakti team of Warwick, Maree, Gail and Linda, as well as all former team members from the last 12 years.

Shakti Man started out in 2004 with a dream to bridge communities across the globe. Today it supports a vast range of projects, including the children’s home in Kathmandu that first started it all. The store has effectively ‘grown up’ along with the fair trade movement, which has changed radically over the last 12 years. Back in 2004, very few people understood the concept of fair trade. Today, conscious consumers are the norm – people who want to buy beautifully designed, hand made, high quality fashion, gifts, homewares and food that also make positive contributions to the world.

Shakti Man’s motto ‘Love what we do’ comes from a quote by the spiritual poet Rumi: ‘Let the beauty we love be what we do’. Flooded with sunlight, the new store is a seamless combination of old Manx stone, reclaimed timbers and sustainably sourced natural materials – an embodiment of beauty; an emporium of ‘Love what we do’.

“Shakti Man was born out of a resistance to ‘business as usual’,” says Leni. Since then we’ve been on a real journey of transformation and come to see that it’s all about making the most of the world we live in; about helping to change things through connection and collaboration. Fair trade is, in the best sense, an upside-down way of doing business. It’s interesting that this has been reflected in the way our new store has come into being – it was as if the building told us what it wanted so we could bring out the best in what we found there.”

Every single product Shakti Man sells supports a fair trade project somewhere in the world. These are projects that help to keep traditional skills alive, and empower people to support themselves, their families and their local economies. Every product is also ‘true fair trade’, which means that every step of production has fairness built into it. The sustainability credentials are also exemplary: from natural yarns to natural dyes, hand woven fabrics to reclaimed furniture, every process involved respects the earth the product came from as well as the people who made it.

Leni adds, “Shakti Man is an ever evolving philosophy for awareness, whether it be for business practice, customer relationships, creative expression or reflection and contemplation. So, as the French proverb says, ‘Until further notice, celebrate everything!’”

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