There was an interesting thread on the Renegade Conservatory Guy recently criticising conditions in Chinese hardware factories, putting forward the idea that there might be some mileage in the UK for a 'Fairtrade' range of hardware.

Firstly, I need to point out that I've personally visited factories in China that manufacture products for Mila and I've seen none of the appalling conditions described on Matthew Glover's blog nor any evidence of anyone being exploited. 

Labour is certainly cheaper out there, hence the fact that we can sell our products competitively in the UK, but conditions are superior to some I've seen in many other countries I've visited in the search for ever lower cost hardware.  And, I should add that Mila actually only sources about 40% of our products from China (the rest comes from factories in the UK and Europe) - which is much less than many of our competitors.

Much more importantly though, I want the market to understand and appreciate that the simple reason why hardware manufacturers like Mila now have to use Chinese factories is that customers in the UK are simply not willing or able to pay the prices which we would have to charge for products manufactured to Fairtrade standards.

As soon as a fabricator asks me for a Fairtrade handle sold with an Open Book accounting policy, I'll respond with a new range with the inevitable price premium.

Sadly, my experience in this industry tells me that the resulting orders would not justify my investment.   The market is still very price sensitive and, while Chinese and other global factories go on delivering the quality that customers want at a price that is reasonable, the demand for Fairtrade just won't increase.

Personally, I'd love to be able to manage factories in the UK - as we did up until February 2009 when we closed the last of our manufacturing plants - manned by well rewarded staff but the harsh and rather sad reality of this market is that they just wouldn't be able to compete anymore.

Richard