Our mission
Baksheesh is a fully committed fair trade retailer.
Our mission is to grow fair trade as much as we can while adhering to the highest standards. We start and grow our own stores. We share information with others. We advise, consult, mentor and listen. We have helped over a dozen folks start their own fair trade stores. We serve on boards, committees and panels.
Baksheesh has been a member in good standing of the Fair Trade Federation since our founding in 1997. All of our suppliers except for educational items are members of FTF or the World Fair Trade Organization. We are also members of Green America, the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, Napa Valley Visitors Bureau, St. Helena Chamber of Commerce and Sonoma Chamber of Commerce. We are the first Sonoma Valley certified green business and a Bay Area certified green business.
Baksheesh: originally an Old Persian word meaning gift. Today it can be heard across the Middle East and scattered through Africa and Asia. Its meaning has grown to include alms, tip, blessing, bribe or a great place to shop in Wine Country. It reminds us of where we first heard it, from children begging in the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Our stores exist to help such families earn a living with dignity so they don’t have to rely on handouts.
Candi Smucker
Sofie Wastell with artisans in India
Brian
and Candi Smucker
started Baksheesh with a small storefront in Sonoma in 1997.
We moved to larger space in 2002 at the present Sonoma address. We took
on a partner and started a second store in Healdsburg in 2003, adding
a third store in St. Helena in 2007. At the end of 2008, we split with
our partner. She took the Healdsburg store and renamed it; we kept Baksheesh
and the Sonoma and St. Helena stores.
Candi has been involved in fair trade since 1987 and Brian since 1992.
Before starting Baksheesh, we worked together for Ten Thousand Villages,
starting stores and developing the model they would continue to adapt
and use to open more stores. Candi now manages our St. Helena store.
Candi has worked in retail all her life. While working for Ten
Thousand Villages, she developed a management program called manager’s
training week. She presented this hands-on workshop to several hundred
fair trade store managers in the US and Canada.
Brian worked in magazine publishing before switching to fair trade.
He serves on the board of the national Fair
Trade Federation and the Sonoma
Valley Visitors Bureau. Over the years, he has served on 15 nonprofit
boards and dozens of committees. Brian now manages our finances and
marketing.
Brian and Candi often do free advising and mentoring with fair trade
retailers, especially startups. Both have presented seminars at Fair
Trade Federation and Ten Thousand Villages conferences.
Both of us travel in the Third World as often as we can. One or both
of us has been in 20 of the 40 or so countries represented in our stores.
See some of the stories under Artisans.
Sofie
Wastell started working at Baksheesh in May of 2005. After a year,
I took my eye for design to the next level and started doing display
work full time. I quickly made my way through the ranks, becoming assistant
manager before making it to the top in early 2009 as Sonoma store manager.
I continue to be the Sonoma store manager.
I continue to make the store beautiful every day, and now I have the
added pleasure of choosing what wonderful products we carry. My absolute
favorite part of this job is learning stories behind each gift we carry,
and knowing that there is a person being helped with each sale. Fair
trade has become more than just words to me. It carries the weight of
each individual artisan that I have met, and those that I will meet
in the future.