1940’s – Ten Thousand Villages in USA (formerly Self-Help Crafts) began buying needlework from Puerto Rico.

1950’s – earliest traces of Fair Trade in Europe when Oxfam UK started to sell crafts made by Chinese refugees.

1960’s – Parallel initiatives were taking place in the Netherlands and the first ‘Third World Shop’ (Dutch Association of World Shops) was formed. The importing organisation, Fair Trade Original (formerly SOS), was also established.

1970’s, Fair Trade Organisations such as Traidcraft in the UK, which was formed in 1979, began to meet informally in conferences every couple of years

1980/90’s there was a desire to come together more formally. 

1984 The first European World Shops conference took place. This conference set the beginning of close cooperation between volunteers working in World Shops from all over Europe and NEWS! (Network of European World Shops) was established. 

1987 The European Fair Trade Association (EFTA), an association of the 11 largest importing Fair Trade organisations in Europe was formed. 

1988 The Max Havelaar label, the world's first Fairtrade certification mark, was officially launched by Stitching Max Havelaar on 15 November in Netherlands. 

1989 IFAT (International Federation of Alternative Trade) now WFTO (World Fair Trade Organisation) was formed in the Netherlands.

1994 The Network of European World Shops (NEWS!) represented approximately 4,000 World Shops in close to 20 European countries. NEWS! coordinated European campaigning activities and stimulated the exchange of information and experiences about development of sales and awareness raising work. They had a volunteer base of around 100,000 volunteers. It was the Fair Trade shops that started including producer stories in product packaging to raise awareness on Fair Trade. World / Fair Trade Shops mobilised consumers to participate in campaigning activities for more global justice.

In 1996, NEWS! established the European World Shops Day as a Europe-wide day of campaigning on a particular issue, often with a goal at the European level. This initiative was taken up by IFAT (now WFTO) which brought it to a worldwide level.

1997 FLO (Fair Trade Labelling Organization) now Fairtrade International was formed and is based in Bonn, Germany. The umbrella organisation currently comprises over 50 national licensing organisations – the Fairtrade Foundation is the UK member.

2001, December The four networks comprising of FLO (now Fairtrade International), IFAT (now WFTO), NEWS! (now dissolved and integrated within WFTO Europe) and EFTA, and known by their acronym FINE, defined and agreed
the Fair Trade Definition and Principles.

The aim of FINE is to enable these networks and their members to cooperate on important areas of work, such as advocacy and campaigning, standards and monitoring of Fair Trade.

2002, May 4th was the first WFTO World Fair Trade Day
2003 All FLO Affiliated organisations (Fairtrade Foundation in the UK) use the same Fairtrade label – The FAIRTRADE Mark.

2004 January, IFAT (now WFTO) Fair Trade Organisation Mark developed a monitoring system for Fair Trade Organisations in order to strengthen the credibility of these organisations towards political decision-makers, mainstream
business and consumers.

The Global journey, to promote the FTO Mark, sets off from Mumbai, India with a message promoting the ideals of Fair Trade in supporting poor and marginalised producers and calling for greater equity in international trade. The FTO Mark is available to member organisations that meet the requirements of the IFAT monitoring system and identifies them as registered Fair Trade Organisations.

2009 Members of IFAT felt that the FTO Mark, which could not be used as a product label, was not enough to give them visibility in the label-conscious market. Following the sentiments of its members, IFAT underwent enormous
changes.

The International Federation of Alternative Trade changed its name to World Fair Trade Organization during the Kathmandu Annual General Meeting (AGM). 

The same year, the organisation spearheaded the global celebration of World Fair Trade Day. The move to rebrand itself was part of the plan to make WFTO one of
the major global players in Fair Trade. 

World Fair Trade Day takes place every year on the second Saturday of May and is affectionately known ‘as the Crown Jewels’ of the movement – a day when globally everyone comes together to celebrate the membership.

2010 – The FTAO (Fair Trade Advocacy Office) is set up to focus on influencing European policy-makers. It was supported, managed and funded by the FINE networks. The FTAO is now a joint initiative of Fairtrade International, the World Fair Trade Organization and the World Fair Trade Organization-Europe.

Fair Trade and Fair Trade Organisations have been recognised repeatedly by European Institutions as well as national and regional governments for its contribution to poverty reduction, sustainable development and consumer
awareness-raising. The European Parliament passed several resolutions on Fair Trade (in 1994, 1998 and 2006) authorities include fair and sustainable criteria in their public tenders.

Two years later at the 2013 Rio AGM, members of WFTO approved the new Guarantee System (GS) after it was presented by the working group together with reports and feedback from pilot organisations that were part of the system testing.

The GS has five components: improved membership application procedure, self assessment, peer visit, monitoring audit and the Fair Trade Accountability Watch.

The GS uses the WFTO Fair Trade Standard for organisations, which comprises a set of compliance criteria based on the 10
Principles of Fair Trade and International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions.

The GS revolutionised Fair Trade verification. It is an innovative system that can be used to verify Fair Trade  compliance of any type of trading organisations, and thus not tied to product-specific features. It was developed to address the various types of trading organisations at WFTO, taking into consideration that many are small fair trading organisations producing a variety of different products every year, which is dependent on market demands and trends. 

Members that successfully complete the GS process become Guaranteed Members and can use the WFTO Product Label on their products. It is a label for Guaranteed Fair Trade Organisations that can be used on products as an
assurance for buyers and consumers that the Guaranteed member has complied with the Fair Trade Standard.

During its history of over 60 years, Fair Trade has developed into a widespread movement. Thanks to the efforts of Fair Trade Organisations worldwide, Fair Trade has gained recognition among politicians and mainstream businesses.

More successes are to be expected, as Fair Trade Organisations develop into stronger players and mainstream companies become more and more attuned to the demand for Fair Trade in the marketplace. 

Watch this space as we continue to write Fair Trade history!