With finals approaching, we are all in need of a little boost to get us through these work-heavy weeks, and recent Wake grad Emily Taylor is just the girl to get us geared up and ready to go!
A native of San Diego, California, Emily came to Wake four years ago, following her older brother’s footsteps. After graduating this past December, Emily became an assistant for Dr. Simonelli in the Anthropology department . . . and recently started her own company!
The company, Ecopeful (eco + hopeful), aims to act as the middle-man between small, fair trade companies and consumers. Emily collects and sells handmade crafts from artists in developing countries all over the world. And by no means is the undertaking simply about the money.
“I really want to spread awareness,” Emily explains. “You can’t just throw money at people; you need to give them a livelihood.”
There are some catches, however, to the fair trade industry. Unfortunately, it can cost a lot of money for a company to be certified as “fair trade.” Emily eventually wants to create a brand signifying “fair trade” with a much cheaper price tag.
Emily first got interested in the fair trade industry when she took two entrepreneurial classes during her senior year. After graduation, she approached Dr. Simonelli and landed a job as her assistant. Over this past spring break she traveled with Dr. Simonelli’s “Free Trade, Fair Trade: Independent Entrepreneurs in the Global Market” class to Chiapas, Mexico. While the class traveled around Mexico visiting cooperatives, Emily picked up some amazing textiles and crafts for her company.
Fair trade companies were first created to sell products from farmers such as coffee, flowers and bananas, but now there is a burgeoning market for handcrafts, including textiles, clothing and accessories.
Emily focuses on selling everything from clothes to a huge array of accessories. She sells items she personally selects, as well as ones from well-known fair trade companies such as Malia Designs.
So far, Ecopeful has set up two sales here at Wake, one in December and one just last week.
“You can’t get a better buy somewhere else,” Emily says. Her stuff is “more unique” than anything else you could find in the stores around Winston. And the fact that eco-friendly items are especially trendy now is a definite plus.
“Many of the things I sell are recycled,” she says. The products Emily sells from Malia Designs are from Cambodia and made of recycled rice bags.
The University has played a major role in getting Ecopeful off the ground. Emily received a New Venture Seed Grant from Wake Forest in October, and was most recently awarded a Hobbs Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement. “A lot of this wouldn’t be possible without the Office of Entrepreneurship,” says Emily.
So what’s next? By the end of the summer Emily hopes to have her website up and running. She eventually hopes to branch out to other campuses with the help of media tools, “like Her Campus!”
Emily will spend the summer in DC with a part-time job while she looks for new, interesting companies to buy from. Be sure to check out Emily’s Ecopeful booth at Wake Forest this Wednesday!