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 The
Company:
Chandni Chowk
specialises in textiles, hand made in India and Bangladesh by wonderfully
skilled crafts people to a very high quality. We are a fair trade company
producing two main fashion
collections annually (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter) along with several
satellite collections usually with something extra special about them such
as our Tussah silk collection or Organic cotton range. We also have a
constantly updated Interiors collection which follows no set seasons, it
simply grows and changes as and when inspiration dictates! To compliment
both of these departments we have a range of accessories and jewellery.
Established by
Rosalind Price and Paul Garrod in 1978, joined by Suzie Murrow in 1996, Chandni Chowk acquired its name
from an early customer who said we reminded her of the ancient ‘Chandni
Chowk’ market in Delhi. The name is Hindi and roughly translates as
“shiny/silver/bright—place/area”. At the time, the company was based on a
table in the famous Barnstaple Pannier Market; it later progressed into
the upstairs of the wonderful Heavens Above restaurant and then to the
site of the first permanent Chandni Chowk store in Barnstaple. Today the
company is still based firmly in the south west with our HQ housing the
design facility, administration and central warehouse in deepest beautiful
Devon. We now have 7 branches and a well-established wholesale business.
Fair
Trade and our
BAFTS
membership:
Environmental, fair trade and ethical issues are as fundamentally important to Chandni
Chowk today as they were when the company first started up in 1978. We are
members of
BAFTS
(The British Association for Fair Trade Shops) both as Importers of Fairly
Traded goods and as retailers of Fairly Traded goods. A large proportion
of our suppliers are known personally to us; they are generally either
small, family businesses or cottage industry based. If we take on a new
partner we use our own common sense: how well does this person treat his
employees? what sort of conditions prevail around the business as a whole?
do we feel reassured of the personal integrity of the Principals of the
company? do they seem to be fundamentally decent folk? If we have
doubts about any of these issues we simply do not deal with the company.
We are always seeking ways to improve the methods and circumstances under
which our goods are produced. Invariably this is based on a consensus
between us as a company, our facilitator in situ, and the individual
worker. Quality of working conditions and quality of product is always our
main priority over and above price - if an item is hand made by skilled
people they should be paid a fair price for their work.
 Environmental Issues:
Our aim is simply to try minimise our impact on the environment. We only
use natural fibres and are working hard to develop our Organic cotton
collections—we would love all our products to be organic but have had
great difficulty in sourcing genuine and certifiable organic fibres. You
will see from our Product information the importance of Natural Dyes
within our collections, and the continued support we give to environmental
projects working with companies such as Anokhi and Aranya (to name but
two). We believe that our principal suppliers of textiles from India are
representative of the very best of contemporary practice, combining sound
commercial judgement with an uncompromising belief in fair and sustainable
economic partnerships, and a continuing programme of development of more
environmentally "kinder" projects.
What is
accacia?
Over
the years we have
built many long standing relationships, and now work with many different
groups of crafts people across India and Bangladesh (amounting to several
hundred people in total). Our main garment range and a large proportion of
our Block Printed Interiors collection are labelled as ‘accacia’
rather than Chandni
Chowk. These collections are designed jointly by the Chandni Chowk (Devon
Based) and Anokhi (India based) design and production teams. We have
created the
accacia
label as a means of
expressing this exciting joint venture to our customers. Other products
carry the usual Chandni Chowk label and this covers all the other
wonderful producers we work with.
The
UK Chandni Chowk Team:
We now employ around 40 members of staff across our seven stores and HQ in
the UK. The HQ team is in charge of company administration, design,
production management, overseeing our shops and wholesale customers,
selling, marketing, shipping, distribution and running our new website. We
are only a small team, and because we are personally involved at every
stage of our products from conception right through to its sale we feel we
have a very good ‘hands on’ knowledge of every aspect of the company, and
that this shows in the quality of service and product that our customers
receive.
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