Fair Trade for All in Port Could Close After Holidays

After a successful in Port Washington, co-owner Gail Bennett-Christian said business fell off sharply in the fall at their Fair Trade for All Port location.

"No one was coming out," Bennett said. "It was dead downtown."

Bennett-Christian and her husband Allen Christian decided to close the store for three weeks in October because they couldn't afford to keep it running. They hope they will recoup and break even with the holiday season, when their Wauwatosa store does half its business. After that, they will consider closing — depending on how business does.

"People come in and say this is a great idea, but they don't come back," Bennett-Christian said. "They aren't seeing the connection between, I have a gift to buy. Am I going to go to Walmart or downtown?"

Bennett-Christian praised Port's Business Improvement District for moving in the right direction with events such as and , but she said they could do more to encourage residents to shop locally.

"We did our part by moving in this summer when they invited us," she said. "There really needs to be a culture shift in the community where they decide to band together and support their local businesses. That would be their job. We can't change a whole community."

Bennett-Christian said she thinks one of their struggles in Port was the distance from a network of local Milwaukee businesses that support one another.

"When we opened in Port, we made sure we supported all the local businesses," she said. "We've gone to every restaurant, we've spent hundreds of dollars at local places, and we tell our friends to meet us in Port for dinners. If all the business owners would do that for each other, that would do a lot."

Bennett-Christian said their stores are especially dependent on customer volume because they operate with a low profit margin, as they are a mission-based business.

"Our goal is to support the artists as much as possible," Bennett-Christian said. "That's the way we advocate for them and fight things like sweat shops, slave labor and trafficking."

This week, Fair Trade for All is promoting a "Free and Fair Holidays" event, raising awareness about trafficking and donating a portion of their sales to BASICS, which supports victims of human trafficking in Wisconsin.

"People don't like to be bombarded with all that slavery stuff," Bennett-Christian said. "So I'm just doing little signs with information."

Bennett-Christian said she hopes holiday sales pick up and allow the Port location to stay open, but time will tell.

"We want to stay, but it depends on how the community supports us," Bennett-Christian said.