About FOLKDAYS
Jewellery, accessories, interior, garments
Handmade, sustainable, fair trade
With emphasis on distinctive design and natural materials
FOLKDAYS is a Berlin-based brand for contemporary fair trade design and fashion, founded by Lisa Jaspers in 2013.
We offer sustainable jewellery, accessories, interior products and garments created by independent artisans, small family businesses, and local fair trade organisations throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. With a focus on the use of natural materials, all of these products are handmade and fair trade. Each piece is truly one of a kind and destined for ‘forever favourite’ status in your home or wardrobe. In doing so, the claim is to create timeless and distinctive products – favourite pieces for eternity.
FOLKDAYS takes a collaborative, strength-based design approach which combines the knowledge and expertise of all participants within the framework of co-creation processes; one which is inspired equally by centuries-old handicraft techniques, local materials as well as decidedly contemporary design influences. We work exclusively with producers and companies that are also committed to the values of social entrepreneurship. To create fair conditions of purchase, our current partners calculate the prices themselves. Learn more about this here.
Since autumn 2020 we have been offering a curated B2B range of handmade, fair trade jewellery, accessories and interior products in cooperation with El Puente, the pioneer of the fair trade movement in Germany. More about FOLKDAYS x El Puente here; here you can also find our B2B shop for German and European retailers.
We see ourselves not only as a business, but also as advocates for change on a political level. We want our work to contribute to making global trade fairer and have therefore campaigned for a law that holds companies liable for what happens in their supply chains as part of the #fairbylaw petition.
About Lisa Jaspers, Founder and CEO of FOLKDAYS
Lisa Jaspers started FOLKDAYS with her friend Kimon Haars to transform the image of fair trade in Germany, making it attractive to a younger, design-conscious audience. Before she started the company she worked for OXFAM and for a public sector consultancy. Lisa studied political sciences and development economics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the London School of Economics.
Today Lisa manages her business with the help of a team of eight. Together they are continuously working on the execution of the idea as well pushing the brand forward.
Lisa is not only an entrepreneur, but also an activist. Besides talking about ethical consumption and social entrepreneurship at events and panels, she started her #fairbylaw petition on Change.org.
In 2019 Lisa teamed up with her friend Naomi Ryland (co-founder of tbd*) to write the business book Starting a Revolution – What we can learn from female entrepreneurs about the future of business. Since founding their companies, Naomi and Lisa have been on the lookout for meaningful business advice but hardly any of the advice they heard from the startup world, and read in business books, seemed up to the challenges of our time, like climate change, deeply divided societies, growing inequality, and a disillusioned and burnt-out workforce. So they went on the lookout for new ideas and new role models, choosing to focus on a group of people who have been previously underrepresented in business (literature): women. After the successful self-publication in English, the business book was published in German translation by Econ (Ullstein Buchverlage) in August 2020.