Made in China (Creative Commons/Cory M. Grenier)

Consumers, however, seldom stop to think about what the branded words really mean—or the origin of the products that are unmarked by such words.

Elizabeth Suda’s curiosity was sparked while working in the merchandising department at Coach’s corporate headquarters, she said.

One of her responsibilities was managing the high-end label’s samples closet for men’s products, a job that raised a number of questions she had never previously considered.

“In being so close to the product, I really started to think about where these products were actually coming from and who’s making them,” Suda said. “There’s so much stuff coming here, but from where?”

A little over two years ago, Suda quit her job at Coach and went in search of some answers.

“I finally decided that I really needed to travel and see for myself what was happening over in Asia,” she said. “My original plans were to go to India, but for various reasons I ended up in Laos.”

A country in Southeast Asia bordered by Burma, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, Laos is home to a population that largely survives by subsistent farming.

Eighty percent of the nation’s population grows and cultivates just enough food to feed their families, which means many of them have no monetary income, Suda said.

The families that do have small sums of disposable income usually earn it through the local sale of weaving and other crafts.

“What I saw there was the difference between someone being able to send their child to school and buy the school uniform or not,” Suda said. “You would see some poorer families that weren’t able to do that.”

Suda added that she encountered countless women in Laos producing astounding handmade items. They simply did not have access to the markets that would allow them to substantially profit from their talents.

“Coming from a fashion background, I thought, let’s see what these women are producing and whether or not their skills can be developed into a product that’s appropriate for a Western market,” she said.

After spending about six months in Laos, Suda returned to the U.S. and began developing Article 22.

For more than a year, the company has been helping to financially reward women in Laos for the hard work that goes into the making of their handbags, scarves and other fashion accessories.

Named after the 22nd article of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Suda’s company has created an online retail site that serves multiple causes.

Not only does it bring traditional, handmade Laos creations to an international market, but it spreads awareness about both fairly traded fashion and producing merchandise in an environmentally sustainable way.

“While working for Coach, I also started paying more attention to issues around the environment,” Suda said. “But in Laos, it became not just about sustainable fashion, which is hand woven and naturally dyed, but also about how you can improve people’s lives by paying them to do what they already do.”

Under the Article 22 label, Suda does sell some of her own fashion accessory designs, but all of the revenue made from the sale of merchandise produced in Laos goes directly to the artisans’ families.

With similar intentions, Global Goods Partners, an online company started by two former fieldworkers for development agencies, takes a nonprofit approach to the fair trade market that Article 22 set out to enact in Laos.

Started in 2005 as a school fundraising program, Global Goods Partners now works with 20 countries all over South America, Africa and Asia.

Throughout these countries, the organization partners with 40 different groups, most of which were identified by founders Catherine Lieber Shimony and Joan Shifrin.

“What we want is to create economic stability for our groups,” said Sara Lopez-Isaacs, the organization’s operations manager. “By purchasing products for these women, we’re able to offer them income generation for the first time ever, giving them some sense of financial independence. It really empowers them.”

This female empowerment is the heart and soul of the organization, Lopez-Isaacs added.

For many women, the extra money they bring in by selling their products through Global Goods Partners means being able to feed and educate their children more substantially.

“When we actually get the crafts firsthand, it’s moving, and these women are always very thankful to us,” Lopez-Isaacs said. “It’s the ultimate bliss to actually meet them in person.”

Global Goods Partners carries primarily jewelry, handbags and small houseware items crafted by foreign artisans.

The organization purchases the items in bulk directly from the craftswomen, who are paid up front. Organization representatives work with the artisans to set a price that is fair trade for their community and for the work they are doing.

“We try to pick products that have some kind of heritage tie to our groups, and then we work with them to modernize those,” Lopez-Isaacs said. “We don’t want our group in Afghanistan to make something you can find on the streets in New York.”

It is the individuality and diversity of the items produced by these artisans that makes them so special, Lopez-Isaacs added.

“You can really see the difference in quality between our handcrafted products and the regular retail made in China,” she said. “And you’re not only getting a beautifully crafted, well made gift, but it’s also going back to a good cause.”

Lopez-Isaacs said that organization members hope Global Goods Partners will double in size throughout the next year, taking on more groups in more countries as it grows.

Ruth DeGolia, founder of nonprofit Mercado Global, also hopes to expand her organization in the coming years, but on a smaller scale.

Mercado Global works with women in the Guatemalan Highlands to give them the confidence and refined skill set needed to craft products marketable in the U.S. DeGolia started the organization in 2004 after studying in Guatemala during her time as a Yale student.

“I met these really amazing women who are very smart and talented and who make these great products, but they were literally starving because they had no market,” DeGolia said.

Mercado Global created a training program that teaches the Guatemalan women about self esteem, financial literacy, business administration and more.

“Seventy-five percent of the women we work with can’t even write because their fathers didn’t want to send them to school,” DeGolia said. “I had this very overwhelming feeling that this was not fair.”

Mercado Global works with 31 co-ops—each of which contains between eight and 20 women—in 25 different communities in rural Guatemala. The women in each co-op produce everything from scarves and jewelry to bags and pillows, as well as some ceramics.

“I think now, with the recession, people can’t buy as much,” DeGolia said. “So maybe before, people would buy a lot of jewelry in a season and a lot of it was not great stuff. Now people can only buy one necklace per season or one necklace per year, so they’re more thoughtful about that one piece. They want something that feels special, that has a story behind it.”

DeGolia added that on the tags of each of their items, Mercado Global tries to include the story of the artisans who made the piece, a story that says so much more than the “Made in China” that can be found on many manufactured products.

Similarly, Suda strives to tell stories through Article 22’s merchandise. In June, the company began selling what she calls “peace bomb bracelets.” They are made from melted scrap metal taken from bombs that have been dropped on Laos.

Suda came up with the idea for these after watching Laos artisans make spoons from the scrap metal. According to Suda, Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history. As a result of this, much of the country’s land is highly contaminated with bombs that have not yet exploded.

Suda hopes to both help fund land-clearing projects in Laos and to spread awareness about the situation there through the sale of the bracelets.

“It’s a part of history that many Americans don’t really know about. It’s not really emphasized in our history books,” Suda said. “So I like the idea that if you’re wearing a peace bomb bracelet and someone comments on it, you can explain the story.”

Also in an effort to spread awareness, Mercado Global recently partnered with Levi Strauss. Last month, Levi Strauss officially stopped sourcing accessories for the men’s brand in China and now they are going to be selling accessories made by the organization’s artisans in Guatemala, DeGolia said.

One of Mercado Global’s goals is to get more companies to do what Levi Strauss is doing.

“We want to change how the fashion industry works,” she said. “We want the norm to become sourcing socially responsible products.”

DeGolia said she wants consumers to demand more and more of these sustainable products so that companies will start using eco-friendly materials and producing their merchandise in a way that has a positive impact on the world.

According to Suda, it is this positive impact that makes companies like Article 22, Global Goods Partners and Mercado Global such desirable choices for shopping.

“You can have beautiful things,” she said. “But they’re even more beautiful if they’re made in a way that’s beautiful.”

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