Sundial Brands shares their community commerce program in which they ensure that women in particular and suppliers of their ingredients are receiving the compensation deserved. One of Sundial Brands' missions is to empower women and are able to implement this through giving 10% of their sales to the cooperatives that supply ingredients.

1. Global Shea Alliance
Shea Trade and Industry
Conference
NYC 2014

2. SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage was founded on the streets of New York by way of
Liberia and Sierra Leone. Rich’s grandmother, Sofi Tucker, started trading shea nuts at
the village marketplace in Bonthe, Sierra Leone in 1912 at the age of 19. The widowed
mother of four started making shea butter-based concoctions at home and was selling
them throughout the countryside. These products are her legacy
Co founders Richelieu Dennis and Nyema Tubman found themselves without a country
to return to after graduating college in the US with civil wars taking place in their native
Liberia. Richelieu had experience making products from shea butter from having spent
summers working for his grandmother in Sierra Leone.
Richelieu and Nyema started making products in their kitchen and selling them on the
streets of Harlem, they soon developed a distribution network.
Today, NH and SM products are sold all across the United States in every state, and
are being sold in Canada and on-line everywhere, Sundial employs over 200 people

3. SheaMoisture Products

4. SheaMoisture Products

5. Nubian Heritage Retail Displays

6. SUNDIAL’S COMMUNITY
COMMERCE
Thought Leadership in Socio
Economic Empowerment
through Sustainable
Commerce in Indigenous
Supplier Communities

7. Community Commerce:
What is it?
A business model that recognizes poverty
alleviation is best attained through
increased, mutually beneficial commercial
activity, and linking producers in
developing countries to the global
economy and treating them as equal
partners in business relationships. It is a
model that empowers people in our supply
chain, especially women. Sundial is
establishing this model and sharing it in
the shea industry. We are starting with
shea and then moving to other raw and
semi-finished materials in our supply chain.

8. Community Commerce:
Why we do it
To alleviate poverty in our supply
chain—
• Recognize and pay for value of
labor in production process
• Invest in cooperatives to
decrease labor and
environmental impact, and
improve efficiencies
• Invest in value added production
to expand commercial activity of
cooperatives

9. • Shea industry is highly unregulated and not well
understood
• No central pricing or commodity market for shea
nuts
• Industry dominated by a handful of major
industrial processors
• Women collector groups and shea butter
processors have no negotiating or bargaining
power in the marketplace
• Roughly 90% of shea products go into confections
and the edibles industry
Community Commerce The Shea Industry

10. • Five cooperatives consisting of 300 women supply shea
butter
• For each kilo, Sundial pays an “ethical wage premium” to
the women directly on top of the market price paid for
the raw butter. Equal to about 10%-depending on
market price
• According to our research of labor and cost inputs in the
traditional process, paying this premium effectively
doubles their wage for production of raw butter.
• Our aim is to ensure the members each at least double
the daily minimum wage (presently roughly $2.20 in
Ghana)
Shea Butter Supply Chain in Ghana

11. • The program also is procuring semi-finished soaps from
two cooperatives: black soap and virgin shea soap
• Semi-finished soaps are blended in our bars of soap with
our own ingredients and fragrances
• Coops will be paid for soap production and a back-end
royalty for each bar sold through this program
• We will package and distribute nation-wide in Target
retail outlets under a special promotional program
• Potential for coops to earn thousands of dollars annually
through this program
Shea Butter Supply Chain in Ghana

12. • Starting program to link coop with communities that
engage in fruit collection and nut yielding
• This has the potential to benefit an additional 1,250
women in Ghana
Shea Butter Supply Chain in Ghana

13. • Have a grant agreement with SNV Netherlands office in
Accra to provide direct support to cooperatives for the
following:
• Invest in energy savings technologies to reduce cost of
inputs and decrease labor and make process more
environmentally friendly—less firewood
• Improve health and safety conditions of coop processing
centers
• Train coop leadership in business development and
record keeping, fair trade
Shea Butter Supply Chain in Ghana

14. • Grant to SNV includes funds to purchase updated processing
equipment for the coops and invest in energy savings
production methods
• Increased production capacity per woman will increase yield
and decrease cost of production
• Women earn more for their labor
• A small portion of the wage premium is given to coop central
fund for additional investments in the coop and community
projects
• Coops develop sustainable production capacity to increase
production and market products to additional clients. Our
investments aim to help the coops thrive as businesses
Shea Butter Supply Chain in Ghana

15. Community Commerce Impact
• Improve on fair trade by paying a fair wage component
directly to 300 women to double their incomes, and
higher prices to 1,250 collectors
• Investments in production improvements and energy
efficiencies will result in wider profit margins for
producers (decrease labor input)
• Investments in value added processing will increase
commercial activity (soap, black soap)
• Increase purchase of shea butter from 25% of our annual
usage to 100% in 2014 through community commerce
• Buy semi-finished back soap and virgin shea soap at
premium wage price and pay a back end royalty to
increase income of soap producers

16. • Increased income through a model that values the wage input
• Helps cooperatives understand the value of their labor and
appreciate the concept of calculating cost of inputs and
production efficiencies
• Imparting the Value of branding products to improve
marketability of goods
• Help coops with the capacity to move onto producing
additional value added products that Sundial can help them
market through our nation-wide distribution channels
• Share and learn with others in the industry with the ultimate
objective of improving the livelihoods and working conditions
of all in the supply chain
Implications

17. Community Commerce: Validation
• Monitor and evaluate the program by
partnering with SNV, an international NGO to
train cooperatives and introduce energy and
production efficiencies in Ghana
• In the application stage to obtain a Fair for Life
handler certification from IMO