Beginning of this year we published an entry on a "network of philantrophic, for-profit companies" and how we could take our initial slogan of "consultants of compassion" to a whole new level and create value by giving our work away for free to certain projects. In our quest for such a project, we have had the honour to meet many great and passionate people. We are also in the process to launch a website for our network of compassionate consultantsTM who will share similar values, ethics and work practices with us and whose services will be complementary to ours in web-strategy consulting and project-management.

The first project in what we intend to be a line of different ventures for us in the future is free2tradefair. It is an e-commerce site that connects artisans and producers in developing countries with consumers in Australia. The team is made up solely of volunteers who committed their precious time and energy to the launch of this producers marketplace. "The Free2TradeFair website provides an open marketplace that supports the buying and selling of fair trade products from around the globe. It seeks to assist producers overcome the many obstacles that can be faced in relation to access of developed markets such as Australia. As such, the website provides support for the selling of their products with the aim of returning all profit made directly to them."

This will represent a unique chance to Australians in supporting people in developing markets by purchasing products directly from the producers site and featured on free2tradefair. We look forward in continuing to work with the free2tradefair team in enhancing the website and making it even better going forward. On our personal wishlist are local payment methods and to keep as much as possible of the shopping experience on the free2tradefair site in general.

Theandb has worked with the free2tradefair team in creating the business website specifications for the project and giving general advise wherever necessary on a range of topics to ensure the projects overall success. We've come far from where we started out from and still have a way to go to the official launch of the site but it's looking very good indeed.

We feel truly blessed to have worked and continue to work with such wonderful people. Thanks to (in totally random order) Helen Burrows who pulled the often changing team together - never forgetting the end goal - Sean Torstensson for his inspired designs, Michael Vullings as web-developer for working his way through the at-times difficult to understand Catgen system, Michael Fuller as our biz-guy for lending focus on critical business issues, Andrew Eagle for coming up with just the right content based on his long years of experience in the NGO sector, Ewa Potaczala for managing all aspects relating to our producers, Ewa Potaczala and Christie Hall for the superb organisation of producers and... many others whose names i must have omitted from this list who should feel very welcome to complain to us. There have been a number of people involved earlier on in the project to get it off the ground that we have not interfaced with directly as we came in when things were already in quite high gear. A particular Thanks to them for lending their positive energy in shaping the free2tradefair project (then called JustTrade) from a simple idea to reality.

See it for yourself.! The link points to the current development site which will soon be replaced by our domain. In addition, the content is still in-progress and producers are still signing up to be part of this exciting new producers marketplace.