Succeed At The Expense Of No One: Our Commitment To Fair Trade

There it is, the package you’ve been waiting for. Inside is your brand new John Candor product. As the delivery truck drives away and you excitedly hold your package in your hand, have you ever wondered what it took to get your item designed, sourced, made, and delivered to your front door?

A Global Supply Chain of People

From designing our products, to sourcing our raw materials; from artisans handcrafting each item, to delivery drivers in your local area, dozens of people like you and I get up every morning and work diligently to make your product a reality. They are the unsung heroes of our global supply chain and they are equally entitled to happy, balanced, and satisfying lives. You may never see them or meet them but they also have needs, and dreams, and families to take care of.

At John Candor, we adamantly believe that we are not successful unless these very individuals partake in that success. As a company we will never compromise their wellbeing for a profit margin and ensure each person receives:

• Fair pay
• Benefits (paid sick leave, paid holidays, retirement contributions, and health insurance coverage)
• Training opportunities
• Safe working conditions

Every product has to be made with this objective in mind.

Fairness and Dignity Across the Board

For over two years we invested thousands of dollars, and thousands of hours, traveling and personally visiting the various components that make up our supply chain. We carefully searched, vetted, and partnered with companies who shared our vision. Today we visit them regularly and invest in audits so we can confidently hold ourselves accountable to this objective.

This means a lot to us because John Candor was founded by two immigrants: one born and raised in Colombia and the other born and raised in Japan. Both of us came to the United States as young men and both of us landed whatever jobs we could find to survive. We cleaned bathrooms, dug ditches, worked carnival rides, sometimes worked 2 jobs, and put in long shifts at production factories and service companies to make ends meet. More often than not, we were not offered a benefits package and paid for health/dental insurance. With the salaries we made, this was a far off dream. Eventually one joined the US Army and the other became a Police Officer. 

Times have changed since those early years and we are grateful for what we have been able to accomplish as we worked our way through college and into our professional careers where we can now afford those things. But we have never forgotten where it all started and what it felt like to barely scrape by while not putting any money away for retirement or being able to see a doctor.

This means that as a company we are willing, and happy, to pay higher costs to our suppliers and artisans in order to treat them with fairness and dignity...even if this affects our company’s profits.

This is important to us, because at John Candor there is more than the bottom line.