Living Wage: Paying Whats Right

We’re all about maximizing our slay, but not about maximizing our profit-margins. We don’t have a middleman or sourcing agent. We do business directly with the village artisans that produce our fabrics. 

Why? Because the monthly minimum wage in these minority ethnic groups is approximately 2000 RMB, if not less. That’s roughly $185 USD per month, amounting to a little less than $6 a day. While living wage research is still limited in rural regions of China where we operate, we ballpark our hourly wage floor rate to be 30% above the minimum wage to what we estimate would be living wage. 

 

Minority ethnic groups have been resisting assimilation and mass relocation for thousands of years. But with their hometowns being in remote locales, economic opportunity is hard to come by. In recent years, thousands of villages have been emptied as youth migrate to urban cities for employment.

But elderly villagers remain.

 

We love our village ladies, and we believe artisan craft deserves to be shared with and marveled by the world. 

So, we pay them whatever rate they deem necessary for them to stay. They sell their fabrics to us at well above a living wage, and we readily pay them at that rate. It’s not about negotiating for the best deal, it’s about doing the right thing.

By continuing to forge these relationships with these minority ethnic groups, we hope to move toward a cooperative system in which village artisans each serve as member-owners of their village’s textile guild. 

Sour Gongzhu would become a patron of these worker cooperatives, providing financial support and professional development skills so that these artisans can take ownership and control of their own economic future. 

They set their wages. They set their working hours. They forge their future.