Brand Collaborations Commercial Integration and Brand Collaborations
“Integrating Living Wage benchmarks into commercial supply chains requires balancing fair artisan remuneration with commercial viability.” A prominent example of this commercial model is MADE51’s partnership with UK retailer John Lewis, which launched a collection of six holiday ornaments handcrafted by more than 200 forcibly displaced women across six countries using heritage techniques. The pricing structures are designed to ensure fair wages while remaining commercially competitive. While brand collaborations extend across global markets, larger collaborations, such as those with Chloé and UNIQLO, include tailored impact reporting, drawing on production monitoring and artisan payment data to help brands understand and communicate their positive impact.
Overcoming Operational Challenges and Addressing Wage Gaps
Maintaining Living Wages on an annual basis involves navigating several complex operational hurdles. Sudden local inflation and currency exchange shifts can rapidly erode real earnings.
In response, Isabella explains, “MADE51, UNHCR, and local social enterprise partners monitor changing conditions and adjust piece rates dynamically based on changes to local economic conditions”.
Additional challenges include assessing living standards in refugee camp settings where housing or food may be subsidised, but where the level of assistance provided can change suddenly depending on funding availability, as well as addressing varied digital literacy among local partners through multilingual guidance and hands-on workshops.
A practical illustration of WageIndicator data in action occurs in South Sudan, where approximately 400 refugee and host-community women in Juba and Gorom Camp produce the ‘With Refugees‘ and ‘Stackable‘ bracelets. In this location, the applicable WageIndicator Living Wage benchmark is set at US$5.78 per eight-hour workday. Field production data reveals that beading artisans earn US$17.90 per day, while quality control artisans earn US$12.10 per day, placing both payment rates at more than double the local Living Wage benchmark. These figures reflect earnings on days when production orders are available and should not be understood as continuous daily income throughout the year.
Because these bracelets are fast, high-volume items, calculating payments strictly at the baseline Living Wage would return a disproportionately low share of product value to the artisans. Consequently, piece rates were deliberately set higher to ensure a greater proportion of sales value reaches the makers, while unit allocations per artisan are capped to distribute production fairly and limit income disparities within the community.
Looking Ahead: Decent Work and Long-Term Stability
Earning a reliable income provides displaced families with critical stability, directly supporting nutrition, education, and financial security within host communities. Moving forward, Isabella says that “MADE51’s vision centres on expanding transparent supply chain oversight, refining data-driven costing tools, and working directly with local social enterprise partners to systematically close remaining payment gaps across all 23 refugee-hosting countries. Our partnership with WageIndicator is crucial to enabling MADE51 to reach this goal.”