Lorna Young

LORNA YOUNG, ENTREPRENEUR (1952 – 1996)

Lorna was the entrepreneur who lived every day as if it were her last.

Born in Dumfriesshire, she skipped university for a job in a bookshop, then marketing, quickly earning a reputation as a hard woman of sales.
 
“I like to persuade people to buy what I’m selling”.

Her vivid red hair, matching personality and passion for self-determination, lit up Equal Exchange’s cramped offices in Edinburgh’s West End – the Product Sales Director was driven by the idea that smallholder coffee farmers could evolve their business and marketing skills to cut out the buyers, exporters, middlemen and multi-nationals, who suck the profit out of commodity crops. Her answer to poverty was revitalised trade, not aid.

But like so many success stories, this one began with a colossal gamble. It was the late ‘80s. Coffee prices were plunging and coffee communities were in crisis. Four NGOs (Equal Exchange, Oxfam, Traidcraft, and Twin Trading) got together with three cooperatives in Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, to build a more stable market with a fairly-traded, mass-market product. Cafédirect was born.
 
Without money, Lorna swung deals with supermarket buyers, convinced them that she’d keep product on shelves and opened their doors to ethical shopping. She talked a great product rather than a good idea, and used charisma rather than a guilt trip to make a sale. Lorna understood how the industry worked and that Fair Trade had to make business sense. Lorna lived and breathed the win-win.

There’s little doubt that she’d have been thrilled by the UK’s Fair Trade transformation if she’d lived to see it. Lorna died suddenly in July 1996, leaving the shoots of a consumer revolution as her memorial. Her family remembers her determination, wit and grit. The absurdity of it all made her laugh, the ethics and moral fight made it all worthwhile.

Self-determination and independence require more than a label and a price premium; they require a personal commitment from people who can make change, and a conviction that life is more than a spectator sport. The Lorna Young Foundation is named in Lorna’s memory. The LYFE project has been created to accelerate the work.
 
Cheers just now, as Lorna would have said.

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