FairTale GHANA was born in 2017, and it has been a rollercoaster ever since. We came through Covid. The years that nearly finished us were 2024 and 2025.
It started with an automated system at Amazon closing our store by mistake. We spent months trying to get that decision reversed and got nowhere. Our customers stayed with us through all of it, and somewhere in those months we decided to read it as a sign. Plenty of people had been asking us to leave Amazon anyway. So we did. We closed the account, pulled everything off, opened our own store, and started shipping straight from Ghana.
It did not go well at all. Shipping out of Africa is simply expensive, and that is fair enough, the continent is enormous. Within a few months we had lost 90 percent of our sales.
Why Leaving Almost Ended Us
Raw Shea butter is heavy, and shipping heavy boxes and pouches internationally from a small operation is expensive in a way that is hard to picture until you try it yourself. Amazon's logistics network solves that problem so completely that most customers never think about it. Take it away, and the math falls apart fast. That was the actual lesson, not a theory: fewer sales, not because the product changed, but because the delivery problem came back and nobody else on earth had already solved it for us.
What Amazon Is Actually Doing Behind the Price
Here is the part most customers never see. We ship our Shea butter and Baobab oil in bulk to two places: a warehouse in New Jersey for the US, and one in Poland for the EU. From there, Amazon moves it, at their own cost, out to whichever fulfillment center is closest to the customer who ordered it, coast to coast, country to country.
Nobody offers that for free. If we shipped every individual order ourselves from one location, each customer would be paying for their own dedicated cross-country or cross-border shipment, splitting that point-A-to-point-B cost with us. Amazon instead moves thousands of companies' inventory through the same network at once, and the cost of that gets shared across all of it. That is the specific reason our Amazon prices can sit lower than our own store's prices for the same product. It is not a discount we are choosing to give up on our own site, it is a cost we cannot spread the same way alone.
What the Cooperative Cares About
The ethics-of-Amazon conversation matters, but it is not the conversation the women in the cooperative are having. They want their Shea butter and Baobab oil sold, at a fair price, in volume, because that is their income and their children's school fees. Whether it moves through Amazon's warehouses or ours does not change what they are paid for their work.
The Bigger Question We Are Not Going to Answer
Whether one company should be allowed to get this large, and how much power that gives one owner, is a real question. It is also not a question a business our size gets to settle, and pretending we have a position on it would be more marketing than honesty. What we can say factually: Amazon employed about 1,576,000 people worldwide at the end of 2025, more than live in the entire state of Hawaii, or in Estonia, where the founders of both FairTale GHANA and NGO Mondo are from. That is before counting delivery drivers and warehouse contractors who work under other companies' names.
None of this is our opinion. Amazon's headcount is in their own annual filing, their warehouse pay is on their own careers pages, and the argument about what those warehouses are like is all over the internet, made by people far better placed than us to make it. Look it up. We are too small, and moving too fast, to litigate that debate. What we can actually do is run our own small piece of it as ethically as we know how.
Not Either/Or
We do have our own store. It exists, but the honest answer to "why Amazon" is the 90 percent, and the math behind the price tag above. We keep working on it, and on finding more affordable options for our customers, and we completely understand why most people go to Amazon.
We have already had a taste of what it means to build your house on another man's land. That is exactly what we have done with our brand, and we have already found out what it costs when the landlord changes his mind. The rules change, and then Amazon decides, not us. That is why our own shop matters so much to us: if our listings went down tomorrow, it is the place we could still send you, and the place the women's income would still come from. Keeping it alive is our responsibility, not anyone else's.
But as long as the Amazon stores are up and running, every purchase is worth exactly the same to us, wherever you make it. Which one you choose is up to you, and we are incredibly thankful to every single customer either way.
Find us on Amazon, or shop directly through our own store.
FAQ
Why does an ethical brand sell on Amazon?
An automated system at Amazon closed our store by mistake, and after months of getting nowhere we took it as a sign and left for good. We shipped from Ghana instead, and within a few months we had lost 90 percent of our sales. Shipping heavy Shea butter internationally on our own is far more expensive than Amazon's shared logistics network.
Why are prices lower on Amazon than on your own store?
We ship in bulk to Amazon warehouses in New Jersey and Poland, and Amazon distributes it from there across their network at a shared cost. Shipping each order individually ourselves does not have that same cost-sharing.
Does the cooperative care whether you sell through Amazon or your own store?
Not really. What matters to the women is that their Shea butter and Baobab oil sells at a fair price, which funds their income and their children's education. The sales channel does not change that.
How many people does Amazon employ worldwide?
About 1,576,000 at the end of 2025, across its warehouses, delivery network and offices. That is more people than live in the entire state of Hawaii, or in Estonia, where the founders of both FairTale GHANA and NGO Mondo are from.
Do you have concerns about Amazon's size and influence?
That is a real debate, and not one a business our size is positioned to settle. The numbers and the arguments are public, and we would rather you looked at them yourself than took our word for it. Our own focus is running our own small, ethical operation well.
Why build your own store at all?
As long as our products are on Amazon, it works, and we are glad of it. But the rules of any marketplace are set by the marketplace, not by us. If our listings went down tomorrow, our own shop is the place we could still send you, and the place the women's income would still come from. Keeping it alive is our responsibility.
Raw Shea butter from our cooperative: Raw Shea Butter
0 comments