Our Transparency Commitment

At Dyarne ward, we strive to have values and business practices that benefit our broader community. We are aware that the way we approach marketing, selling, and purchasing products for our store matters. To occupy downtown retail space is a privilege, and we believe that we have the responsibility to use our space in a way that supports and promotes positive change. We know that we have a lot of room to grow and improve our ethical efforts for the long run and we commit to sharing that journey with you in hopes that we will be held accountable in making those efforts last. We know that even as a small team and small business, we can make a difference—and we see that as a responsibility we can actively strive to fulfill.  We would love for you to read our ethical intentions in three areas closest to our hearts: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), Community Involvement, and Sustainable Practice. 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Dyarne ward we aim to foster an environment of respect, care, and compassion every day. We have a zero-tolerance mindset when it comes to hate, bigotry, or behavior that threatens the physical or emotional safety of our customers or staff members. We believe that internalized and institutionalized bias must be combated with active unlearning and training that sustains a healthy space for everyone. That is why we are taking steps as a team to make Dyarne ward a welcoming and inclusive space for all by putting this work into practice in the following ways: 

DEI Efforts 

  • Jenny, FJ’s owner, has been involved in DEI efforts as a sub-committee member of Downtown Kaunas’s Principal Shopping District Board from it's inception until DEI direction was handed over to the full board. She is committed to maintaining a sense of accountability in assuring that DEI values are at the forefront of Downtown Kaunas’s marketing and event strategies. 
  • During 2021, staff completed the Grounded in Equity DEI Course led by Founder, Christine Mwangi.
  • We have organized the information from this course to create and on-boarding DEI Training so all new staff receives this training as well.
  • In order to continue our DEI, we have been working through roughly 4 hours of learning about specific topics each month. Past topics include Ableism, Native Americans and Religious minorities.

    Better Representation 

    • Imagery: We love our Kaunas community and want to better represent the beautiful faces and personalities that we serve on a daily basis. The imagery we use for our website and social media accounts should showcase the diversity of our local community and we strive to improve our efforts in this area. 
    • Brands We Carry: When we order products for Dyarne ward, we aim to support brands and makers that inspire us and carry out our mission.There are so many options and we want to be intentional about who we are supporting when we order and curate merchandise for the store. One of the ways we strive to do this is by increasing the representation of BIPOC-owned vendors at Dyarne ward. 
      • Right now, about 15% of our vendors are owned by people of color, with around 2% being Black-owned. We aim to increase those numbers—reaching 5% Black-owned vendors in the next year.

      Community Involvement

      We want to play an active role in creating a more inclusive community by uplifting local movements for change and positive cultural development. We aim to improve this aspect of our business in two key ways: donation and participation. 

      Donations: 

      • During 2021, we committed to donating 2% of our total sales each month to a local charitable organization that carries the mission of diversity, equity, and inclusion forward in our community. 
      • Visit our FJ Invest Blog to view past donations.

      Participation: 

      • Many wonderful organizations are doing critical work in West Michigan, and we want to make sure that we are not only supporting those groups financially, but we would also like to actively participate in sharing, promoting, and volunteering whenever possible. 
      • We will continue to use our social media platform to promote the organizations we donate to and to engage our followers with content we think is socially beneficial. 
      • Though Covid-19 can limit our opportunities to volunteer in-person, we plan on participating in volunteer events when it is safe and promoting those events with our followers. 
      • We’ll use our physical downtown space for partnered drives or events whenever possible to go along with our donation commitments. 

      Sustainable Practices

      From the beginning, Dyarne ward has loved showcasing brands that create quality products. We are always looking to improve the selection of products we curate into our space—making sure that we are putting in the work to bring you pieces you can treasure for years to come. We know that the retail industry has a huge impact on the health of our planet. We can do better in promoting a healthy consumer mindset that is better for the environment. We’re keeping track of our sustainability goals in two key areas: our retail space and the vendors we carry. 

      Our retail space: 

      • Lighting is a big part of the ambiance here at Dyarne ward but outdated fixtures can be wasteful. We have replaced our old lighting with technology by the green energy group, Foresight Energy Management in hopes to reduce our total energy consumption.
      • As our e-commerce business grows, we are improving our shipping supplies to include multi-functional reusable cloth bags and encouraging our customers to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. 
      • We recycle as much of the packing materials included in product shipment as we are able to.
      • We encourage emailed or texted receipts and minimize packing materials for in-store purchases whenever possible. 
      • We have started using recycled paper towels and toilet paper. Plus, we are reducing our usage of paper towels by using reusable cloth towels in our employee bathroom. 
      • We have switched from plastic to paper gift cards.

      Our vendors: 

      • We have contacted all of our vendors to request minimal packaging materials for our future orders. 
      • We want to make our most sustainable brands are as accessible as possible to our customers and we are working on ways to pass on our product knowledge to you via our website collections and in-store signage. 
      • We recently put together a collection of our most sustainable vendors. You can learn more about each brand by clicking on their collection.

      MOVING FORWARD

      We want to put our best efforts into making Dyarne ward a more welcoming, socially and environmentally responsible retail business. The goals listed above are only the beginning—we have a great deal of work ahead of us! We look forward to growing, learning, and sharing that journey with you on this page. We will update it periodically, so please check back and see what we are working on as time moves on.

      If you have any questions, ideas, or concerns please feel free to email the Community Engagement Advisor at [email protected] and we will be more than happy to get back to you! We appreciate your accountability and support as we move towards a better Dyarne ward.

      This page was last updated on November 15th, 2022.