Back to cases of study
Fair Trade USA™

How Fair Trade USA™ uses Modelit to scale up its team.

Who they are:

Fair Trade USA is the leading certifier of fair trade products in North America. Its trusted Fair Trade Certified™ seal on a product signifies that it was made according to rigorous fair trade standards that promote sustainable livelihoods and safe working conditions, protection of the environment, and strong, transparent supply chains. Rather than creating dependency on aid, Fair Trade USA’s model empowers farmers, workers, and fishers to alleviate poverty and earn additional money to improve their communities. They needed a reliable partner to help them evolve their business into the Salesforce platform in order to maximize their positive impact. The main goal was to achieve stronger technological capabilities.

The challenge

Founded in 1998, Fair Trade USA has been building an innovative model for responsible business and conscious consumerism — with a common goal to eliminate poverty and enable sustainable development for farmers, workers, their families, and their communities around the world.

In 2016, they made the decision to further invest in the Salesforce platform and needed to quickly assemble a skilled team to build solutions.  

Having worked with offshore teams in the past, they found that such teams would often fall short of meeting Fair Trade’s standards.  As a complex company, they needed an external team that could keep up with their staff on a daily basis and come through with the expected results. 

They later realized that Modelit’s engagement model and proven tech capabilities were exactly what they had been missing!

The culture of Modelit— where employee happiness, balance, and respect are prioritized — is evident in the members that join our teams.

Matt Pope - Director of Engineering, Fair Trade USA

The solution

Before working with us, Fair Trade USA had already been using Salesforce for several years. So, alongside their team, we began by defining their needs and determining exactly how we could help them to thrive.  We swiftly joined forces with their growing, internal technical team and offered the assistance necessary for bringing their vision to life.  

Our extensive experience within the Salesforce platform helped Fair Trade USA immensely.  They were able to cut back on the time it would have otherwise taken them to develop such proficiency internally.  Not to mention, working with Modelit proved to be the more cost-effective choice when compared to local Bay Area tech experts.

In the beginning, we had only 1 person working with the Fair Trade USA team.  Then 2 more resources joined on, and it continued to grow from there. We provided skills and experience on the platform, and we also allowed Fair Trade USA to add capabilities in a fast and flexible way.  We processed a large amount of data, while also managing to deliver great solutions for them. We experienced the most significant growth in 2020, as the team dedicated to working with Fair Trade USA grew to 12 members. 

With Modelit’s smooth and effective onboarding process for newly recruited team members, the integration of those new members with the existing Fair Trade USA team was made easy.  Over the years, Fair Trade USA has held onto team members that have developed a solid relationship with the company while proving themselves as valuable resources.

Modelit has acted as a strong force over the years, offering knowledgeable resources which have allowed for the smart and swift growth of the Fair Trade movement.

Modelit has provided an ability to scale and adapt quickly, as the technology roadmap needed to meet our needs has evolved to reflect our internal vision as an organization.

Matt Pope - Director of Engineering, Fair Trade USA

How we helped

  • Knowledge of how to make best use of technology to drive positive impact and make progress toward goals. 
  • Automated systems to date collection and analysis and to support partners' interactions.
  • An expanded, dedicated team from 1 to 12 members. 


Best of all, Fair Trade USA and Modelit continue to share a positive technology partnership today. From the start, we were able to establish a foundational level of trust between leadership at both Fair Trade USA and Modelit.  Together we adopted a highly integrated and collaborative approach, from individual contributors up to management.  Our collaboration continues to thrive as we stay focused on building a tech-driven future for Fair Trade USA.  
We are excited to see what the future holds for this partnership!

We look forward to continuing to build on the foundation of quality that we have established with Modelit over the last 5 years. We look to both the leadership, and to the people working side-by-side with our staff, to bring innovation and improvements to the way we do our work and ultimately drive the impact we are able to have on the lives of farmers and workers around the world.

Matt Pope - Director of Engineering, Fair Trade USA

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5
Heading 6

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Block quote

Ordered list

  1. Item 1
  2. Item 2
  3. Item 3

Unordered list

  • Item A
  • Item B
  • Item C

Text link

Bold text

Emphasis

Superscript

Subscript

Partnering for Success

Explore our client success stories to see how we’ve been able to boost companies towards solving their business challenges with Salesforce

Salesforce Platform
Explore how PeerNova teamed up with Modelit to launch Cuneiform for Salesforce.

Read more
arrow
Salesforce Data Cloud
How we harmonized PeerNova's customer data from Salesforce and Hubspot with a three-week Salesforce Data Cloud POC.

Read more
arrow
Service Cloud, Experience Cloud
Modelit Snapshot: How we secured sensitive data with Salesforce.

Our client specializes in life expectancy analysis for life insurance policies, along with providing life insurance underwriting services. With a focus on meticulous data organization, the company operates two Salesforce orgs—one dedicated to insurance policy writing and the other for data organization to initiate policies. The life expectancy calculation org plays a pivotal role, collecting and processing insured client information to determine policy decisions. Additionally, the company utilizes Salesforce tools for document generation, email communication, and policy servicing, ensuring comprehensive coverage of their operations.

Read more
arrow
Modelit Snapshot: How we facilitated the migration process from Hubspot to Salesforce.

Our client specializes in providing cybersecurity solutions for various software platforms. Operating as a small to medium-sized business, the client predominantly worked with HubSpot for their CRM needs in the past. The client was introduced to us by a Salesforce Account Executive, as they were in search of an outstanding implementation partner that could assist them in the migration from HubSpot CRM over to Salesforce. Here’s how Modelit got involved…

Read more
arrow
Service Cloud
Modelit Snapshot: How we leveraged Service Cloud for customer excellence.

Our client builds top-of-the-line POS solutions for the live entertainment marketplace, with the goal of creating a smoother overall interaction between vendors and consumers. Their customers in the entertainment industry regularly approach them with questions about their products and logistics. Thus, it is crucial for them to have an excellent handle on their customer service. We built a cloud-based customer service solution to help our client excel in addressing everyday customer queries. Here’s how Modelit got involved...

Read more
arrow
Modelit
How Fair Trade USA™ uses Modelit to scale up its team.

Fair Trade USA is the leading certifier of fair trade products in North America. Its trusted Fair Trade Certified™ seal on a product signifies that it was made according to rigorous fair trade standards that promote sustainable livelihoods and safe working conditions, protection of the environment, and strong, transparent supply chains. Rather than creating dependency on aid, Fair Trade USA’s model empowers farmers, workers, and fishers to alleviate poverty and earn additional money to improve their communities. They needed a reliable partner to help them evolve their business into the Salesforce platform in order to maximize their positive impact. The main goal was to achieve stronger technological capabilities.

Read more
arrow
Salesforce
Custom Solutions for Energy Efficiency.

In 2012, Modelit took on Build It Green as its first client. This nonprofit, which offers energy efficiency services throughout California, has since been acquired by Franklin Energy. With that acquisition in 2019, Franklin Energy was able to expand its reach to the west coast -- continuing with its mission of providing energy efficiency solutions to the entire United States. The ultimate goal is to encourage communities to make smart choices when it comes to energy efficiency, and to help reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2025. When we began working with Build It Green, they’d been using two separate legacy systems to run the Energy Upgrade California™ Home Upgrade - a program that is administered by the organization for Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E). Not only was this approach a slow and expensive one, but trouble with data integration between the two systems was also costing the company in customer satisfaction.

Read more
arrow
Salesforce
Creating a better experience for MoreHands customers and employees alike.

MoreHands Maid Service is a family-owned business that provides cleaning and errand services across Texas. They needed a reliable Salesforce partner to help them build their business into the platform to provide better customer experiences and help streamline their internal operations. The main goal was to use efficient tech to offer an efficient service, so MoreHands can create more joy for their clients.

Read more
arrow
Salesforce
How we streamlined payment scheduling for Amazon's FreeTime Unlimited service.

Amazon is a multinational technology company that focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence, among many other things. In 2019, the Amazon App Store division needed to streamline its business operations. The main challenge was to implement a system capable of automatizing the processing of hundreds of payments while taking into account the particular terms of each individual agreement.

Read more
arrow
View all cases