ELEGANT ROOTS VALUES

WELCOME and thank you for your interest in our company values.

Elegant Roots, a branch of Elegant Village LLC, is a values-based e-commerce boutique that transparently offers high-quality artisanal gifts from eco-conscious and socially responsible designers and small businesses.

At Elegant Roots and Elegant Village, we recognize that there are many ways to support people and planet and that making responsible choices can be a complicated matter. We also know that we are not perfect, and that we cannot expect perfection from any product, process or company. But we are confident that if we all take positive steps whenever reasonably possible, we can make a significant difference in this world.

Our Name

Our name reflects our values. We offer one small but elegant solution to our growing concern for people and planet by transparently presenting gifts with eco-conscious and socially responsible roots. We believe that thoroughly understanding a product’s story enhances its meaning and adds value to our customer’s purchasing power.

Mission/Vision Statement

Our business decisions reflect our Mission/Vision Statement, which we are pleased to share:

Elegant Roots serves customers, stakeholders and planet by transparently offering and consistently delivering a sumptuous and relevant gifting experience. We push ourselves and encourage others to conduct business in a more responsible way, including creating an environment where customers care to ask and business authentically answers four simple questions: who made this product, what is it made from, where was it made and why, beyond its form and function, is it worth buying? We believe that the more often our answers demonstrate socially and environmentally responsible product roots and business practices, the more dramatic our shift to sustainable living.

Core Values

In order to realize our Mission/Vision, we strive to operate our business within the following five core values:

• Quality: We delight our customers and their gift recipients by consistently and timely delivering exceptional quality gifts in luxurious but environmentally responsible packaging.

• Relevance: We offer gifts produced by small designers / businesses that are socially and / or environmentally relevant to people and planet in some significant way, without exception.

• Transparency: We provide our customers the information needed to make responsible choices about how to spend their powerful purchasing dollars.

• Encouragement: We encourage consumers and entrepreneurs to make responsible buying and business decisions that will improve the lives of people and planet.

• Responsibility: We run our business in an eco-conscious and socially responsible manner, even if doing so reduces profit.

Operating Principles

Our mission, vision and values guide all of our operating principles and decisions. We are proud to share a few of our operating details:

• Quality:
• We carry only high-quality, commercially viable products that have been made with attention to detail.
• We favor beautifully handcrafted products with intrinsic value.
• We provide exceptional quality, eco-friendly gift packaging free of charge, even though doing so reduces profit, because we want all gift recipients to have a memorable but relevant gifting experience.

• Relevance:
• We offer products from environmentally and socially responsible small designers / businesses only.
• Our designers / business vendors personally make the products we purchase or are closely involved in the creative process.
• We carry primarily artisan-produced gifts and never products mass produced in anonymous factories. We consider products made in volume only if they have strong social or environmental value and otherwise meet our standards.
• Our designers / business vendors provide or ensure fair prices, fair wages and good working conditions, without exception.
• We go to extraordinary lengths to ensure our complimentary gift packaging is as eco-conscious as possible. Please see our Gift Packaging description for details.

• Transparency:
• We provide as much product and vendor detail to our customers and gift recipients as practicable, including outlining the all-important who, what, where and why story on each product page, so that our customers can make responsible choices and have peace of mind.
• We provide our customers with additional relevant information about all of our designers / business vendors in order to promote and honor them for their responsible business practices. Please see our Designer Profiles index.
• We provide a list of all ingredients used in our natural personal-care gifts such as lotions, scrubs, balms, creams and oils so that our customers can determine compatibility. Please see our Ingredients List.
• We conduct our own business operations as transparently as practicable, including identifying our packaging specifications (link above), fulfillment house / call center (links below), Values and providing our Team Profiles and Advisory Board Profiles.

• Encouragement:
• We encourage consumers to demand responsible business practices from us and from other retailers.
• We encourage retail shoppers to ask and understand, whenever possible, who, what, where and why before buying on any site or in any store.
• We encourage all businesses to offer products with transparency and to ask and understand, whenever possible, who, what, where and why before purchasing supplies and products.
• We offer our Designer Profiles to honor and promote our responsible small business vendors and to encourage others who wish to create for the betterment of people and planet.
• We offer a Blog in order to encourage others to share their creativity, inspiration and ideas for more responsible living.
• Elegant Roots will encourage socially and environmentally conscious business development by contributing profit dollars to the Elegant Village Foundation, a non-profit that will provide micro-loans to needy and deserving entrepreneurs.

• Responsibility:
• We push ourselves to operate in the most eco-conscious and socially responsible manner and to constantly improve.
• We run our business office in as responsible a manner as possible. Among many other things, we operate largely paper-free and we recycle, reuse and buy the few supplies we need from Give Something Back, one of the most responsible business products companies we have found.
• Our team works hours and locations of their choosing, which supports their own personal goals and reduces our environmental footprint.
• In order to support and promote our designers/small business vendors, we 1) never “private label” products (our designers should receive credit for their own work); 2) never demand “exclusivity” (we want our designers to be widely successful); and 3) always pay our designers promptly (we do not want to shift the inventory and cost burden to our designers.)
• We use a socially responsible warehouse and shipping service located in the United States. We describe our Rapid Fulfillment warehouse and shipping services at our Shipping Page.
• We promptly respond to customers who have additional questions and offer a USA-based call line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We describe our Marketing Support Network customer service support at our Returns & Customer Service Page.

Thank you for visiting. We hope you will shop with us and evolve with us to a higher consumer consciousness.