Believe it or not, the idea for Maggie's Organics began with an Organic Tortilla chip. We were in the food business, busy selling both blue and yellow corn tortilla chips, when one of our farmers recommended adding cotton to the crop rotation to improve the quality of the corn. His experiment worked. However, his cotton yielded a crop and we were expected to sell it!

After learning the harsh facts of conventional cotton cultivation and garment manufacturing, we began making garments a different way - using our farmer's Organic cotton. We started with socks, and then added tee shirts: simple products that would encourage the use of Organic fibers in order to convert as many acres of land as possible from conventional to organic farming methods.

In the apparel industry, we quickly learned about poor working conditions and pay for the actual sewers that make the clothes we all wear. We became impassioned to find or to create an alternative. By partnering with Jubilee House, a community development organization, and pledging our sewing contracts, we were instrumental in the creation of The Fair Trade Zone, a 100% worker-owned Sewing Co-Operative in Nueva Vida, Nicaragua. The co-op became the first worker-owned cooperative in the world to gain Free Trade Zone status! Visit the Fair Trade Zone web site for more information.

Click here to view a 13 minute video that tells the story of our work to form a sewing cooperative with victims of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua.

Our partnership with The Fair Trade Zone has inspired us to pursue other projects. Currently, we are working to develop a domestic worker-owned cooperative that will exclusively knit our best-selling Cotton Crew Socks, and we are beginning to develop relationships with other worker-owned producers as well.

Today, our products are sold around the world in natural product and specialty stores, as well as on the Maggie's website.