Half Day Off

By Naji Makarem Of FunkyGandhi

FunkyGandhi declared a spontaneous half-day off on Thursday the 22nd of September in celebration of exceptionally good weather. I took the decision upon stepping outside at 1:40pm and facing a blaring sunshine. It’s been a pretty poor summer this year here in the UK. We were teased with a little sunshine here and there, but we havn’t been blessed with a long period of sunshine that actually makes us crave the clouds and look forward to getting back into our cosy winter clothes. So when I felt the heat of Thursday’s sun in my face, I squinted, smiled and decided we should take the rest of the day off.

By 1:42pm I had made his decision. I walked back into his office, and declared: “We’re taking the rest of the day off in celebration of exceptionally good weather”. The reaction was to cheer, and within no time business was on hold until the following morning, when the FunkyGandhi team resumed work feeling re-vitalised.

Many businesses have commitments which cannot be posponed by such a spontaneous decision. But, I feel, the inability of most businesses to spontaneously put business on hold hilights one of the biggest problems of our Economic system:

There are two aspects of our economic system which influence our lives: On the one hand it offers many of us oportunities to work in a multitude of fields, and to make our dreams a reality by injecting our entrepreneurial energy into a start-up or within a company. Consumers benefit from these competitive market dynamics by being offered a wide range of products and services at competitive prices, tailor-made to meet our needs.

On the other hand though, Capitalism, within our existing framework of taxes and monetary system, drives us to work even harder and longer hours, a phenomena known as the race to the bottom, and puts more and more power into fewer and fewer hands, thus reducing the diversity in our retail landscape.

As you can see, the two influences of Capitalism are conflicting, and unfortunately the latter has proved to be a more powerful force.

The forces of our current System of Capitalism are having a negative impact not just on our lives, due to higher debt, longer working hours, less job security, less time to invest in our communities through Social Capital and less choice on the high-streets, but is also having a negative impact on the environment. The root cause of this problem is captured by the inability of most companies to take a spontaneous half-day off: We must work at the pace set by an expected ROI (return on Investment). If we don’t, the system collapses. Even slowing economic activity down temporarily to reduce C02 emissions while we invest in sustainable energy is impossible, even though the future of this vessel we find ourselves in, planet earth, is at stake.

The callenge of communities all over the World today, who have come together under the common “brand” of Global Democracy/Justice Movement, is to change the parameters within which Markets function, so that economic activity meets the needs of people and the Environment/Nature. This process is known as Alternative Globalisation.

So how was FunkyGandhi able to declare a spontaneous day off in today’s system? We are a small company, and we all invested in FunkyGandhi, so we all have a share. So in a way we are a co-operative, although not in the legal sense. Neither of us have been set targets to generate a specific ROI. We just hope that in the long run we grow organically to become a succesful Ethical Fashion Label within a small niche of Ethically minded customers. Sure we’d like to get there sooner than later, and most of the time we work really hard to achieve our dreams, but we have the freedom to manage our time in a way that meets our personal needs as well, such as enjoying the sunshine on Thursday afternoon.

Naji and his partner launched FunkyGandhi just under two years ago and have been enjoying healthy growth in both their retail and wholesale businesses. To get hold of your FunkyGandhi T-shirt or just to surf through a great web-site, visit www.funkygandhi.com.