History:

 Jorge Nicolas Iturralde Vasco - Our Founder & General Manager

In June 2005, Jorge Nicolas Iturralde Vasco, who is from Ecuador, with other 4 shareholders, created FOCOS as a Singapore Asian based Company, engaged in general import and export business among Asian countries and Latin American Countries.

For the past 10 years, Nicolas and the other shareholders had dedicated their time to charitable work and community development projects in Southeast Asian countries. Together with the Focolare Movement (www.focolare.org) and the Association for a United World (AMU) (www.azionemondounito.org) , several social post disaster recovery, community development and other social causes projects were conducted in  Batam, Medan, Aceh & Bantul Jogjakarta in Indonesia :

These experiences brought us into contact with household producers and small businesses that were desperately in need of a viable marketing and distribution channel to prospective markets where their products (e.g. Batik and handicrafts, etc.) would be valued by consumers.

This realisation led to our motto “Bring Together : Bridging Businesses, Connecting the World, Enhancing Lives”. This now guides our corporate strategy and business operations to Improving Market Access - Benefiting Local Disadvantages Communities in Singapore and beyond, by uplift in their livelihoods, so as to live in dignity with reduced reliance on government funding and philanthropy.

Therefore, at the beginning of 2010, the Directors and Management team embarked to re-position FOCOS as an integrated wholesale, e-commerce and retail Business Hub for the “Fair Trade & Social Responsible” global consumer market.

Our strategic advantage is that as we are based regionally in Singapore and Asia.  We are close to our production of Asian sourced items and able to network through Singapore infrastructure (communications, shipping and banking), to our partners in other parts of the world : our suppliers in Ecuador and South East Asia and our customers in Europe , North America,  Australia and developed Asia.

Our shareholders and managers are nationals of Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore with languages proficiency in English, Chinese, Cantonese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Bahasa Indonesian.  This provides us with strong abilities to develop relationship with strategic partners across the world.

The experience of the management represents the core competencies of our business which allow us to build viable, growing and sustainable business with capacity building abilities for the communities that we service.  We also collaborate with other social enterprises, relevant agencies, organizations and community development programs, to internationalize and market the indigenous and world class designed products of disadvantaged artisans, artists, women, older workers, disabled and ex-offenders.

These wide range of knowledge, expertise, abilities and commitment to “Charity in Truth” "Caritas in veritate" - Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Benedict XVI, “Economy of Communion”  www.edc-online.org and “Fair Trade “  WFTO - About Fair Trade models, underpin our confidence to succeed.

Join us, in fighting poverty, by actively supporting this alternative business model, to Improve Market Access, thereby bringing social justice and common good to local disadvantaged communities in Asia & beyond!