LAURA JANE KENNY | staff writer

Professor Steven Moser's fair trade skin care products, Anti-body, will be sold in the APU bookstore next week.

College Algebra Professor Steven Moser supports fair trade actively. He does more than just buy the products— he produces them. Moser has taken his passion to APU and has given students the ability to support fair trade by buying his products from the bookstore, which will be available next week.

Moser, who teaches at APU part time, is co-owner of Anti-body. The company makes skin care products, including lotion, soap and lip balm. Anti-body stands for anti-poverty, beautiful body, and only uses fair trade shea butter as an ingredient. Moser, his wife Shelby and his sister-in-law Tamara McMahon started the company two years ago in their kitchen.

“[Fair trade] is something outside of ourselves, it’s bigger than ourselves. We can not only be a part of it, but we can impact other people,” Moser said.

The idea of fair trade was in the trio’s mind before they ever created a bar of soap. They stumbled across the idea of skin products because they wanted to provide a fair trade product that everyone can use.

Shelby Moser and McMahon started making scrubbing salt as a hobby in the kitchen sink. Steven Moser suggested that they start to make soap because everyone needs it. As they were looking for recipes online, they researched fair trade ingredients wanting to use as many as possibly. After six months of perfecting the recipe, the trio decided to go full time.

Steven Moser quit his job at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and McMahon quite her job at DreamWorks. Shelby Moser had just finished her master’s degree in art history. The three were encouraged to reassess their lives when McMahon’s fiancée died in a car accident.

“It was this moment in all of our lives where we thought, ‘What are we doing right now?” Moser said.

While Steven Moser researched ingredients for the products, he began to investigate fair trade shea butter, a main ingredient for many of their products.

“The idea was not just to make something fair trade, but to make a really good product,” said Steven Moser.

The company has been growing for two years. Although all three agree it is more than stressful to own their own business, they are happy with their commitment.

“The more momentum that gets thrown into it, the more passion we get,” Shelby Moser said.

Steven Moser also works part time at APU as a math professor.

Sophomore social work major Rae Johnson is one of his students who is excited about her teacher’s fair trade skin care products.

“I’m very supportive of it. It’s for a good cause and it’s easy for everyone to get involved by purchasing it,” Johnson said.

Fair-trade impacts people differently depending on the product. For Anti-body, it was not a situation of slavery but of underpaid workers. Many tribes in Africa make shea butter and sell it for pennies. That shea butter travels through networks of buying and selling through unnecessary middlemen.

Anti-body has made the commitment to buy shea butter directly from a tribe in Toga. 62 women and 3 men who live in this tribe have been making shea butter for generations and now make it directly for Anti-body. Anti-body has made the commitment of paying fair wages for their work.

Anti-body offers more than a fair price but also a consistent relationship, promising to always buy from them even when other less expensive opportunities arise. Anti-Body has entered into a relationship with the tribe, offering them stability and an honest, consistent business relationship.

McMahon was even able to visit the tribe. Leaving from Kenya, it took her five days to find them. During her visit she was able to talk to the women and see the direct effect the company has made. The women were respected in their community because of the stability they brought to the tribe. Due to the money they were bringing in, the women were creating the opportunity for childcare and education in their tribe. McMahon said she could see that it improved the quality of life. The women were excited to go to work each day. McMahon felt inspired to meet these women and see the direct effects of their labor.

“It was essential for us to have this visual to see the lives we were changing,” McMahon said.

The company sells out of a website : http://www.anti-body.com and at many different vendors in American and Canada. Look for their products in the bookstore next week.