Looking for purposeful holiday shopping? Venture no further than 45 Mt. Auburn St. in Harvard Square, where the staff of No Sweat Apparel has opened a retail outlet.

All is Fair, a wood-paneled storefront that opened on Dec. 1 with a free lunch of fair trade rice and free-range chicken, brings the company back to where, in 2001, Harvard Square lunch meetings were held between activists and entrepreneurs. It also brings CEO and founder Adam Neiman back to his Harvard roots, allowing him to continue the mission of No Sweat, a pioneer of fair trade fashion and footwear.

Nieman, an Atlanta native whose mother worked for the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, said there are lots of advantages to opening the company's first retail outlet. "We've gone online for about three years now, without getting to meet our customers face-to-face," he said. It's especially important in a clothing business, he explained, to see the people. "How they dress, what they look like, what their preferences are, these are critical factors in providing good service."

The Waltham-based startup became an industry phenomenon with the success of its No Sweat sneaker. Not only is the canvas shoe simple and functional, each box contains a leaflet depicting the wages and benefits paid to the union shoemakers in Jakarta, Indonesia. When the company challenged Nike and Reebok to do the same, bloggers and newswires hopped on the story. Business picked up. "We're in 135 stores around the world now," said No Sweat COO Anne O'Loughlin, "but we're very excited about having a store of our own."

Store staff includes Neiman's wife Natalia and their children. At the opening, 8-year-old Raquel Neiman was tagging clothes and learning to use the cash register. Her brother Raphael, 13, was doing stock work and handing out flyers. Natalia's children, Manuela, 23, and Kuanyin, 30, were there, but Lucien missed the event due to illness. All the children serve as models in the company's ads.

Neiman said that customers "span an incredibly broad demographic," and include both 15-year-old punk rockers in London who have tattooed the brand on the backs of their heads and 50-year-old workers in Arizona who hand out company information at their union halls. Products range from T-shirts and khaki pants to beanies and scarves, all produced in union shops around the world. "We're really showcasing the fair trade economy," said Neiman, who cites flip-flops with designs that are silk screened onto the insoles. "The designs are provided by Indonesian tsunami orphans from the neighboring province of Aceh," he said.

Rounding out the product line is a full selection of fair trade coffee, tea and chocolate from Equal Exchange, the Bridgewater-based company that began promoting fair trade commodities to a U.S. market nearly 20 years ago. Equal Exchange Marketing Director Dia Cheney said it was a natural fit: "It's been very interesting to see how No Sweat applied the fair trade ethos to the industrial workplace," she said. All is Fair is also the first to carry fair trade rice, which comes from an architectural cooperative in Thailand.

While American Apparel and Bono's Edun Clothing advance a similar cause, No Sweat focuses on worker empowerment through independent trade unions or worker-owned co-ops.

The fair trade movement, which has been boosted by Oxfam International and rock stars such as Bono and Coldplay, aims to transform global poverty on a consumer level. "About 10-15 percent of the best informed consumers out there believe that the world we inhabit is the one we're willing to pay for," says Neiman. "Coupling collective action with individual choice is the future of social change. When you vote with a dollar, it always gets counted."

"It's a lot of fun," says Raquel, a Rashi student, who nonetheless admitted that working at the store did cramp some of her personal time. "I can still do most of my homework, though, except for Hebrew, which I need help from other people to do."

The store is open on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, and Neiman offers a 10 percent donation to the congregation of the customer's choice. For more information, visit nosweatapparel.com.