LO QUE NO VES
Fundación Raíces · Retail
Challenge
Cultural relevance — Urban middle-class consumers in Colombia aged 25-45, habitual mall shoppers who consider themselves socially conscious but rarely engage with NGOs or think critically about the informal labor behind the products they buy
Insight
In Colombia, millions of displaced rural families survive by selling handmade goods on city sidewalks — but urban consumers walk past these vendors every day without seeing them, because street selling has become so normalized it functions as visual wallpaper. The same shoppers who proudly buy 'artisanal' goods in boutiques at a premium literally step over the artisans themselves on the way in.
Idea
Open a beautifully designed pop-up retail store in Bogotá's most prestigious shopping mall that exclusively stocked products made by displaced street vendors — but priced them identically to what the vendors charged on the sidewalk outside, forcing shoppers to confront the absurd gap between what they value inside a store versus what they ignore on the street.
Execution
Fundación Raíces designed a sleek, minimalist storefront indistinguishable from high-end retail neighbors in Centro Comercial Andino, Bogotá's most exclusive mall. Products — woven baskets, handmade soaps, embroidered textiles — were displayed on white plinths with gallery-style lighting and elegant price tags showing the exact same street price. Hidden cameras captured shoppers' reactions as they admired the goods, then were shown video of the actual vendor selling the same item on the sidewalk fifty meters away. A 60-second TV spot aired during primetime Colombian telenovelas, juxtaposing the polished in-store footage with raw street-level video. Each product tag included a QR code linking to the vendor's personal story, and a social campaign invited people to share photos of street vendors they'd previously ignored using the hashtag #LoQueNOVes.