When I first announced here that I was restarting my efforts in the ethical clothing arena, I mentioned Nau as an inspiration, having read about them in an issue of Fast Company.

The news this week, of course, is that Nau have called it a day (more here and here).

Check over the fold for my further thoughts on Nau’s farewell.

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Ever since I first worked with Digital Eskimo (while I was working on the Future is man made site re-launch for WWF) I’ve really admired their approach to using qualitative research methods to underpin their work.

The research we did for the FiMM site was really valuable and useful - giving us a much clearer picture of where sustainability fits in people’s lives and what sort of site/support people would find most benefit in.

So, in starting down the path of launching a new business, I felt strongly about embarking on a research project to underpin the brand and product development.

Keep reading over the jump for more information about the research process.

Update: I was remiss in not mentioning that I was first introduced to the idea of ethnographic style research for business and the web by Stephen Cox, who is now doing great work at News Limited.

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I was chatting to a friend of mine a little while back about my plans to start a label, and they mentioned that a friend of theirs was putting together a tshirt label with some cool designs.

I’ve also been wanting to find some more obscure tshirt labels since Threadless tees are seemingly popping up everywhere nowadays. Plus I wanted a bit of a change, given most of my tees are Threadless already.

In watching my Facebook news feed I saw they’d become a fan of the-affair, figuring that was the label they were talking about, and sure enough it was them.

I checked out the website and subscribed to the blog. I dig the tees and the branding, and the other week took the plunge and purchased two tees.

More about my impressions of the tees and American Apparel over the jump…

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Last weekend I went to the Fashion Exposed exhibition at Darling Harbour. The last time I attended the event was in Melbourne 4 years ago. If nothing else, this year’s event was a firm indicator of how little has changed.

Granted, there were a few booths with organic cotton, hemp or bamboo offerings. Bamboo Body were there, along with Eco Wear and Pure Pod - but there were probably less than a dozen offerings in the full exhibition center area, and of those only one had menswear (tshirts).

The organisers claimed that there was an “eco-fashion” precinct - but this turned out to be 6 stalls, one of which was linen, and the other was Drizabone - included because they use Australian sheep which is a “natural fibre” (supposedly we’re meant to overlook the immense damage sheep grazing causes on the environment.)

I spoke to a couple of merchandising and shop-fitout suppliers at the show, and it seems that they haven’t yet received word that “green is the new black”. Not one could answer even the most basic questions about eco-friendly shop fittings - they had none. One at least made an attempt, claiming their mannequins were recyclable, but I’ve yet to find evidence to back up that claim.

There were two paper bag companies I spoke to - one responded to my question about recycled bags with “you’d want to look at our natural finished product”. When I asked about the recycled content of the bags, he acknowledged there was none!

Paper Pak, on the other hand, seemed to have a good range of blended recycled material with sustainably managed virgin pulp - and the sales rep didn’t try to bullshit me. He explained that they used water based inks, improving the enviro credentials, but that the adhesives were problematic from a biodegradability standpoint. Still more research to go, but a good start at least on that front.

Overall it was worth the visit to review - but not overly inspiring. I’m currently also reading Eco Chic which serves as a stark reminder as to why I got into this game in the first place. But more on the broken-ness of the system in another post…

I’ve been a bit quiet around blog-land of late due to general busy-ness in life and work (including a presentation I did for the Investor Weekly Branding conference last week.)

Consulting biz: Zumio

Preparations for my consulting biz are going well - the name is Zumio, and I’ve started a blog (of course!) covering work related stuff - esp. posts on social media and networking, with a bit of emphasis on non-profit/social change.

I was waiting until I’d created the site design etc. that reflects the Zumio visual ID etc., but it might be a couple of weeks before that’s done, so worth making mention of it now…

I’ve got a few bookings already post my departure from working as an employee at Digital Eskimo. (Happily I’ll be continuing working with the eskimos as a freelancer on some projects into the future.)

Menswear label: Soko Loko

The menswear label has a “working title”: Soko Loko - I call it “working title” because I’m still working on sourcing a designer and developing the business plan, so I’m not 100% sure the name will stick.

I’ve been busy attending another series of courses at Sydney Community College covering a lot of the practicalities of starting your own label in NSW. Susan Goodwin, who designs and runs street-wear label Rocket Fuel, as well as freelancing for some more well known labels, is running the courses. She’s been an invaluable source of hard-won information about the industry, how it ticks, and how we can make our own label succeed. (Further courses are planned in May - keep an eye on the college’s site if you’re interested.)

Over the next month or two I should have a bit more to talk about in that regard (as much of my time has been focused on establishing the consulting gigs). Suffice to say that so far things have been progressing well.

Fuzu

My band Fuzu have been on a little bit of a self-imposed hiatus as we search for a keyboardist (we’d been jamming with someone who’s unfortunately moving to Melbourne) and finalise the artwork. Toby has come up with some promising photos that may become the cover art, so hopefully it won’t be too much longer…

In related news, we’re no longer the only Fuzu in town - seems a certain gorilla at Toronga Zoo liked the name, which apparently means “to graduate”.

Strange, but true…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the term “ethical” in relation to my clothing business. When I was writing this post the other day, I was thinking - how amazing is it that we kind of accept that the fashion industry operates unethically.

I thought, how hard must it be to turn up to work knowing that you’re contributing to sweatshop labour and environmental damage just so you can do your day job? That by accepting working in the industry, you are effectively accepting unethical work practices.

Having spoken to a few folks since, however, I’ve started to work out that there are a lot of folks working in the industry that are, in fact, wanting and trying to do the right thing - it’s not as clear cut as I once thought.

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Around the launch of his book, All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin wrote a lot about stories - the stories businesses tell when selling their products, and the ones that we, as customers, tell ourselves about products and companies.

I’ve been thinking a little about this over the past few weeks, thinking about what sort of story the (yet to be named) clothing label will tell, and also looking at what sort of stories existing ethical labels are telling.

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After making my decision to make the change at work, I decided to have a quick look at what relevant community college courses might be around next year. I found this fabric printing course and decided, on a whim, to give it a go.

Although I don’t see myself actually doing the printing, I wanted to learn about the concepts. I also thought it might be a good way to meet other people doing interesting stuff, but also just to have a bit of fun and to feel like I’m actually moving forward on this idea, even though I can’t really do a whole lot until early next year.

One thing I’ve worked out pretty quickly is that there doesn’t really seem to be an environmentally sound method of printing. Even though you can use water-based inks, which manufacturers claim are non-toxic and can be washed into our waterways (a claim I’m yet to fully examine), the process of creating the screens seems to be either using plastic sheeting (Ezycut - for short runs) or photo emulsion, which uses photographic chemicals - neither of which is environmentally sound.

One of my hopes for the products is that perhaps, some day - when we have the money and resources to do so - to get our clothing Cradle to cradle certified. I can’t really see a way, unless we can properly recycle the chemicals or find an alternative method of creating the screens, to achieve that goal while using these printing techniques.

I’m also pretty sure that the C2C review will find all sorts of issues with printing ink, despite the general view that it’s “safe”, that make it unsuitable for C2C certification. And this doesn’t even venture into the world of fabric dyes, either, which are likely to have even more impacts!

In either case, that’s a longer-term goal - and there’s a lot of ways to be much more environmentally friendly than most manufacturers without getting to this level of detail. But I do want to ensure that our design process takes these things into consideration from day one - looking for alternatives and designing these kind of problems out of our products.

For example, if we design shirts that don’t require printing we remove one potential problem from the production process. And if we find clever ways to use undyed fabric, even better. (I should be clear that I’m not talking the “natural hippy” look here - just using natural fabric in clever ways within a fashion context.)

One of the things I’m very keen on is for my new venture to be an authentic company - one that is really doing the right thing and not just “greenwashing”.

It always bugs me when I see fallacious claims from the latest “we’re on the bandwagon” company that’s joined the green brigade. And as a “consumer” it’s usually (though not always) easy to pick the real deal.

It seems, though, that regulators such as the ACCC are starting to take an interest, with plans to crack down on greenwashing. Such moves make it all the more important to truly walk the walk.

It strikes me that one of the best ways to do that is to participate in independently verified certification schemes that support any claims made.

There are plenty of schemes out there, from using certified organic cotton to the Fairwear “No Sweatshop” label to the Fair Trade standards and Clean clothes codes of conduct.

All of these certifications does have a cost associated with it, and many are “compatible” with each other - and as the business progresses I’ll be looking into many of these in further detail (there’s already some discussion and review on the old blog as a starting point).

On that front I was interested to read this week a news report about the Green Pages’ “Principles of Sustainable Fashion” and the related Eco Runway Show.

From the press release:

Katie Patrick, CEO and founder of Green Pages,
points out that whilst a range of international environmental standards exist along with Australia’s own Good Environmental Choice standard, not one fashion brand in Australia has adopted a comprehensive environmental standard.

The Eco Runway Show will highlight designs from Akira, Gorman, Vixen, Sara Victoria, India Flint, Romance-was-Born, Rachael Cassar, Camilla, Nudie Jeans, and more, that comply with the Principles.

The principles are a “starting point”, calling on designers to create products:

• Being made of at least 50% organic cotton or wool, hemp, silk or bamboo fibres.
• Incorporating dyes and pigments that are vegetable-based.
• Incorporating recycled or reclaimed materials.
• Incorporating materials with Fair Trade Certification.
• Incorporating recycled synthetic fibres.

As a purely environmental standard, the principles don’t include labour standards (I don’t believe you can separate the two issues, but I’ll talk more on that another time) - but they are indeed a good starting point.

The PDF media release (PDF 130 KB) highlights a number of standards and bodies working on the environmental impact of textiles - and form the basis of the Green Pages’ broader call for fashion labels to take account of their entire footprint (incl. carbon and waste) rather than just in the materials they use.

I’ll certainly be looking into these further over time, as it seems to me this kind of standard would be a good thing for our label to support.

I’ve got some news relating to work and my plans for the coming year. From Jan 1 I’ll be working 4 days per week with my current employer, Digital Eskimo, until March/April, at which point I’ll be doing the freelance thing.

The primary reason for the move is a desire on my part to set up a new business producing and retailing ethical clothing (more on that here) - that is clothes that use environmentally sustainable materials (like organic cotton, hemp and bamboo) and that are sweatshop free.

Some of you may remember that I started down this path some years ago while I was still working at NETaccounts (now Saasu). Well, although in some ways the industry has come a long way (even Target now offers organic cotton options) there’s still a long way to go. I want to work towards that goal.

The move from Digital Eskimo was tough - the team that I’ve had the privilege to work with since May this year is exceptional, and it was a really hard decision to make (and I hope to continue working with them on projects in the future).

But through some soul searching, in part prompted by working through The Artist’s Way with some friends earlier this year, but also the passing of Anita Roddick, lead me to the conclusion that I needed to pursue this dream (that just hasn’t let go).

So, anyway, this blog is probably going to be a little more active as I post about the business and ideas surrounding it, but also just generally about ethical business.

In the freelance side of things I’ll be hopefully doing a variety of web development projects - I hope with a focus on non-profits and progressive organisations, social media and web standards - but I’ll speak more on that in the new year as I start to get things in place to make the leap.