We screen all potential sellers’ websites and their product, material, about us and mission pages, before we reach out or get back to them, to get a first impression of how sustainable their businesses are.
The less information a brand proactively shares on their own website about their materials and production process, the more rigorous we will be in scrutinising their answers to our questions.
Based on this information and with the many considerations mentioned above crystal clear in mind, we determine for our sustainable criterion whether we could be a match or not (mind you: this is just one of our 5 main values). We then continue by meeting them via a video call to discuss their operation further and get acquainted. At this time we ask any questions that may arise from having inspected their websites.
If all of our questions get a satisfactory answer, we continue onboarding them onto our platform. The seller managers hand the new brand’s collection over to the product managers who continue the onboarding process from there. Adding a brand’s collection to our platform is mostly an automated process, but in this stage too, a human check is involved for every single product that we add to our marketplace. If our product managers are unsure whether a product is made from regular or organic cotton, they will contact the seller before allowing the product to be put online. They make sure no unwanted, unsustainable materials work their way into our collection.
We give a damn about Mama Earth – and all of her inhabitants that rely on this planet to sustainably exist for millennia to come. That’s why our entire collection is made more sustainably by brands who are dedicated to protect the environment.
Dit is een van onze 5 kernwaarden. Wij zijn ook:
There are many ways in which clothes can be to a more or lesser extent environmentally (un)friendly. It’s rooted in the entire supply chain. It’s in what materials are used, how they’re grown or made and where they come from. It’s in the understanding that recycling can be but isn’t always the most environmentally sound option (from the chemical processes involved to make a new fabric, to microfibres still being released during washing anything synthetic: it’s a complicated matter). It’s in the amounts of water, type of dyes and chemicals applied in any stage of a fibre’s life cycle. It’s in the factories, where they’re located and what decisions they make regarding resources and waste solutions. It’s in the type of (single or multi-use) packaging chosen and the amounts of it. It’s in the many miles of transport from the place where resources and raw materials come from to the factories, via distribution centres and shops, to the people that eventually buy and wear these garments. It’s in how these people treat, wash and perhaps repair or resell them. It’s in how often, driven by fast fashion’s trends and corresponding levels of quality, they are replaced by new items. And it’s even in the end of their lives, the moment when clothes become waste – or by design, they don’t.
There are also many ways to make the supply chain and the life cycle of a garment more sustainable, some more impactful than others. Usually the fashion brands brazenly marketing the loudest that theirs are sustainable, aren’t – sometimes ignorantly overestimating their sustainability efforts or deliberately greenwashing their way towards making you feel good about shopping their actually not so sustainable products.
So how do you recognise what does make a difference?
Nuance and minimalism are key
A curated collection of the most sustainable brands we could find
How do we make sure our collection is sustainable?
Combining research, knowledge and gut feelings
Ons verificatieproces
Read our articles about sustainability in fashion
Nuance and minimalism are key
A curated collection of the most sustainable brands we could find
How do we make sure our collection is sustainable?
Ons verificatieproces
Read our articles about sustainability in fashion
For years, we as a team and as individuals have been learning about the detrimental effects of the fashion industry on this planet, about environmental justice and intersectionality, and in which ways it may sometimes seem that a certain purpose-driven new brand, an innovative material, new type of packaging or complete production process is more sustainable than what it replaces, but often isn’t.
This is why we’ve become more and more nuanced with our statements about what is sustainable. And from a deep awareness how every single new item produced, shipped, used and eventually thrown away takes something from the Earth and has a certain environmental impact, we remind ourselves and you too to:
Shop with compassion. No more than you need. Always vegan, fair and as sustainably as possible.
Because no matter how sustainable the sourcing, fabric, production process, transport or waste management: nothing that is overconsumed can ever be sustainable.
We’ve partnered up with loads of mission-aligned sellers that are reinventing fashion in a way that is sustainable for years to come.
Together we’re making compassion and sustainability the new normal – one pair of jeans made entirely out of post-consumer recycled cotton, a fly fanny pack fashioned out of locally sourced deadstock material, reversible ECONYL® 2-in-1 bathing suit or ethically handmade cork pair of shoes at a time.
Our team of seller managers has years of experience in vetting thousands of fashion and cosmetics brands. We check and scrutinise thoroughly, we listen to our guts and we are committed to act on new insights to keep our existing collection as ethical as it’s intended to be. And we will offboard any seller that no longer lives up to our continuously deepening standards or matches emerging sustainability issues.
Before onboarding any new seller, we’ve got to be really sure about them, knowing that we’re about to offer them a platform to hundreds of thousands of conscious consumers looking for a sustainable find. We’ll search for more input until we’re confident that we are a match on all that matters to us. When we’re still in any doubt, a potential seller and their collection don’t make it to our platform. (Most of the brands we talk to, actually don't.)