Thank you.
There are no better words to begin this update with than incredible gratitude to every single one of you. Whether you’ve ordered shirts, shopped with one of our partner retailers, donated to our team in Haiti or supported us in any other way over the past months, we have noticed, and are grateful for every act of kindness.
Despite all of the challenges we’re facing in Haiti and beyond, your support for our business and what it means to people throughout the supply chain is life giving for all involved! As we moved into 2nd quarter, we’ve been completely blown away by a flood of both business and messages expressing care for our team!
And in the midst of all of it, we were dealt another surprise upheaval a couple of weeks ago when we were notified that CCW, our fabric supplier in South Carolina for the past decade, is closing permanently this summer. Despite all of the work to bring manufacturing back to the US, large clients continue to choose their bottom lines and move business across oceans. In this case, loss of contracts from a couple of large clients made the business unsustainable. We are heartbroken and yet we remain committed to supporting US jobs. For those who don’t know, fabric manufacturing requires three steps which, especially in the US, are all performed by different companies. First, raw materials are spun into yarn. Then the yarns are knit into raw fabrics (greige goods) on large circular knitting machines. Last, the fabric is dyed and finished at a dye house. CCW is a dye house – they sourced yarn and knitting services on our behalf and then finished the fabrics. When this announcement came, we quickly jumped on calls with a couple of companies who have been knitting our fabrics and were familiar with our brand and our need for the same high-quality, sustainable fabrics. Then Meghann (our Product Manager) and I jumped on a plane to go visit. I’m writing this on the way home from that trip. I’m excited to share that we’ll be partnering with Clover Knits to continue creating our unique, eco-friendly fabrics!
Clover Knits is a boutique knitting operation located in the small town of Clover, SC – about 45 minutes from Charlotte. They are family owned and operated, committed to their town and to their employees and take great pride in their work. And they power 60% of their operation with solar power – how cool is that?! They will source yarns, knit our fabrics (many of which they’ve been knitting for years) and coordinate dying and finishing. We are incredibly grateful, yet again, for a strong partner who understands and values our business and wants to help us grow. More to come there – we will hopefully have some unique new fabrics to introduce you to over the next months. 😊
As we’ve shared before, we are sewing in the Dominican Republic for the summer. A container of fabric is set to ship there this week and we’ll have garments headed back our way beginning in late June or July! In the meantime we continue to produce some high-demand garments in the Carolinas. For those waiting – ivory eco-cotton and charcoal & navy triblend are back in stock! Thank you all for your patience as we’ve navigated stock. We started this with 265,000 garments in stock in Kansas City. As of now that’s down to 207,000. We know some of you have sacrificed on color or style and we just want to say thank you for your willingness! Those 207,000 garments are ready to hit the presses!
In Haiti news, we are excited to share that the airport did reopen and we were able to move all finished garments from our factory to the airport to ship to the US – so several thousand, made in Haiti garments will hit our shelves in a week or so – yay! While we are not yet ready to give a reopening date, we are feeling confident that we can reopen this fall and are committed to paying our employees until we do. If you would like to support those payments you can do so here . We will continue to update you and will host another live update in June.
We had a fantastic time in Baltimore a couple of weeks ago for the annual Museum Store Association Expo – thanks to all the buyers who came to visit! We’ll be in Salt Lake City in June for the Outdoor Retailer show and in Atlanta in July for the Gift Show – come see us if you’re at either!
Thank you again and keep those orders flowing!
With gratitude,
Jessica
