A new online space for curated, sustainable fashion. 

Nau is known for its simple lines and urban aesthetic. The sustainable Portland-based lifestyle brand represents a design ethos that is different in the world of fast fashion: make products that are meant to last, both in how they are made and in how they look, meant to be multipurpose, and meant to inspire a discussion about conscious consumption.

In that spirit, the brand is now launching the Nau Collective on its revamped website, a curated selection of brands and products that reflect good design for a conscious shopper. With the idea of “design for the conscious life” the collective will offer high-performance goods for a low-impact lifestyle, putting like-minded brands that have responsible design and a refined aesthetic all in one place.

Nau Collective is launching with five partner brands that include select styles from Nudie Jeans, blankets and throws from Pendleton’s Eco-Wise collection and select men’s and women’s footwear from the Timberland Boot Collection. The Collective also features co-branded gear from Klean Kanteen and Snow Peak, with goods like stainless steel reusable water bottles and flasks.

We caught up with General Manager Mark Galbraith to learn more about the Nau Collective and what being conscious means in a world of fast fashion.

What does “conscious shopper” mean to Nau? How does the Nau Collective embody that?

There is a discerning group of people that view themselves as global citizens and take that as a responsibility to make considered, conscious decisions about their life. These people are the early adopters who are having a positive influence in the world. The concept of Nau Collective is to bring like-minded companies together to engage with this progressive audience and bring about positive change. The Collective will expand our community and provide a curated offering of products and ideas for better living.

How much power does the consumer have in making positive change?

I compare consumer decision-making to voting in a democracy. It’s imperative for change. The support we give to companies and corporations by purchasing their products and services is essentially a vote with our dollars. The consumer has the ultimate power to vote for or against the type of companies and corporations we want in our world. The scale of this power is universally impactful, transcending the local, state or national level. The multi-national global corporation is the most powerful entity in the world; it trumps religion, race and national identity as a force for change. We, the consumers, have the choice of who and what we want to support.

In a world of “fast fashion” how are Nau and the other brands in the Nau Collective different?

Underlying the world of “fast fashion” is a dark reality of consume and discard. The effect is the same with a shirt we use for one season and then throw away, or the single use of a plastic cup or fork. The brands in the Nau Collective offer a more sustainable alternative to this trend. We are showing a collection of essential products that share a similar philosophy of clean, classic, long-lasting designs made in the lowest impact manner.

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Exploring the relationship between corporate mergers and corporate social responsibility.

Timberland’s mission is unique for a shoe company: “to equip people to make a difference in their world.”

Then again, Timberland isn’t your average shoe company. For more than a decade, Timberland has been at the forefront of the corporate social responsibility space, showing the industry that it’s possible for a mainstream brand to operate sustainably without sacrificing profits. “It’s no longer enough to measure business by standards of profit, efficiency and market share,” wrote CEO Jeffrey Schwartz in the company’s first CSR report, published in 2000. “We must also ask how business contributes to social justice, environmental sustainability and the values by which we choose to live.”

On the surface, it seemed that Timberland was successful in achieving that balance, which is why many were surprised when the company announced in 2011 that it was being acquired by VF Corporation, one of the world’s largest lifestyle and apparel conglomerates.

With a portfolio of more than 30 brands including The North Face, Vans, Reef, Nautica, Jansport, Kipling, and 7 For All Mankind, VF seems perfectly positioned to expand the Timberland brand. But as Timberland itself admits, “there’s much more involved than simply adding up the two balance sheets.” This week’s Behind the Label explores the Timberland-VF merger and its implications for Timberland’s social responsibility efforts.

The Good

Timberland’s story dates back to 1952, when shoemaker Nathan Schwartz purchased shares of the Abington Shoe Company, a small manufacturer based out of Abington, Massachusetts. The company mostly focused on contract manufacturing until 1973, when it launched its first guaranteed water-proof boot under the Timberland brand name. Through the second part of the 20th century, Timberland was run as a family business, first by Nathan, and then later by his son Sidney and grandson Jeffrey.

With Jeffrey at the helm, Timberland became a pioneer in corporate social responsibility in the 1990s, with comprehensive reports and ambitious goals that raised the industry bar. Thankfully, it appears that Timberland is adequately equipped with the tools, structure, and leadership to continue working toward its sustainability goals under the VF umbrella.

One tool that will be invaluable is Timberland’s new online responsibility portal, hailed as a breakthrough in corporate transparency upon its launch in 2011. The portal is broken into sections exploring Climate, Product, Factories, and Service, providing status updates as well as hard graphs and data on the company’s progress in areas like carbon emissions, eco-conscious materials, factory conditions, employee engagement in service activities, and even number of trees planted.

For those who don’t wish or aren’t equipped to sift through the data, Timberland also releases a quarterly newsletter that provides summaries of its efforts, as well as podcasts, blog posts, and a section called “Voices of Challenge,” which brings together CSR professionals to discuss issues around sustainability.

“People can go granular as they want or stay as generalist as they’d like,” Mark Newton, Timberland’s Vice President of CSR, told Forbes. “What’s different about the portal is that we are not starting conversations by discussing one of our pillars or metrics but focusing on stories that matter and then getting to the things that are underneath those stories.”

The portal also includes an interactive scorecard that allows stakeholders to view Timberland’s progress toward its CSR goals for 2015. The scorecard reveals the good, including greater use of environmentally preferred materials and growth of the company’s eco-friendly Earthkeepers line, and the bad, like a 4.5% increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 to 2011 (which Timberland recognizes as a function of increased growth and employee air travel).

The Bad

During the acquisition process, VF Corporation has indicated a desire to continue working toward Timberland’s sustainability goals. “Regardless of what happens post-merger, we are all in this together,” Newton told Forbes. “Our values are integrated into all of us and everyone who works here.”

However, certain public comments and actions indicate that the transition process may have a larger impact on Timberland’s CSR efforts than leadership lets on. For one, it’s a given that VF’s multinational corporate interests will differ somewhat from Timberland’s triple bottom line approach. In a New York Times Dealbook article published at the start of the merger, it appeared that VF’s approach to the acquisition was primarily profit-driven.

VF executives appeared confident that it could wring profits by improving Timberland’s business performance, primarily by folding it into the apparel giant’s global platform and cutting costs. On an investor call with analysts, VF’s chief financial officer, Bob Shearer, said his company planned to raise its new acquisition’s operating margin to 15 percent, in line with the rest of the conglomerate’s brands.

Part of this “folding in” is the replacement of Timberland’s long-standing, well-respected, and notoriously strict factory Code of Conduct with VF’s Terms of Engagement and Global Compliance Principles, the same principles in place across all 30 of the company’s brands. According to Timberland, this will allow for a two-step approach to factory compliance: factory inspections and audits by the VF team, followed by remediation, training, and “beyond compliance” efforts from Timberland’s Supplier Sustainability Team. The success of this new approach is yet to be seen, but one has to wonder how continued “cost-cutting measures” will impact the socially responsible supply chain that Timberland already has in place.

The Questionable

Before the merger, Timberland was on oft-cited example of a homegrown family business that successfully grew into a mainstream brand, without sacrificing its commitment to sustainable business practices. However, comments from Schwartz before his departure from the company revealed that the endeavor was far from simple:

For three generations, we’ve tried to create and master a weird new kind of modern dance—the one that blends the foxtrot of “fiduciary responsibility to shareholders” with the tango of “authentic brand building,” with the Alvin Ailey contortion of “sustainable for profit business practice” … For 30 years, we’ve been trying, fighting, struggling, to choreograph the intricate interaction between shareholder value, consumer demand, and social accountability. I have the scars, and the long list of failed efforts, incomplete outcomes, unrealized dreams and frustrated ambitions before my eyes all the time that reflect this passionate effort. 

By several accounts, it seems that Timberland’s troubles lay in its ability to scale its operations so as to continue operating sustainably while maintaining its responsibility to shareholders as a publicly traded company. The best option, it seems, was to align itself with a larger conglomerate, like the VF Corporation, that would be able to shepherd the company to the next level. In a research memo from Sterne Agee cited in Dealbook, analysts said that they “regard Timberland as a high-quality brand that has been operationally challenged for a number of years,” and that “VF has exhibited a strong track record and the capabilities to rectify many of the historical problems.”

Judging from his heartfelt farewell blog post, Schwartz seemed to agree with that analysis. He also seemed confident that he was leaving Timberland in the right hands, and that VF Corporation would be able to grow Timberland without abandoning the social responsibility that was central to its mission.

To illustrate his confidence, Schwartz shared a story from an employee town hall meeting that took place during the changing of hands.

An environmental activist in our ranks rose, way in the back, to ask the new guy, the Boss to Be, about sustainability.

“Tell us, please, why sustainability is important to you.”

Wow. That is town hall democracy the way Rockwell painted it. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide — respectful, but a “no quarter granted” question.

And the man with whom I negotiated hard and long for the best possible deal for shareholders stood his ground, and answered, authentically and naturally. “The answer is simple—we believe that sustainability is good for the business and good for the world environmentally.”

… In this poignant moment of transition, from a business run by my family for three generations to a business to be run by relative strangers – here is the CEO of a 10B$ powerhouse, talking about sustainability simply and easily — good for business, good for the earth. And he means what he says. 

Corporate acquisitions of sustainable brands tend to instinctually make me cringe. But in some cases, I have to wonder if they can actually be a positive thing, not only for the companies in question but also for the industry as a whole.

Although he’s no longer at the helm of Timberland, Schwartz certainly seems hopeful that this corporate undertaking is a step in the right direction.

It strikes me, hard, as I sit there — 30 years later, a vitally important conversation has shifted … Used to be, “what in the world does for-profit business have to do with social issues? That’s the purview of the government or the church.” And yet here, and now — I hear this powerful leader telling my colleagues, announcing to the whole damn world, that the question is not “if” corporations should be involved in questions of sustainability — not “if,” only “how.”  Thirty years later–the corporate conversation turns from “if” to “how.” 

SEE ALSO:

Behind the Label: H&M’s Conscious Collection

Behind the Label: Levi Strauss’ E-Valuate Program

Behind the Label: TOMS’ One for One Campaign

Behind the Label: Puma’s Vision and Clever Little Bag

Behind the Label: Anthropologie’s Made In Kind

Behind the Label: Is Stella McCartney A Sustainable Brand?

Behind the Label: Tommy Hilfiger’s Promise Collection

Behind the Label: Alternative Apparel

Read more Behind the Label here.

The post Behind The Label: Timberland’s CSR After the VF Merger appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the last of this 4 part series, undercover industry writer, Louise Lagosi address the history of fashion marketing, the strategies used to build the perfect consumer while covering up poor quality, and how those tactics have effected us as a society. We also look at how the fashion industry and marketing is changing with the times to keep up with an evolving society of people.

If you read the first three parts of this series, you might be in the mood to avoid the media, shut off your TV, stop shopping, and just give up on fashion. But, other than offering you peace of mind, what would that accomplish? As easy as it is to point fingers, the leaders of the fashion industry are not the only ones responsible for the state of fashion. Society as a whole bought what was being sold without stopping as individuals to question the motives behind the advertisement or wondering if our “consumer” habits were good for us, our neighbors, or the planet.

Unless you want to go back to wearing burlap bags, and go Medieval, we all need something to adorn our bodies. And let’s face it, beautiful clothes, beautiful anything for that matter, really does make life more joyful. That said, nothing can be beautiful if it has a dirty, rotten underbelly it’s hiding. So let’s just get to the core of this thing.

Taking Responsibility

Now that the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” has been imprinted on our brains, we all know that shopping with small mom and pops stores, as well as supporting local designers and supply chains is the best thing we can do for our immediate environment, but how can we be effective on a global level? Have you read any articles, or signed any petitions requesting that corporations clean up their acts? Written to your government representative asking for higher international labor standards lately? Not sure who your representatives are? Well, it’s pretty easy to find out. In this age of information sharing with a little due diligence and research it’s becoming increasingly easier to figure out who’s doing business right, and who’s doing business wrong. And it’s even easier to find a petition or even to start a petition asking companies and the government to do business responsibly.

It has become more and more common to share our opinions and knowledge of this kind freely among our friends and associates, on Facebook, Twitter, and various social media sources. As a favor for your sharing the information, they in turn go on and share it with their friends and pretty soon the news has gone viral. Some of your conversations on Facebook might look something like this:

“There’s a joke going around China today that you can tell what colors are going to be in fashion next season by looking at the rivers.“

“I think I’ll opt for a nice neutral, beige from now on, thanks.”

 “Time to Stop the Fashion Pirates again. Forever 21 has gotten caught stealing yet another design from independent designers.”

“I stopped shopping at Forever 21 after my last purchase from there smelled like magic markers and fell apart in the first wash. But I do buy clothes from the local designers in my own town.“

 “Why does Disney still carry polyester jammies for kids coated in fire-retardants? Didn’t they get the memo that it’s been repeatedly proven that both the synthetic fibers in clothing and formaldehyde based fire-retardants are carcinogenic, cancer causing, hormone disrupting, and/or can cause damage to our nervous systems?!

“I wouldn’t know, I avoid both synthetics and Disney like the plague.“

 “Did you hear that Victoria’s Secret were caught slashing and throwing away garments that were returned because donating them to charity was too much of a hassle to organize?”

“I wouldn’t wear Victoria Secret, even if it were free. Let’s just say that I don’t know a single 16 year old whose boobs naturally sit directly under her chin, so why, at any age, should mine?”

Whether or not these conversations in social media and on the street actually sway the decisions of those in power to create a change in the industry, for us to be aware enough about these issues that we feel a little whistle blowing is in order can make us better, more informed, people.

Word gets around fast in this Internet Age and in no time at all, Walmart has a publicity crisis for abusing their laborers, and the Gap is making public apologies for promoting red,white, & blue flag waving products that are made in China. H&M and Nike claim they too are doing their parts, all while receiving raised eyebrows from the sustainable community, for making lofty corporate responsibility initiatives mandated for 2020 that promise unprecedented standards with little or no suggestions on how they might go about doing so. Perhaps H&M & Nike could borrow from their multibillion dollar marketing budgets to fund reaching their 2020 goals.

Are initiatives enough? Hardly, but when you’re a company that’s big enough to consume one third of the planets organic cotton supply, even a small initiative, like H&M’s organic cotton initiative can keep large amounts of fertilizer and herbicide from going into our water, provided it’s an honest effort. “Good” is questionable when you take into account that their organic cotton is not all that organic after all.

Recent New York City H&M window

With their greenwashing marketing efforts these companies still do not get the green light for sustainable shopping. In the same way we shop for food, if we can’t find clear and certifiable labeling on the product, many of us are not buying it. Some consumers are even going so far as avoiding stores with bad track records altogether, regardless of their “eco” initiatives.

In 2009, The Hartman Group’s report, titled Sustainablity: the Rise in Consumer Responsibility stated that 88% of consumers engage in what they consider to be sustainable behavior. Are people hearing concerns about water contamination or global warming and choosing to cut back where they can to help? Are fast fashion fans growing annoyed that their clothes fall apart after a couple washes when the hand-me-downs from their mother’s wardrobe seem to last forever? Have people suddenly realized that they have enough stuff in their closets that they could probably go for years without shopping and still maintain appearances?

Author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, Elizabeth Cline, describes the pivotal moment in her consumer mindset, “When I piled up all of my clothes in the middle of my bedroom, I was astonished that there wasn’t much variety within the mound of poorly made clothing. It was mostly all one color, and I had bought more or less the same few items over and over again. I wasn’t using most of it, and most of it was cheep crap that I didn’t even like very much. Overall, I was unsatisfied with what was in there.”

She explains the transformation that occurred in that moment of realization, “It made me more mindful. I shop my own closet now. I have stopped buying repeat garments. I don’t crave having a million tops. That doesn’t really interest me anymore. I want one or two good garments for each category to make complete outfits within my wardrobe. I want to save my money to buy really nice items to fill in the holes.”

Signs of Change in Mainstream Fashion Media

CFDA Leader, Diane Von Furstenburg, and American Vogue Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour, recently released that they support encouraging a cleaner Fashion Industry through an initiative presented by the NRDC called Clean By Design. We’re still waiting to see how they do clean up, but they have taken the first step, which is openly acknowledging the elephant in the room. This is nothing short of a miracle.

Fashion Labels Evolving With the Times

Eileen Fisher

This privately owned company has always taken a holistic approach to designing clothing. The brand carefully chooses fibers for their sustainable, community based, growing methods, natural content, longevity, and feel. They work with collectives and factories around the world that pay fair-trade wages. They design clothes that are timeless and that do not relate to any trends, allowing the clothes to survive as long as their high quality materials do. And through their recent initiatives like Ampersand, they have been educating their customers on why choosing their products supports a sustainable environment here on earth for everyone involved.

Patagonia 

Patagonia also keeps their marketing to a minimum, but when they do promote something, the message is unusual for a clothing company. They promote clean water initiatives, such as Our Common Waters, in their recent Common Threads Initiative, they tell people to stop buying more than they need. They also provide transparency in their supply chain like in The Footprint Chronicles, with this interactive map on their site showing exactly where their factories are located with stats, reports, and a brief on Patagonia’s history with each one. This brand ultimately puts their dollars in recycled materials innovations, such as polar fleece made of recycled bottles, and maintaining factory standards, so they can provide more responsible products to their customers.

Timberland

Timberland is a brand that is committed to the outdoors. Which is why they have made  developed TIMBERLAND RESPONSIBILITY, their plan for significantly reducing their companies emissions through the research, evaluation, and investment in company structures that will allow them to run cleaner and produce products that have a smaller impact on the earth. The company reports are transparent and available to the public on their home site, grading their efforts and describing all the methods used to achieve their challenging goals to reduce their company wide climate impact.

Levi’s 

Levi’s has been doing business with the goal of striving towards sustainability and excellence for over 100 years now. They give cash credits to customers who return their old Levi’s in for their denim recycling programs and they have been working on increasingly finding ways to reducing their water use in their denim production processes. Are they singing about their exceptional practices in their ad campaigns to help better educate their customers? Let’s just say this is one of the places where they still have room to improve.

Pendleton

This nearly 150 year old American company produces much of it’s premium products, from fibers grown, spun, dyed, and woven in America. They keep marketing to a minimum and keep their funding aimed at doing business responsibly and offering the best quality products possible to the customers they serve. Their product’s are so beautifully made, by  that they end up heirlooms in most of the fortunate homes that they grace.

Change is indeed happening all around, but most of all it starts with each one of us. We have to make up our own minds. What type of consumers are we?

Image: oxfam, Fashionista, Last Night’s Garbage,Amy DuFault

The post Fashion Marketing 101: From Social Media to Social Responsibility, Fashion Evolves appeared first on EcoSalon.

Do you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes in the eco fashion industry? Thankfully, there are many helpful sites that do a great job at pulling back the curtain so fashionistas of the world can understand what makes a garment sustainable. Valuable information like that can go a long way to justifying the expense, n’est-ce pas?

Perhaps one of the most unglamorous aspects of any “behind-the-scenes” look in apparel is the supply chain. And I mean unglamorous in that the term itself just doesn’t sound as sexy as an eco atelier, hempsilk, or fair trade. Yet it is the one big umbrella under which each of these elements resides, and one where companies can incorporate both social and environmental practices.

I realized just how many companies are taking this seriously when I read about the Green Supply Chain Awards. Run by Supply & Demand Chain Executive, the award recognized 65 companies for their sustainability efforts, with the goal of highlighting the industry’s best practices in the field, so that readers would have a means to assess their own efforts.

It was encouraging to see that in addition to companies based in logistics, transportation and healthcare, that clothing and footwear apparel companies were also included in this award. Timberland deserves a big congrats, the company that won in this category. After all, they have been committed to sustainability for years, and are one of the 100 well-known apparel brands behind the recent Eco Index (currently in beta).

As defined by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) a sustainable supply chain is “a system of aligned business activities throughout the lifecycle of products that creates value for all stakeholders, ensures ongoing commercial success, and improves the wellbeing of people and the environment.”

Therefore, a sustainable supply chain in the fashion business is pretty much the entire process involved in making a garment, along with its social and environmental footprint. From the farm where the raw fibers are grown, to the factories where the fabric and garments are made, and all the various transportation points in between.

Or think of it in reverse order, starting with that gorgeous dress hanging in the window at your favorite retailer, and then trace it back through the various stages along the way, back to it’s raw material form. How many of us think of this when we are buying our clothes? The point is, we all should.

A number of apparel companies have made great efforts to make their supply chain more sustainable. From providing fair wages and working conditions for farmers and factory workers, to smarter design and less use of toxic chemicals, to being more mindful of waste and effluent, and developing more efficient transportation methods.

This is no easy feat. Given the way the conventional apparel industry has functioned for decades, its no surprise to see corporations, non-profits and governments all working together to bring about greater sustainability in each stage of the apparel supply chain. They need each other for this massive market transformation.

So while an apparel company’s supply chain is not the first thing we think about when choosing what brands to buy, we have the ability to make better choices and be more mindful of it the next time we shop.

The post Finding the Sexy In a Supply Chain appeared first on EcoSalon.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a group of roughly 100 well-known apparel brands and retailers including Nike, Levi’s Timberland and Patagonia “Have developed a software tool to help them measure the environmental impact of their apparel and footwear, from raw material to garbage dump.”

This Eco Index, similar to what appliances go through to achieve an Energy Star label is an informal software tool that asks companies to consider their environmental and labor practices. The answers to the questions translate into an eco-value score that, (when the program is ready for the retail market), will allow consumers to make a decision whether they want a product based on its index score.

Many of the companies are hoping it will be an invitation to try their product as it will set them apart from competitors based on insider know how.

The index will debut at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City next month.

While many of the questions companies must answer cover significant supply chain steps like manufacturing, shipping, and even disposal, one of the biggest eye openers for consumers will be to see their part in the equation.

The WSJ reports that for example, consumer washing of a pair of Levi’s 501’s contributes to half of the water used and carbon dioxide produced in the life of those jeans. Levi’s has already won points simply for advising consumers to wash with cold water, line dry and donate to Goodwill which puts them ahead of the curve.

Like Energy Star ratings, the Eco-Index value system will allow a semi-sustainably aware public of the need to conserve and have more of a connection to what they are wearing and how the clothing got to them.

Do you think the public is ready for this and that it will make a dent in how we consume?

Image: ecouterre

The post New Eco-Index Challenges Manufacturers and You appeared first on EcoSalon.

There’s a lot to learn from the cool UK example of raising funds to share the wealth.

Take Oxfam, for instance, and their ethical and secondhand shops whose funds raise money for relief efforts around the globe. They do great work and offer us one-of-a-kind clothes and jewelry to die for.

Another group, most commonly known as TRAID (Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development) is a UK charity that actively works to divert clothing and shoes from landfills as well as to reduce world poverty by raising funds for development projects.

From TRAID has sprung TRAIDremade, an environmentally-conscious fashion label launched in 2002, giving new meaning to conscious shopping. They recently partnered with Timberland to create Bagsy, limited edition eco bags made from 100% recycled denim and leather (including reconditioned Timberland shirts and jackets).

Bagsy by TRAIDremade and Timberland

Timberland’s role in the partnership is equally impressive with its “Change Your Wardrobe, Change Their Lives” campaign where Timberland customers get 20% off new purchases by donating clothes they no longer need. TRAID then transforms the clothes into “funds to fight global poverty.”

If you live in London, shopping TRAID is a given. But the best resource for Stateside shoppers is to contact the site and see if you can claim your own Bagsy and have it shipped. (Man, but then there’s a carbon footprint to offset. Can’t anyone open a location here?)

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