Sustainable Clothing Startup

New Zealand startup Little Yellow Bird makes sustainable, fair trade, ethical clothing.

CEO and Founder, Samantha Rae Jones, ensures that every step of the process of making clothes sold through Little Yellow Bird is as sustainable as possible. Organic cotton is responsibly sourced from a cooperative in India. The dye process can be very polluting, but the small scale farmers she works with create high quality cotton relying on rain and avoiding chemicals and pesticides, instead using low-impact dyes without toxic metals. The dye process is zero waste - 95% of the dye water is reused, and the remaining 5% is evaporated and used in the manufacturing of bricks. Work environments are ethical and inclusive, packaging is paper or cardboard wherever possible and most products are shipped by sea rather than by plane. Best of all, all products can be returned for recycling - over 8,000 kg of textile waste has been saved from landfill so far.

‍

At Cow-Shed we liked their unusual (and effective) approach to staying afloat when Covid first hit in March 2019. Their main customer base was tourism, hospitality and events industries - each of which were hardest hit by Covid. When their sales dropped, they found they had a lot of stock and no cashflow to pay their bills. They decided to offer 50% off all their stock in an attempt to bring in the cash they needed and penned a heartfelt plea to share the word. Within a week they received over 500 orders which made all the difference.

Oh and for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing, their website is built on Shopify.