Offcut hats business an environmental success story
Little did Adrien Taylor know the fabric scraps he played in at his father’s curtain warehouse as a child would spark a career of environmentalism.
Taylor is co-founder of Offcut, a Christchurch company making hats from fabric odds and ends. Their main aim is to reduce waste from the fashion industry going to landfill.
‘‘I went back to his warehouse in 2015 and saw the room full of little fabric pieces, so I asked Dad what they did with them and he said they just get thrown out,’’ Taylor, 28, said.
‘‘I thought that was ridiculous and asked if I could buy them to do something with. He said I couldn’t buy them, but I could have them for free.’’
Three years later, Taylor and business partner Dan Price have produced more than 3000 hats in monthly ‘‘drops’’ of their latest designs, with materials sourced from fabric printers and garment factories, predominantly in Asia.
Labelled as ‘‘over-engineered’’, with a ‘‘lifetime guarantee’’, most caps are oneoffs or part of small runs. They partnered with Swanndri for four runs of caps, which proved their most popular design. Each run of the classically-Kiwi lids sold out within minutes.
In 2017, the Offcut team launched Trump Forest, vowing to plant trees in the name of US President Donald Trump following his repealing of climate-change regulations. More than 1.2 million trees have been pledged since the campaign launched. ‘‘The company has been growing organically over the past three years, which is really great, but it’s remained quite boutique. The idea was to scale up and get to a more meaningful size, in order to have a bigger impact,’’ Taylor said.
Offcut launched a Kickstarter campaign this week to expand the company. The company currently produces in New Zealand, but is moving its hat manufacturing operation to Vietnam ‘‘to be closer to the fabric offcuts’’. It is also beginning to create luggage tags from discarded leather.
It reached more than 50 per cent of the $20,000 target within 24 hours.
Taylor was realistic about the impact a hat company could have on environmental issues, but hoped to ‘‘inspire people to think about waste happening in so many of the industries we’ve created’’.
‘‘We’re always actively thinking about other industries we could get into where we can use offcuts or by-products,’’ he said.