Doing good, and not just because it’s fashionable
Silk made from orange peel, leather from pineapples and Lycra from recycled plastic. Gosia Piatek has seen the future and she’s excited.
It’s a future the Kiwi fashion designer has helped frame, the fringe and niche that is now mainstream and marketable.
Piatek has been there from the start, when people knew little of fair trade in fashion, ethical supply chains and the circular economy.
Twelve years ago, when she started the Kowtow clothing label with a $10,000 development grant, ‘‘people’s eyes would glaze over . . . they’d be snacking on McDonald’s – no-one cared’’. They care now. And they’re willing to back it up with cash.
Kowtow has returned that initial grant many times over: Piatek now employs 27 people in New Zealand and overseas; her distinctive organiccotton garments are sold by more than 250 retailers worldwide. ‘‘We’ve got warehousing in America, Europe; we’ve just employed a new sales manager in London, and we’ve got a showroom in Melbourne and an agent in New York.’’
The company was ranked in Deloitte NZ’s Fast 50 for three years running from 2014, with annual revenue growth approaching 300 per cent. Other businesses are catching up; they’re beginning to take the lead on social and environmental initiatives and incorporating corporate social responsibility into their strategy.
But such things are not a bolt-on at Kowtow; they are what the business was built on. ‘‘For me it came from a very genuine concern for the planet. You get inspired by being in nature, you want to preserve that, and I think it’s become more mainstream to think like that.’’
That inspiration was backed by hard work and many months of research to find small farms in India to grow organic cotton and a factory that could produce the clothes in an ethical manner.
‘‘I worked with certification bodies that I trusted, that I felt were legitimate and I knew worked from the farm level.’’
She also visited India and looked those farmers in the eye.
‘‘I remember having a conversation with Matt [Lamason], who started People’s Coffee, and I said what if I go there and they hide it from me, or it’s not legitimate . . . and he said you can’t hide misery from people’s faces, and I thought that’s such a good thing to keep in mind.’’
It’s not just about happy farmers and recycled hemp buttons, it’s ‘‘the paper we get in the workroom, the cleaners we have, the toilet paper we use, our recycling system; it’s the way that we eat lunch . . . it’s all day every day’’. ‘‘We get pretty nerdy with it. If you don’t come with some sort of interest in what we do you’re just going to think we’re total nutbags.’’
But Piatek admits it’s not for everyone.
‘‘If you were a conventional business you would get frustrated with the lack of flexibility and a lack of choice,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s difficult if you’re a larger business than myself and then you are adding a more sustainable policy into what you are doing because you are going to have a whole bunch of products that may not tick all the boxes, in terms of transparency and ethics and sustainability.’’
But it is the way of the future, which brings us to London.
‘‘In London it’s really exciting because I can go to a fabric fair or a fashion show or a design festival and . . . you can tap into sustainable fabrics.’’ Including silk made from orange peel, leather from pineapples and Lycra from recycled plastic.
‘‘I’m quite excited to dive into so much more out there.’’
Watch this space.