Eco-friendly fashion has its price. We explain why.
In contrast to fast fashion products, fairly and sustainably produced items of clothing often seem overpriced. But what many people don't know is that disposable fashion can only be so cheap because during the manufacturing process, savings are made in places where they shouldn't be. Using our NIL hoodie as an example, we show you here how we want to do it right.
Every item of clothing that is produced has certain production costs. These include material costs, wages, trims - i.e. buttons, zippers and the like - printing, embroidery and logistics. In the fast fashion industry, savings are made not only on materials, which are produced as cheaply as possible and under poor conditions, but above all on workers' wages. In many countries, there is no minimum wage or only a very low one. Fast fashion companies take advantage of this to keep the wages of the workers who work on their products as low as possible. However, it is important to us that everyone involved in our production process does not live at subsistence level, but can make a good living from their work. This is why, using the example of our NIL hoodie, wages already account for 33% of production costs.
In addition, we pay attention to high-quality materials. Cotton is one of the most popular raw materials for the textile industry. However, cotton is usually grown in monocultures for conventional cotton cultivation. This means that no plant species other than cotton are planted throughout the year. If this is the case, the soil cannot recover in the meantime as it dries out more quickly, which in turn means that more fertilizer and more water have to be used. The monoculture also means that the cotton is more susceptible to pests, which means that more chemical pesticides and insecticides have to be used for the cotton to survive. This chemical cocktail of fertilizers and pesticides not only carries the risk of leaching into the groundwater, but also ensures that the soil needs a break of several years at some point, or in the worst case even lies fallow.
We therefore work with organic cotton, among other things. This form of cultivation is characterized by the fact that no pesticides or insecticides are used, only organic fertilizer. It also works with crop rotation, which means that other plants are grown on the same field between two cotton seeds so that the soil can recover. This saves water, as the permanently covered soil never dries out completely and the different plants always bring different nutrients into the soil. Unfortunately, organic cotton only accounts for 1% of the approximately 26 million tons of cotton harvested worldwide each year.
As we already pay attention to many social and sustainable factors in our production, there are other factors that make up the final price. A large part of this is marketing. Of course, our products also want to reach you and therefore we have to advertise them as a first step. Another major factor is the 19% VAT that applies to goods for sale in Germany. The remaining 26.9% is made up of our wages, logistics, transaction fees and other smaller aspects, such as xxx. And because we also want to earn some money so that we can produce more beautiful items for you, we allow ourselves a profit of 0.5%. So the price we end up with can't compete with fast fashion. Instead, we create products that we and the people who make them for you stand behind with full conviction.
