One company is looking to target the worst aspects of wasteful fast fashion and demonstrate a circular and cost-effective economy with that most standard of clothing – the t-shirt.
Utilizing the second largest source of cotton on Earth, Teemill’s business model is making mass-produced t-shirts from mass-produced t-shirts.
These days, if you have a corporate event, a good idea is to print 100 cotton t-shirts to commemorate it. Going on tour and looking to raise money from merchandise for your band? Print 500 cotton t-shirts to sell at merchandise stands.
Trying to continue the profits of the World Wildlife Fund? Print 10,000 cotton t-shirts to send to donors.
In the world of fast fashion, the ubiquity of casual T-shirts with something printed on them seems immeasurable in scope.
That’s where Teemill comes in. Claiming that a truckload of clothes is landfilled or burned around the world every second, they’re trying to control the flow of waste by cutting off the t-shirt rod.
Every t-shirt purchased from Teemill can be turned around, shredded into cotton fibers, sterilized and remade into new t-shirts in a pair of carbon-neutral factories powered by renewable energy.
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“We’re constantly being told as consumers ‘change what you buy, make better choices, educate yourself, do what you can,'” Teemill co-founder Mart Drake-Knight explains in a TedX about his experience breaking into fashion. stable.
“So when we tried to do our bit and buy products made from organic materials… or products that are designed in such a way that they don’t end up in a landfill, it’s like they don’t exist. In fact, the more we looked, the more we learned that almost everything in the world seems to be made the same way.”
The bust tag on each shirt comes with a QR code that when sent back to Teemill is scanned and is worth a small discount. In this way, the customer also becomes the supplier, and where Teemill needs to buy new cotton, they instead spend that money on shipping to recall old or unwanted Teemill machines from previous buyers and for an incentive small for them to do so.
Sustainable fashion isn’t catching up to the waste of its more wasteful industrial cousins, and selling sustainably grown cotton or t-shirts made from recycled water bottles at over $25 a shirt just won’t cut it. .
Taking advantage of economies of scale by selling in bulk to people who need hundreds of T-shirts, and lower production costs from opening a factory in India, Teemill is adapting the aspects that made fast fashion so wasteful and use them to their advantage.
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With these they combine smart technology innovations such as machines that print T-shirts with personalized designs in real time, along with orders to reduce the amount of warehouse inventory needed and cloud platforms that allow small designers to start their own brands. fashion related to Teemill circular pattern.
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