Well the order for the Eden Project, aprons dyed with tea and coffee, have all been safely delivered. I am genuinely proud of them. The are of great quality, the weight of fabric and the construction and the colour……I love the strong but somehow, still soft colour.
We decided to have some made to hold in stock for potential new customers. It is this type of judgement that we have to make – to hold stock or not? Do we take the risk of buying garments without having confirmed customers or do we wait for customers and then manufacture to order for them?
I have made a few mistakes – and although I realise that this is the only way to learn – my mistakes are not my most favourite thing. For example I have lots of organic bar aprons in both unbleached and black fabric, but I have found that we have had sold far more of our Fairtrade and organic bibbed aprons – the bar aprons wait patiently (but not me).
Naturally dyed garments in our industry (company clothing, uniforms) are a step ahead. It will take us a while to find the customers who are committed and leaders themselves to take this route with us.
We have had t shirt fabric manufactured and dyed so that we can show potential customers. Currently we have pomegranate, madder, coffee, tea plus swatches of a huge range of other colours we can supply using less familiar plants found in India. My favourite colour at the moment is the beautiful orange dye made with the skin of pomegranate.
My current idea (as I am writing this) is to ask Jenny and Ros to come up with a print design for the front of naturally dyed T shirts. A design that gets across the message of “Dyeing for change”. We will then print it, or embroider it and see if we can find a committed organisation who would like to use it for their uniform or to sell in their shops to promote the idea of dyeing naturally.
Maybe there is a museum out there whose theme will be dyeing, or textiles, or sustainability and the idea will fit perfectly
……Well it’s Sunday and I am expecting a visitor so I have to stop thinking about business and start 1. to tidy the house 2. to think about preparing food (maybe a picnic). But before I go, if you are interested in “the perfect t shirt” take a look at http://www.betterthinking.co.uk/perfect/ I found this article sometime ago and found it useful and interesting.