Hey friend, I'm Sam, founder of Yes Friends. Here's the story.
A decade ago, I was in a fitting room trying on some jeans and my conscience said "you can't buy anything that's not ethical". It was 2013 and I was thinking about sweatshops and workers' wages.
Fast forward a few years, I had moved to Bristol, studied music and set-up a sustainable & ethical fashion boutique in a shipping container. I wanted to make ethical clothing accessible.
But there was one problem, nobody could afford it.
In 2020, I was being interviewed for a sustainable fashion blog. On a day that would usually warrant lighting a fire indoors, we sat outside. COVID times.
As we were getting used to mild hypothermia, the interviewer said “I’ve heard it costs £30 to make a fully ethical T-shirt”.
I thought hmmm.
I’d heard that kind of thing loads before. I knew it wasn’t true. But it’s what everyone thinks.
Over the past few years, I'd had a front row seat watching supply chains, pricing and mark-ups. It was in that little shipping container that I discovered sustainable & ethical fashion doesn’t need to be expensive.
But it does require big scale and smaller margins. A bit like going to Costco. But on another level.