Our Vision: Make Sales to End Sweatshops
February 5, 2013, 7:00 am
By ADRIANA HERRERA
Over the last few months, there have been factory fires in Bangledesh that have taken the lives of hundreds of men and women who endured depressing sweatshop environments in order to feed their families. These factories were producing products for global brands like Wal-Mart, Disney, and Enyce. And a recent study by Greenpeace International concluded that Calvin Klein, GAP, Zara, Diesel, and other top apparel brands produce clothes that contain high levels of dangerous chemicals. Does it make sense that these and other brands are allowed to make products that expose people throughout their supply chains — cotton farmers to garment workers to consumers — to cancer-causing and endocrine-disrupting agents that can cause birth defects, learning disorders, and even death? If clothing were food, wouldn’t there be a recall?
In most cases, these brands have little to fear in the way of regulation. What they do fear is a loss of sales – and that is where my start-up, Fashioning Change, hopes to play a role. We have built a marketplace that offers stylish, money-saving, safe, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives. Our goal is to support manufacturers that are doing things right – and to leave the big brands no option but to adopt authentic practices that protect health, the Earth, and human rights. That’s our plan, any way.
When we share that plan with venture capitalists, we are often told, “but shoppers won’t pay more for products that are green or socially responsible.” And we don’t think they should have to. That’s why, in addition to showcasing socially responsible brands, we are using our marketplace to demonstrate that shopping “green” doesn’t have to mean spending more or compromising on style and quality.
To prove our point, we built a feature on our Web site that we call Wear This, Not That (see photo above). Here’s how it works: We look for styles that are trending within mainstream brands, and then we review the Fashioning Change catalog for items that are comparable in price and style. When we find a match, we feature a side-by-side comparison of the Fashioning Change alternative to the mainstream product. Every comparison presents the fashion aesthetics and the price and also highlights the brand’s manufacturing process. Here’s an example, Wear This, Not That: Reuse Jeans vs Guess.
We did an analysis comparing more than 100 products from 27 mainstream brands to the Fashioning Change equivalent, and the data showed that shoppers can save an average of 27 percent with our alternatives. From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, we calculated that shoppers buying through Fashioning Change saved $25,509.84 — the difference between our retail price and what these shoppers would have spent on the mainstream option.
All of this may sound simple but making it happen isn’t easy, especially when you don’t have a huge budget to spend on marketing. To help us connect with each member of our growing audience, we built a targeted e-mail system that reviews shared preferences and site behavior to help us understand what e-mail content is relevant for each person. We use that data to share relevant information with each person who signs up for Fashioning Change. Every day, we work to increase our relevancy to each person so that we can make more sales while reducing pollution and the use of sweatshops.
So far, all of the money we make goes back into building Fashioning Change. My co-founder Kevin and I have forgone salaries until we can get Fashioning Change to profitability (something we look forward to in the near future). In order to live without a salary, I gave up my two-bedroom apartment, sold all of my furniture, and moved into my parent’s guest room. I lived there for more than a year on savings while getting the company started. Now I split time between the Fashioning Change house in Santa Monica and my parent’s house in San Diego. (I also gave up health insurance, which I will discuss in my next post.)
We see fashion as just the beginning for us. We have built a Web platform that will eventually allow us to provide access to authentic, great-looking, money-saving, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives to almost everything that goes on (or in) our bodies, in our homes, or into our communities: clothes, food, detergents, cars, bedding, toothpaste, etc. While we could start adding all different types of products, I believe our success will lie in attacking one vertical at a time. We will see how quickly our vision gains momentum.
Some of the older investors we meet seem skeptical that we can create this mix of business and ethics. We’re looking forward to proving them wrong.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/our-vision-make-sales-to-end-sweatshops/
February 5, 2013, 7:00 am
By ADRIANA HERRERA
Over the last few months, there have been factory fires in Bangledesh that have taken the lives of hundreds of men and women who endured depressing sweatshop environments in order to feed their families. These factories were producing products for global brands like Wal-Mart, Disney, and Enyce. And a recent study by Greenpeace International concluded that Calvin Klein, GAP, Zara, Diesel, and other top apparel brands produce clothes that contain high levels of dangerous chemicals. Does it make sense that these and other brands are allowed to make products that expose people throughout their supply chains — cotton farmers to garment workers to consumers — to cancer-causing and endocrine-disrupting agents that can cause birth defects, learning disorders, and even death? If clothing were food, wouldn’t there be a recall?
In most cases, these brands have little to fear in the way of regulation. What they do fear is a loss of sales – and that is where my start-up, Fashioning Change, hopes to play a role. We have built a marketplace that offers stylish, money-saving, safe, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives. Our goal is to support manufacturers that are doing things right – and to leave the big brands no option but to adopt authentic practices that protect health, the Earth, and human rights. That’s our plan, any way.
When we share that plan with venture capitalists, we are often told, “but shoppers won’t pay more for products that are green or socially responsible.” And we don’t think they should have to. That’s why, in addition to showcasing socially responsible brands, we are using our marketplace to demonstrate that shopping “green” doesn’t have to mean spending more or compromising on style and quality.
To prove our point, we built a feature on our Web site that we call Wear This, Not That (see photo above). Here’s how it works: We look for styles that are trending within mainstream brands, and then we review the Fashioning Change catalog for items that are comparable in price and style. When we find a match, we feature a side-by-side comparison of the Fashioning Change alternative to the mainstream product. Every comparison presents the fashion aesthetics and the price and also highlights the brand’s manufacturing process. Here’s an example, Wear This, Not That: Reuse Jeans vs Guess.
We did an analysis comparing more than 100 products from 27 mainstream brands to the Fashioning Change equivalent, and the data showed that shoppers can save an average of 27 percent with our alternatives. From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, we calculated that shoppers buying through Fashioning Change saved $25,509.84 — the difference between our retail price and what these shoppers would have spent on the mainstream option.
All of this may sound simple but making it happen isn’t easy, especially when you don’t have a huge budget to spend on marketing. To help us connect with each member of our growing audience, we built a targeted e-mail system that reviews shared preferences and site behavior to help us understand what e-mail content is relevant for each person. We use that data to share relevant information with each person who signs up for Fashioning Change. Every day, we work to increase our relevancy to each person so that we can make more sales while reducing pollution and the use of sweatshops.
So far, all of the money we make goes back into building Fashioning Change. My co-founder Kevin and I have forgone salaries until we can get Fashioning Change to profitability (something we look forward to in the near future). In order to live without a salary, I gave up my two-bedroom apartment, sold all of my furniture, and moved into my parent’s guest room. I lived there for more than a year on savings while getting the company started. Now I split time between the Fashioning Change house in Santa Monica and my parent’s house in San Diego. (I also gave up health insurance, which I will discuss in my next post.)
We see fashion as just the beginning for us. We have built a Web platform that will eventually allow us to provide access to authentic, great-looking, money-saving, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives to almost everything that goes on (or in) our bodies, in our homes, or into our communities: clothes, food, detergents, cars, bedding, toothpaste, etc. While we could start adding all different types of products, I believe our success will lie in attacking one vertical at a time. We will see how quickly our vision gains momentum.
Some of the older investors we meet seem skeptical that we can create this mix of business and ethics. We’re looking forward to proving them wrong.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/our-vision-make-sales-to-end-sweatshops/
Article #2:
Inside Apple's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory where workers are paid just £1.12 per hour to produce iPhones and iPads for the West
By Rob Cooper
UPDATED: 10:47 EST, 25 January 2013
-Factories covered in suicide nets to stop workers leaping to their deaths.
-18 people have killed themselves at the facility.
-IPhone, IPad and MacBook assembled in factory in Shenzhen.
-Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard products also built on site.
Apple have opened the doors to their Chinese 'sweatshop' factories where employees are paid as little as £1.12 an hour.
Many of the staff performs monotonous tasks like wiping down screens or shaving aluminum from the edge of the Apple logo for ten tedious hours at a time.
And now the conditions inside the factory in Shenzhen - where 18 employees have killed themselves - can be seen, after ABC TV network were given exclusive access.
The broadcaster revealed that the entry-level salary of just £180 per month is so low that it would take more than two months’ salary to pay for the cheapest IPad.
Even if the lowest earners do the maximum available overtime of 80 hours per month, they still do not earn enough to pay tax.
Previous reports have claimed that some of the workers were doing 24 hours at a time, while others were forced to stand for their entire shifts.
While the Nightline documentary knocks down those suggestions, it does show the suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop over-worked and stressed employees leaping to their deaths.
Managers ordered asked for the nets to be put up two years ago after nine workers committed suicide in the space of three months.
Apple - the world's most valuable technology company - have faced claims that their contractors are forcing staff to do overtime involuntarily and employing underage workers at the factory.
It was in response to these attacks that Apple threw open their doors at the Foxconn City plant in Shenzhen, China.
Foxconn City is a unit of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Company which employs up to 1.1million people in a series of huge factory complexes in China.
Liang Juan, 26, told ABC News that management is 'strict'.
Wearing a white boiler-suit in the spotless factory, it is her job to flip over camera lenses with a tiny pair of tweezers.
Asked what she thinks about when performing the dull task, she said: 'I don't think much about other things because the management is strict and we're busy working and have no time to think about other things.'
Despite the boring jobs unemployed young Chinese workers queue up for work - and employees say that working conditions are much better than at other factories.
An estimated 3,000 people were queuing at the gates to find work on one day when ABC News was there.
Workers are charged around £11 per month to share a dormitory with seven other people and pay around 50 pence for a rice dish in the cafeteria.
Apple has also allowed independent examiners from the Washington-based Fair Labor Association in to carry out inspections.
The Foxconn City complex of factories, run by Foxconn Technology Group, employ 235,000 workers and Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard projects are also built on the site.
In 2009, a Foxconn employee fell or jumped from an apartment building after losing an iPhone prototype.
Over the next two years, at least 18 other Foxconn workers were linked to attempted suicides.
Despite claims to the contrary, the abuses appear to have continued.
With demand for the firm's products soaring the factory is forced to churn out products in growing numbers. Last year they sold 93million iPhones, 40million IPads, 38million iPods and 17million computers.
The ABC journalists given unrestricted access to the site and freedom to talk to anyone found that staffs were paid above the minimum wage - and no-one worked there below the age of 16.
Apple said 60,000 workers have been sent on college courses for free and they have informed one million staff of their legal rights.
Chief-executive Tim Cook said that they were working hard to improve conditions for workers.
'No one in our industry is doing more' to improve the live of employees,' he said, PC Mag reported.
He added: 'We are constantly auditing facilities, going deep into the supply chain, looking for problems, finding problems, and fixing problems, and we report everything because we believe that transparency is so very important in this area.'
However, concerns about the factory remain - and ABC News suggested that managers were warned in advance of their visit.
Last month, 150 Foxconn employees threatened to leap from a three-story building after claiming of poor pay and pressurized working conditions.
*July 2009: A Foxconn employee fell from apartment building after losing iPhone prototype. 18 more workers try to commit suicide over next two years.
*2010: 137 workers at Suzhou facility, owned by Apple suppliers Wintek, injured by poisonous chemical, n-hexane, used to clean iPhone screens because it dried faster.
*May 2011: Four workers dead and 18 injured in dust explosion at Foxconn factory in Chengdu, which produces iPad parts.
*December 2011: 61 workers injured in gas explosion at Riteng Computer Accessory Co factory in Shanghai, which was trialling aluminum iPad 2 back panels.
By Rob Cooper
UPDATED: 10:47 EST, 25 January 2013
-Factories covered in suicide nets to stop workers leaping to their deaths.
-18 people have killed themselves at the facility.
-IPhone, IPad and MacBook assembled in factory in Shenzhen.
-Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard products also built on site.
Apple have opened the doors to their Chinese 'sweatshop' factories where employees are paid as little as £1.12 an hour.
Many of the staff performs monotonous tasks like wiping down screens or shaving aluminum from the edge of the Apple logo for ten tedious hours at a time.
And now the conditions inside the factory in Shenzhen - where 18 employees have killed themselves - can be seen, after ABC TV network were given exclusive access.
The broadcaster revealed that the entry-level salary of just £180 per month is so low that it would take more than two months’ salary to pay for the cheapest IPad.
Even if the lowest earners do the maximum available overtime of 80 hours per month, they still do not earn enough to pay tax.
Previous reports have claimed that some of the workers were doing 24 hours at a time, while others were forced to stand for their entire shifts.
While the Nightline documentary knocks down those suggestions, it does show the suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop over-worked and stressed employees leaping to their deaths.
Managers ordered asked for the nets to be put up two years ago after nine workers committed suicide in the space of three months.
Apple - the world's most valuable technology company - have faced claims that their contractors are forcing staff to do overtime involuntarily and employing underage workers at the factory.
It was in response to these attacks that Apple threw open their doors at the Foxconn City plant in Shenzhen, China.
Foxconn City is a unit of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Company which employs up to 1.1million people in a series of huge factory complexes in China.
Liang Juan, 26, told ABC News that management is 'strict'.
Wearing a white boiler-suit in the spotless factory, it is her job to flip over camera lenses with a tiny pair of tweezers.
Asked what she thinks about when performing the dull task, she said: 'I don't think much about other things because the management is strict and we're busy working and have no time to think about other things.'
Despite the boring jobs unemployed young Chinese workers queue up for work - and employees say that working conditions are much better than at other factories.
An estimated 3,000 people were queuing at the gates to find work on one day when ABC News was there.
Workers are charged around £11 per month to share a dormitory with seven other people and pay around 50 pence for a rice dish in the cafeteria.
Apple has also allowed independent examiners from the Washington-based Fair Labor Association in to carry out inspections.
The Foxconn City complex of factories, run by Foxconn Technology Group, employ 235,000 workers and Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard projects are also built on the site.
In 2009, a Foxconn employee fell or jumped from an apartment building after losing an iPhone prototype.
Over the next two years, at least 18 other Foxconn workers were linked to attempted suicides.
Despite claims to the contrary, the abuses appear to have continued.
With demand for the firm's products soaring the factory is forced to churn out products in growing numbers. Last year they sold 93million iPhones, 40million IPads, 38million iPods and 17million computers.
The ABC journalists given unrestricted access to the site and freedom to talk to anyone found that staffs were paid above the minimum wage - and no-one worked there below the age of 16.
Apple said 60,000 workers have been sent on college courses for free and they have informed one million staff of their legal rights.
Chief-executive Tim Cook said that they were working hard to improve conditions for workers.
'No one in our industry is doing more' to improve the live of employees,' he said, PC Mag reported.
He added: 'We are constantly auditing facilities, going deep into the supply chain, looking for problems, finding problems, and fixing problems, and we report everything because we believe that transparency is so very important in this area.'
However, concerns about the factory remain - and ABC News suggested that managers were warned in advance of their visit.
Last month, 150 Foxconn employees threatened to leap from a three-story building after claiming of poor pay and pressurized working conditions.
*July 2009: A Foxconn employee fell from apartment building after losing iPhone prototype. 18 more workers try to commit suicide over next two years.
*2010: 137 workers at Suzhou facility, owned by Apple suppliers Wintek, injured by poisonous chemical, n-hexane, used to clean iPhone screens because it dried faster.
*May 2011: Four workers dead and 18 injured in dust explosion at Foxconn factory in Chengdu, which produces iPad parts.
*December 2011: 61 workers injured in gas explosion at Riteng Computer Accessory Co factory in Shanghai, which was trialling aluminum iPad 2 back panels.