In our previous article , we talked about the upcoming collaboration by Beau Laurence and Adriano Goldschmied . In this article, the innovators of this project will tell you the further story about this wonderful project which is launched on Kickstarter . We bring the story in the words of Beau Lawrence.
THE STORY
Over a phone call to catch up during Covid-19 Shelter At Home here in California, Adriano and I began talking about ideas, and that’s where the concept for the TYPE ONE TEE was born. We were anxious to give a positive message, and the time at home stimulated us to think about new ways to create a business starting from nothing.
THE PROBLEM
Your average cotton tee shirt is traditionally a weak product. When living in tees (like we do these days) we’re wearing and washing them often enough to understand that they break down over time.
Growing cotton also presents other issues, including the environmental impact from large amounts of water used for irrigation and the chemicals and pesticides used in most of these crops. Garments that aren’t long lasting end up in landfills.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, although efforts are being made to recycle discarded clothing, this only accounts for 15% of the apparel that makes its way into landfills today.
THE SOLUTION:
We’ve created a tee shirt that brings together the most eco friendly fibers in nature, Hemp and Tencel™.
Hemp is a naturally strong fiber with anti-microbial properties. When hemp is blended with Tencel™ (made from fiber that comes from wood), the finished yarn is stronger than cotton and produces a durable long lasting fabric.
On top of our fiber sourcing that creates a longer life garment, we went a step further with our dye processing. Our colors are made from chopped up old clothes that are ground into powder becoming new dye for our tees. Our goal is that you’ll fall in love with our TYPE ONE TEE. Designed with the earth in mind, and so soft that you’ll never want to take it off.
AVAILABLE COLORS
TYPE ONE TEE SIZING
SOURCING STRATEGY
PRODUCTION & DELIVERY CALENDAR
WHAT GOES INTO OUR PRODUCT:
HOW WE WILL USE OUR FUNDING:
A successful Kickstarter Campaign will not only allow us to work through our first production run, enabling us to finance and deliver product to our Backers, but it will also help to prove the concept for our earth conscious brand, Ace Gold Green.
Risks and challenges
If you watched our Kickstarter video, it’s clear that we’re not kids. In addition to the years of combined design, product development, and production experience that Adriano and I bring to this project, we have assembled a team of the best resources available to produce our goods. Just like in any relationship, open communication (always sharing what’s working and what isn’t) is the key to identifying solutions when challenges come up.
All of our resources have committed to focusing on quality as our #1 priority with this project, and making sure that we’re involved and informed about each step of the manufacturing process. Bringing materials together from around the world can be challenging at any time, and clearly becomes much more complicated during a global pandemic.
Our suppliers have committed to our raw material deliveries, but none of us can for-see things that are out of our control like countries being shut down/ shipments being stopped/ or other un-knowns that could impact our planned calendar to ship your finished Type One Tees. Between our experience, our team of best in class suppliers, and our goal to bring you our Type One Tee, we’ll do everything in our ability to ship your product on time
Environmental commitments
Visit our Environmental Resources Center to learn how Kickstarter encourages sustainable practices.
Long-lasting design
Combining Hemp fibers with Tencel adds to the overall fabric strength of our tee shirts, giving it more durability through standard wear. Building Education around alternatives to standard home care (using cold water for wash cycles and air drying) also adds to both energy savings and extends the life of our tees.
Reusability and recyclability
Our compostable mailers are made from a combination of PBAT, a bio based polymer which is compostable, and PLA which is made up of plant materials such as regular field corn and wheat straw.
Our use of PLA makes up barely 0.05% of the annual global corn crop, making it an incredibly low-impact resource. Read on for further certifications and information.
The bags are certified by TUV Austria; meeting American, European, International and Australian standards – including certifications for your domestic home compost. To gain these certifications, the product must break down within 90 days in commercial compost and 180 days in domestic compost conditions, including worm farm compost. After degradation, they must leave no harmful residues behind.
Sustainable materials
The fibers for our tee shirts are produced from a blend of Hemp and Tencel. Hemp grows 4 times faster than cotton, it doesn’t require any pesticides, and uses at least 50% less water than cotton to grow.
Tencel comes from Tree Farms (which are re-grown) and its fibers are extruded from wood chips. The “Recycrom” dye-stuffs used for our tee shirts are created by Officina +39 from post consumer waste apparel. That means they take old clothing, sort it by color, then chop it up into small pieces. This is then ground into a powder which is re-used to dye our Ace Gold Green tees.
Environmentally friendly factories
Based in Los Angeles, we’ve selected our cutting, sewing, printing and finishing facilities within a local radius of each-other. We have long standing relationships with the factories, and we’ve considered how they treat their employees as well as their industry reputations for in our decision to place our Ace Gold Green products with them.
Sustainable Distribution
Our first consideration regarding fulfilment was actually about our direct to consumer mailers, and making sure we had a compostable envelope that wouldn’t add additional pressures to our landfills. Instead of managing fulfilment through a large facility, we’ll be managing all of the packing and shipping to designated services ourselves via Prius.
KEEP IN TOUCH
Kickstarter is a great platform to launch products in many industries – though our industry has not really taken full advantage of it. It enables crowd funding of projects to enable them get on their feet . We would request our readers to contribute whatever – even if a small amount – to support this great project which can be an inspiration for many young designers and fashionistas to launch unique products with shoestring budget. We all need to make this succeed !
Kickstarter link
Also follow Acegoldgreen.com for by putting up your email address for updates on the project .