As a small business focused on slow fashion, we make business changes with intention. Instead of rushing new products and expanding quickly, our team comes together with a plan of action that's carefully considered and one we can stand behind. We listen to our customers and continue to improve our products with each new season.
This is how we approach many of the changes you've seen recently and new initiatives we are working on as we continue to improve, bit by bit, everything we do. Below you'll find some of the ways we're working becoming a more responsible and more sustainable brand.
Thank you for your support and feedback in helping us get to where we are today. We can't wait to keep growing with you.
Quality is something you can feel. When you touch your favorite Tradlands sweater, dress, or shirt we hope you feel the quality, construction, and carefully crafted details that go into each piece we make.
For our fabrics, we use natural fibers like linen, Tencel, cotton, and more, and deadstock fabrics when we can. Utilizing deadstock fabrics is a great way to make what normally would become waste into something wonderful. Plus, when it comes to extras and fabric that would be considered waste, we do what we can to upcycle fabrics making them into scrunchies and bandanas.
With our core textiles, you will see soft cotton and blends of linen and Tencel. These fabrics are comfortable, easy to care for, and long-lasting. It makes them the perfect companion for a timeless silhouette. We help every customer elongate the lifetime of their garment by providing care tips and ideas on how to store our pieces to ensure longevity.
We do everything we can to get the highest quality piece of clothing to you but we know that that's only half the battle. Caring for them, washing them appropriately, and storing them is an essential part of making sure our essentials stay timeless. As we grow and find new suppliers, we will keep working to focus on great fabrics you'll love to live in.
Tradlands was built on the foundation of creating high-quality closet essentials you will love to live in for years to come. Did you know that wearing clothing 50 times instead of 5 times (the fast fashion average) reduces carbon emissions by more than 400% per item per year? That’s why quality is important to us.
While this has been our focus, we’ve also made continuous and intentional efforts to do good for the environment, the people, and the industry that we work with. Conscious consumers understand that buying fewer, well-made pieces that stand the test of time is better for the planet.
Cost Per Wear (CPW) is simply an equation to measure the quality of the items you’re buying. Don’t worry, the math isn’t too hard. One of our fundamental goals as a slow-fashion brand is to combat fast fashion and to teach customers that re-wearing again and again is the best way to lower our individual environmental impact. Plus, it's a cool way to find your personal style and embrace your wardrobe.
We create clothing that works for your lifestyle and holds up along the way. The details are purposeful. The interior seams are clean and finished. The fabrics only get better with time. It's those chameleon pieces that become the foundation of your wardrobe. The ones you reach for day after day, season after season, and beyond.
Each collection is produced responsibly in small batches with established facilities so we produce less waste. Each partner specializes in high-quality garments and helps us meet our specifications from fabrics to details and everything in between. Our goal is to create better products for you and a better future for the planet and the people we work with.
Each season we make our small-production runs as efficient and sustainable as possible, eliminating waste and offering a very limited range of new products and colors. This is all done through a practice called Small Batch Production.
You might notice lots of brands are constantly coming out with new styles. New drops every week, restocks every month, an endless churn of fresh products in your inbox and feed. To us, this is a red flag in any clothing brand that claims to be slow, sustainable, or responsible.
For a small business like ours, there are many benefits, both for our customers and our team. Our customers are mindful of what they purchase and are an integral part of sharing feedback on the styles we produce. We develop each new style carefully and only create a few new options in addition to our core items each season. It allows for us to take feedback and iterate for the next season on a style or fit. We can catch errors, fit issues, and design flaws more easily and make changes quickly with a lot less waste. We can better control the materials needed for the entire process and make changes on a better timeline.
Since quality is a core value of our brand, we focus on ensuring that our standards are met with each batch of clothing we produce. By choosing smaller production runs, it helps customers like you feel confident that the order showing up at your door has been inspected, packed, and shipped with care.
Utilizing small-batch practices is beneficial for the environment. With large-scale production, businesses create more clothing without knowing how well it will sell, producing more waste from those increased units, and creating more emissions shipping and flying large shipments around the world all year long.
With our small-batch production, we have two collections and shipments per year: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. This helps eliminate waste by making refined sourcing decisions and reduces emissions by shipping on the water.
These benefits are why we have chosen to grow slowly and sustainably throughout the lifetime of Tradlands, to make sure our values and the planet are not compromised in the process.
As of 2022, you'll find all new sustainable packaging with every order. This updated packaging is part of our goal to reduce our environmental impact with every shipment.
Our clothing is made to last, but this bag is not — thankfully. The eco-friendly, non-toxic mailer is made from a cornstarch blend and is 100% biodegradable and compostable. The most sustainable way to dispose of this bag is to shred and add it to home compost or have it sent to a local composting facility. Yep, it's that simple.
Is this hangtag worth hanging onto? Nope. This hangtag is FSC certified and is made from 100% recycled fiber. Simply add this to your recycling to sustainably dispose of it. It's that easy.
Moving forward, we'll be working to utilize compostable mailers as our primary shipping method from our warehouse as well as working on ways to reduce paper and any extra plastic used throughout our business.
