Bringing Back (The Flax) Fields of Gold

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Modern Farmer Magazine: Article

American farmers want to grow flax, but there’s little infrastructure to support them. These projects are hoping to change that.

#Business#Culture & Heritage#Plants & Crops

by Kathleen Webber· September 3, 2024

Four acres of flax at Pasture Song Farm.Photography by Zoe Schaeffer.

On a humid summer day in southeastern PA, farmers have traveled hours to Pasture Song Farm to see flax in the field. Farmer Jeremy Dunphy stands next to his four-acre test plot, brimming with flax as a cover crop, sharing what he’s learned with a crowd of 20 farmers, textile artists, designers, and educators. While he calls it the easiest plant he has grown, he knows there are hesitations.

Dunphy is part of the PA Flax Project, founded in 2020. The group aims to reshore the flax industry in North America, and they’ve received a three-year, $1.7 million USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Organic Marketing Development Grant (OMDG) to grow flax for linen on 12,000 acres, using a cooperative model where farmers would share in the profits. The PA Department of Agriculture recently designated flax as a specialty crop, opening up grant funding for farmers. Growers hope other states will follow with that designation.

Farmers can grow flax. What they need is a supply chain and market that can handle the harvest.

Participants learn about flax at the PA Flax Project event. Photography by Zoe Schaeffer.

Home grown

Although US farmers don’t grow flax much anymore, that was not always the case.

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Flax has been cultivated since ancient Egypt, and in the US since colonial times, when European settlers brought seeds to places such as Philadelphia, where it was mostly hand-processed and spun. During World War II, the Works Progress Administration, built three processing mills to get the industry going and put farmers back to work after the Depression. At one time, 18,000 acres of flax were grown in Oregon, with 14 processing mills, spinning and weaving throughout the Willamette Valley. They sold fiber straight to the war efforts, but those contracts dried up around the same time synthetics became popular with the American consumer. In early American history, flax had been less economically competitive than cotton, which was able to exploit slave labor, and it made use of the cotton gin, which made its production faster and cheaper.

Flax. Photography by Zoe Schaeffer..

Now, as the textile industry looks at sustainable alternatives to popular petroleum-based fabrics, low-impact linen, made from flax, is in the spotlight. Organic flax requires little irrigation, and it can remediate soil and promote biodiversity. While most flax fiber is made into linen for clothing, it is also being used for biocomposites for automotive interiors, sporting goods, and decorative home goods. Other parts of the crop are used for rope, paper, mulch, and animal bedding.

Flax takes about 100 days to go from seed to harvest, and once planted, it needs little tending. It is, however, labor-intensive to extract and prepare the fiber for spinning. At maturity, a puller machine grabs the crop’s stalk at the root to get it out of the ground. It is laid down in windrows in the field and then retted, a controlled process of loosening the long fibers from the stalk. Retting can be done in tanks or pools, or in the field where dew and rain do the work. After retting, the stalks are ready for scutching at a mill. Scutching takes the flax straw and separates the short fibers, long fibers, shives, and seeds, through mechanical crushing and threshing. After scutching, the fiber can be sold to send a spinner to be made into yarn and woven or knit into linen textiles. The issue is the lack of infrastructure. Right now, mid- to large-scale scutching mills are non-existent in North America, because there is not enough flax being grown to support an industry.

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Transporting large amounts of flax straw long distances to be processed is costly and environmentally damaging. Grower Shannon Welsh, co-founder of Fibrevolution in Alsea, OR and executive director of the North American Linen Association (NALA), would like to see at least a few processing facilities in strategic growing regions—on the two coasts and in the Midwest—to service existing growers.

“Not having [a scutching mill] is impeding the scaling of flax for fiber production here and why many farmers only grow flax on a smaller scale,” says Welsh. Each mill would require a $5-million to $10-million investment. If a mill is getting quality fiber, her model shows it could turn a profit in three years. “What flax fiber sells for in comparison to other fibers is quite high if the quality is good,” says Welsh. “In Europe, scutching mills are not subsidized and are self-sufficient.”

Where it all started

Because flax has not been grown at a commercial scale here since the mid-twentieth century, many growers make the pilgrimage to Europe to learn how to farm it and use the specialized equipment (pullers, balers, and turners). Robin Maynard Seaver of Green Mountain Linen in South Royalton, VT took her team to Belgium this summer to do that and to learn about how to use the puller she recently purchased. “There’s so much art to getting good fiber out of linen, because it’s not hard to grow, but you want the valuable long fiber.”

Patricia Bishop of TapRoot Farms started growing flax on her family vegetable farm in Port Williams, Nova Scotia, and processes up to 70 pounds a day. When she could not find smaller-scale equipment in Western Europe (where three quarters of all flax is grown), she enlisted an engineer friend to make braking, scutching, and hackling machines to clean and prep the flax fiber for spinning. Because the fibers are longer and need to be extracted from the flax stalk (which is about three feet tall), equipment is more mechanized than the kind used for cotton or wool, she explains.

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LEARN MORE

Find out more about the PA Flax Project and its mission.

Much of the flaxseed in the world comes from France or the Netherlands and is licensed like software. Domestic growers will buy seed from European growers with the agreement they won’t replant it. Farmers can grow flax for fiber or flax for seeds. Welsh has grown and sold their seeds for years at Fibrevolution. “There are multiple groups working on scaling up seed production in North America, because without more seed, we won’t be able to grow very much flax, and we don’t want to build mills if we are dependent on European seed.”

Seven years ago, Fibrevolution began working with Jennifer Kling, a professor at Oregon State University specializing in seed breeding. It has assisted in seed trials to breed new varieties of fiber flax for the North American market. “It takes seven to nine years to release a new variety and we’re almost at that mark,” says Welsh. It has also acquired seed from the OSU seed bank, for a variety developed in the 1960s during the last gasp of the linen industry in Oregon.

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Heidi Barr, co-founder of the PA Flax Project. Photography by Zoe Schaeffer.

Heidi Barr, co-founder of the PA Flax Project, is wrapping up a trip to Europe to learn more about flax growing. “Flax farmers and scutchers have been in the trade for three to four generations,” she says. “We have much to learn and there is much potential for a long future of flax for linen in Pennsylvania and North America. “

Flax in demand

Welsh says NALA is contacted regularly by European spinners looking for more fiber to spin. “Demand is high and they are excited about us starting to grow and anxious for us to get to the point where we can sell fiber. There are also groups here exploring and working towards getting wet spinning, for finer yarns [dry spinning is for things such as rope], here in North America.”

Four acres of flax at Pasture Song Farm. Photography by Zoe Schaeffer.

In 2024, global production currently totals 444,789 acres. Building a North American industry could help meet global demand. “If North America has operational scutching mills, fiber could be sold in the global marketplace, but it will take investment for the long haul,” says Bishop. She says if there’s more flax available to make into linen, consumers will choose natural fibers over synthetics.

“Growing and processing flax is our vision for the future for our farm and our community.”

With the Help Of a Sizeable Grant, Farmers are Rebuilding the Long-Lost Linen Industry in Pennsylvania

Long after the sweltering heat of summer is a distant memory, Heidi Barr is still thinking about light and airy linen — or at least about growing flax, from which linen is made. Barr, a textile artist and costume designer, first became intrigued with the fiber when she was looking for a local linen supplier for her home textiles company and came up empty-handed. Not long after, local farmer Emma de Long contacted Barr and asked her to make her a linen wedding dress, and the two went down a rabbit hole researching domestic linen production. Barr discovered that flax seed first came to the United States with the Dutch and German settlers of Germantown, a Philadelphia neighborhood just 10 minutes from where she lives.

During the pandemic, the two planted a test plot of flax at de Long’s vegetable and flower farm, Kneehigh Farm in Pottstown, Montgomery County. They consulted with growers from the North American Linen Association (NALA), and in 2020 they started the PA Flax Project (PAFP) to organize farmers and create an infrastructure to bring the industry back to America. In January 2024, they were awarded a three-year, $1.7 million U.S. Department of Agriculture Organic Market Development Grant to grow flax for linen and other coproducts on 12,000 acres in the state using a cooperative model where farmers would share in the profits.

Heidi Barr and the PA Flax Project are working to reintroduce flax farming in the United States. Photo by Zoe Richardson.

“Flax is a sustainable alternative in a really toxic industry, and we can make it in Pennsylvania,” says Barr. As fashion and other industries look for sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based products such as polyester and global demand for the light and breathable textile grows as global temperatures continue to rise, increasing production of low-impact linen is in the news. Organic flax requires little irrigation and no chemicals to process, remediates soil and promotes biodiversity. At the processing mill, it is zero waste, meaning that all parts of the crop can be used and sold. While most consumers think of flax for linen for clothing and home goods, it is also a component in biocomposites designed to replace materials like fiberglass, a use category that is growing.

Flax is a sustainable alternative in a really toxic industry, and we can make it in Pennsylvania.”

— Heidi Barr, PA Flax Project

Setting up an industry in Pennsylvania has been daunting because the institutional knowledge, specialized equipment and seeds have been exclusive to Europe for centuries, but a cadre of small-scale area growers remain undeterred, Barr and de Long among them. Their ambitious goals have drawn the attention of NALA members who see PAFP as the model for expanding the industry in North America.

In the 11 months since the group received the grant, PAFP has worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to get flax designated as a specialty crop, thus opening up grant funding for farmers, and has also hired a team of experts: a director of education, Janell Wysock; a director of value chain coordination, Jordan Haddad; a director of development, Evan Reinhardt; and a director of agriculture, Bill Shick. They planted a four-acre test plot at both Pottstown’s Pasture Song Farm, where part two of their three-part producer event series educated farmers on the agronomy of the crop, and Henry Got Crops Farm in Philadelphia. They imported three pieces of harvesting equipment from Belgium, one of three countries (along with France and the Netherlands) where most of the world’s flax is grown. They also traveled to Europe to visit mills and learn from farmers and producers about growing and processing the crop. Locally they are working with partners like Pennsylvania Fibershed, a nonprofit working to connect the fiber and textile communities in Pennsylvania through industry development.

Photo by Zoe Richardson.

Farmers in the state have expressed interest in growing the crop, and PAFP is working to get the supply chain in place by building a first-stage processing mill in the Philadelphia area. After flax is grown, it has to be processed to be sold on to the global market. Right now flax has to be shipped out of the country to be processed, which is not sustainable. “A common challenge we encounter is the need for more organic markets, which importantly includes adequate processing facilities,” says Catherine Peebles of the Rodale Institute, which supports research into organic farming. “PAFP is addressing this need by building a scutching mill in Pennsylvania, which is vital for developing the fiber flax industry they’ve set out to rebuild.” (To “scutch” is to free usable fibers from a plant’s woody parts by beating.) They will work with farmers “to understand what it takes to grow this crop both agronomically and economically.”

Barr hopes that the mill will be operational by year three of the grant, in 2026. Reinhardt is researching locations and the specialized equipment needed for a mill, and PAFP has launched a campaign to raise the money needed to get it operational, since the mill is not covered by the grant. “The scutching mill equipment and mill building itself will be a considerable expense, and we ultimately want the mill to be self-sustaining and not dependent on subsidies,” says Reinhardt, who says it will almost certainly be covered with a mix of public and private funds.

Photo by Zoe Richardson.

As year two of the grant approaches, Shick, director of agriculture, is working with researchers from Cornell, Rutgers, Penn State and the University of Delaware to do seed trials to ensure that farmers have access to good seed. “Most modern flax varieties have been bred and selected in Europe, in different climates and soil types. We are interested in seeing how they perform here. We imagine the flax industry will be using both imported and domestically-produced varieties in the future.”

PAFP is also working with Brian George of Thomas Jefferson University to create a nonwoven, 100% flax cloth, and Haddad, director of value chain, is cultivating relationships with buyers for the products — fiber and all the coproducts — that will eventually be sold at the mill.

At a January 2025 growers meeting, experts will educate interested farmers on the agronomy of flax and how best to scale production. PAFP hopes to get commitments from farmers and then support them as they roll up their sleeves and start planning.

“We are reimagining an industry that once thrived in several North American regions and has deep roots in Pennsylvania,” Barr says.

Bringing Flax Growing Back To The United States

A USDA grant is helping the PA Flax Project revitalize the flax-to-fiber industry in Pennsylvania.

by Kathleen Webber

Textile artist Heidi Barr’s search for a local supplier of linen in Pennsylvania for her home goods company left her empty-handed and curious. Through her research, she found that linen was no longer produced in North America. The flax seed had first come to the United States in the 1600s with the Dutch and German settlers of Germantown, an area of Philadelphia just minutes from where she lived. Barr wondered what it would take to start the industry up again in the United States. She found others interested in growing flax for fiber and came across the Cleveland-based Rustbelt Fibershed linen project and Fibrevolution Inc. in Fruitland, Ore. But it was a chance meeting with a Pennsylvania farmer, Emma De Long, who wanted Barr to make her a linen wedding dress, that led De Long to hand plant a test plot of flax in March 2020 on her vegetable and flower farm — Kneehigh Farm — in Pottstown, Pa. The two women formed the PA Flax Project (PAFP) that year to build a field-to-fiber supply chain in South-eastern Pennsylvania hiring the women at Fibrevolution as consultants to share knowledge about flax, its agronomy, and the processing to make it into linen.

Not long after, in September 2022, the North American Linen Association (NALA) was established, and Barr became the founding vice president on the board. A 501c6 trade association, NALA focuses on advancing the flax-to-linen industry in North America. Shannon Welsh, executive director of NALA and co-founder of Fibrevolution, helped assemble a network of national and international experts to provide members with training, education, technical advice, and networking to rebuild the industry in North America.

Recently, PAFP was awarded a$1.7 million U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Services Organic Marketing Development Grant (OMDG) to grow flax for linen and other co-products on 12,000 acres in Pennsylvania. PAFP has partnered with the Rodale Institute, Kutztown, Pa., on the grant to reach its large network of organic and transitioning to organic farmers. A cohort of farmers is already interested in a work cooperative of producers both at the farm and the mill level. “It is a European model,” Barr said. “We chose the cooperative model not only because we believe in a democratically run workplace, but because it spreads out the risk as well as the reward across all of the stakeholders. And we’re hoping that will make us be able to succeed as a business.”

A flax harvest at Kneehigh Farm in Pottstown, Pa. (Image courtesy of Zoe Schaeffer)

The goal of the OMDG grant is to recruit farmers, support them with education, and move the organic fiber flax from farm to market by developing a mill and a market for Pennsylvania organic fiber flax. PAFP is learning from growers in Europe on how to grow, harvest and process flax. Private funding allowed Barr to purchase three pieces of Depoortere harvesting equipment from Belgium that will arrive this summer in time for its second farmer educational event. “The people we’re purchasing from are also sending somebody to teach us how to use the machinery,” Barr noted. “They’re very supportive of this project and I think a huge key to the North American success in linen is going to be collaboration with people in Europe. They hold all the recent history.”

Welsh traveled through Europe all over the flax-growing regions and toured mills and met other people in the industry for NALA. “Over time, everyone was starting to come to us for consulting for all kinds of things, partnerships,” Welsh said. “Heidi was one of the people that we consulted with. And we saw lots of other regions throughout North America trying to bring this crop back. It seems like to really get a supply chain for linen again, we needed to come together as a larger organization and work together as we build rebuild infrastructure and get crops growing.” NALA’s board is nine members strong and growing. Among the significant growers in North America are Rustbelt Fibershed; Fibrevolution; Chico Flax, Chico, Calif.; GreenMountain Linen, South Royalton, Vt.; TapRoot Fibrelab, Greenwich, Nova Scotia; Montreal-based Canflax; and Biolin Research Inc., Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Scutched flax fiber is combed and then spun into yarns.
(Image courtesy of Fibrevolution)

After securing the grant, PAFP went from no resources to being fully funded for three years, Barr said. It has hired a new director of Agriculture, a director of Development, a director of Education and a director of Value Chain Coordination. PAFP is working with partners like Pennsylvania Fibershed, a nonprofit organization working to connect the fiber and textile communities in Pennsylvania through industry development. Leslie Davidson, co-founder of Pennsylvania Fibershed said it is assisting PAFP on systems development, data collection and supply chain outreach to get farmers interested in growing the crop and getting people committed to using the fiber once it is grown and processed. Barr said flax has the potential to provide new revenue streams for hundreds of farmers in Pennsylvania alone.

State Support For Flax Growing

Barr worked with Michael Roth, director of Conservation and Innovation at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, to advocate for adding flax fiber to the specialty crop list in the state. “Pennsylvania is the first state to have its own Farm Bill and therefore the only one with a state-level specialty crop program,” Roth noted. Flax is now classified as a specialty crop, which unlocks funding for people who are producing the crop. “Specialty crops are crops that are of particular interest and eligible for support because they have some benefit beyond just being a crop,” Roth said.

Barr also noted that: “Flax was awarded the specialty crop status just ahead of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Specialty Crop Block grants coming open to anyone growing fiber flax.”

Shannon Powers of the PA Department of Agriculture said the Pennsylvania Specialty Crop Block Grant was created as part of the PA Farm Bill and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant program prioritizing crops tied to fast-growing sectors, or those that have the potential to increase our sustainability and create opportunities for farmers.

“Flax checks both of those boxes, Powers said. “Linen is among the natural fibers in demand by consumers who want to decrease their carbon footprint with plant-based products. At this point, flax has to be shipped out of the U.S. for final processing into linen, then be imported back to the U.S. PA Flax Project is working to return the flax-processing industry back to the U.S. to create economic opportunity for Pennsylvania farmers, and increase sustainability in the textile industry — an effort the PA Department of Agriculture supports.”

Barr said the hope is that other states will look at what Pennsylvania did and go to their Department of Agriculture and advocate for the same. “The more states that can get it on the specialty crop list, the more likely it will be to be added at the federal level,” Barr said.

John England Irish linen (Image courtesy of Fibrevolution)

Flax History

Flax is a bast fiber meaning that it comes from second layer of the plant’s stem. Hemp, jute and ramie also are bast fibers. There is evidence of its growth and use dating back to the fifth millennium BC in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, but the crop came to Europe in the Middle Ages, where it was cultivated widely. German settlers brought flax production to the Pennsylvania colony in the 17th century, settling in the southeastern area of the state near Philadelphia. “While it had deep roots in this region, the flax industry initially lost ground to cot-ton in the first Industrial Revolution because cotton had the advantages of the labor of enslaved people,” Barr said. “The cotton gin was an early industrial invention that meant it became faster and cheaper to produce cotton. And so linen sort of lost ground there and then it lost ground again after the Second World War, when synthetic textiles came onto the market. NAFTA was the final nail in the coffin.”

Benefits Of Flax

A climate-positive plant, flax is easy to grow, taking 100 days from seed to harvest. Its most valuable use is for linen production. Linen is known for its durability, breathability and strength, and demand for it has grown as consumers turn away from synthetics and embrace natural fibers. “Flax is environmentally very friendly,” Barr said. “It is a low-input crop that doesn’t require irrigation and it remediates soils, promoting biodiversity. It’s a carbon capture crop. It can be processed from field to spinnable fiber with no chemicals using all mechanical processing. So, every part of the plant has commercial uses. Plus, it yields a very versatile textile.”

Flax grows in a large variety of climates. It will tolerate a lot of different soil types, but more importantly, it’s the humidity and moisture that it needs Barr explained. In Europe, it grows in coastal regions. And in Oregon, growers benefit from a coastal climate. “Here [in PA] we have enough humidity,” Barr noted.

When the fibrous stems of the flax plant turn a yellow-brown color, it is pulled to harvest and the flax plant is left to rett in the field for a period of two to three weeks. The retted flax straw is transported to the scutching mill to be processed into spinnable fiber. Then the fiber goes to a spinning mill and then on to be woven or knit into fabric.

Three Stages Of The PAFP

Right now, PAFP is in the agricultural stage, or stage one, with interested farmers. It is followed by the mill stage, and then the mill’s stabilization stage. This year its priorities are to grow small amounts, and sup-port farmers with education about the agronomy of the crop, so that they are set up for success as they scale. PAFP also is networking and relationship-building to begin identifying buyers for what will eventually be produced at the mill. The ambitious goal is to have the mill operational at the end of year three. Its director of development is already looking for a mill building, creating the built environment strategy and fundraising so things can stay on schedule.

PAFP will likely locate the mill in southeastern Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia region — not necessarily because it’s the best part of the state, but because that’s where the bulk of its interested growers are right now. “Our goal is to have a regional scale mill and once we get the mill operational, we don’t want to expand beyond that,” Barr said. “We want to become an educational hub for others who are interested in a similarly-sized cooperative model. And we think that Pennsylvania has room for at least three and probably five, similarly sized operations.”

The idea is to locate the mill within a couple of hundred miles of the bulk of the growers. These growers will plant 3,000 to 4,000 acres of crop in a four-year rotation. The closer the mill is to those acres, the less distance the giant bales of straw need to be transported.

“We will be a raw materials mill, so we’ll be producing what’s called scutched fiber or fiber that’s ready to be spun,” Barr said. “For the textile industry, our end users would be spinners or people who are creating nonwoven cloth with short fibers as well as buyers of coproducts like shive, dust and immature seed.”

The biggest hurdle to building the industry is the amount of capital it takes to build mills as part of the infrastructure. A first-stage processing or scutching mill can cost between $5 million and $10 million to build, and ideally, a mill on the West coast, in the Midwest and in the Northeast would be needed, Welsh noted. “My goal is to really disrupt our current textile system and have commercial production taking place domestically,” Welsh said. “I feel like there is a lot of momentum right now, but I see it slowing down because every group is having to raise a significant amount of money to build the processing mills.”

However, Barr said reestablishing a whole industry requires a relatively modest investment making it attractive to investors. “In our case, the early stage funding we’ve received through the OMDG award will help us achieve funding for our mill and it’s our hope that our success will encourage investment in other regional flax fiber projects,” Barr said. “Our OMDG award is a huge step forward and a vote of confidence by the USDA in both PAFP and the fiber flax industry in North America, which is very encouraging.”

Flax can also be used in composite applications such as thermoplastic honeycomb sandwich panels created by EconCore NV in collaboration with Flaxco®, both based in Belgium.

Demand And Meeting It

Barr believes there’s a movement afoot. There is a very large growing demand for linen and for the coproducts that may be produced at the mill including short fibers that can go into biocomposites, be ring spun similar to wool, or even be cottonized and blended with cotton. Everything produced at the mill will have a market.

European supply is not meeting with current market demands and so the Pennsylvania project could possibly fill in those gaps. According to a report by the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp, three quarters of the world’s flax fiber is produced in France, the Netherlands and Belgium — all small countries in terms of land. From 2010-2020 there’s been a 133-percent increase in flax production in Europe, but in 2023 poor weather conditions meant a smaller harvest. In the same report, the aver-age price in 2024 across all qualities and all production regions of European Flax fiber produced by European scutchers — in France, Belgium and the Netherlands — reached 9.08 euros per kilogram, representing a year-on-year increase of 55 percent.

Flax linen can be found in all three main areas of design: 60 percent by volume is used in fashion; 30 percent in lifestyle and interior decoration; and 10 percent in technical applications. Welsh said through her research she learned consumers are attracted to the sustainability of the fiber, but beyond fashion and apparel, other industries also are using flax fiber for applications such as biocomposites. “They’re using flax in airplanes, cars and boats,” Welsh said. “There’s a lot of potential for this fiber in other sectors too, and I think the demand in those sectors is going up. There are more industries interested in flax fiber to replace things like carbon fiberglass. It has a lot of characteristics that perform really well.” Welsh also cited the fishing industry, which is interested in using hemp and flax in order to move away from plastic-based nets and ropes.

Innovation And Applications

The Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp reports the value chain has been enhanced by new textile production processes for knit-ting and innovative technical applications including linen knits, fiber brands, and techniques like washed linen and water-repellent linen.

“A lot of the European companies, like Safilin, are starting to come out with knit textiles made of linen,” Barr said. “No one has ever really done that before. We think of knits as being cotton or poly but it can be done. And there’s a lot of experimentation being done with the end-product. So, there is the environmental end, and then there’s the business end.”

The possibilities for flax and linen are just beginning.

Editor’s Note: Kathleen Webber is a freelance writer and academic who teaches journalism at The College of New Jersey. She researches and writes about sustainability in the global fashion industry, innovation in creating circular economies and domestic manufacturing.

How Boathouse Sports Is Using Domestic Manufacturing to Build a Business and Attract Collaborations

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The Philadelphia-based company has done a string of collaborations, with the latest due from menswear retailer J. Press

by Kathleen Webber March 19, 2024

PHILADELPHIA — In 2020, fashion veteran Cindy DiPietrantonio took the reins of Boathouse Sports from its founder, two-time Olympic rower John Strotbeck, with the initial goal of getting it into retail stores. The brand outfitted pro, college and team sports for years and it was time to take it beyond the athletic field.

DiPietrantonio had an impressive résumé. A former chief operating officer of the Jones Group, she was part of the team that managed seven acquisitions for the company, including Stuart Weitzman, Nine West and Jones New York. When she first visited the north Philadelphia facilities of Boathouse, she saw patternmakers and sewers and cutters again. It reminded her of her early days at Jones when, in a pre-NAFTA world, the group still had production in the U.S. But right before she started, COVID-19 shut down team sports and store; the factory kept its doors open by making masks and gowns instead of athletic apparel.

Today, more than three-and-a-half years later, DiPietrantonio has helped build social currency for the brand and boosted sales. To do that, she expanded its e-commerce business; added new styles for the everyday athlete; entered the brick-and-mortar market in Philadelphia, Boston and other cities (they are in 24 stores now), and created a series of brand collaborations with companies that share a similar DNA. The company also expanded its private label business and built an ecosystem of sewers and skilled labor in a city that was once one of the largest textile and garment manufacturing centers in the country, employing 35,000 garment workers.

Boathouse’s focus on domestic manufacturing is making it increasingly attractive to other brands for collaborations. It certainly is what appealed to menswear retailer J. Press, which will launch a joint collection with Boathouse later this month.

“Everything we can get from the U.S., we do, so we loved that it is made in Philadelphia,” said Robert Squillaro, J. Press’ chief marketing officer and senior vice president. “We have also wanted to offer performance activewear to appeal to a younger audience for some time.”

Fourteen styles will ship mid-March to J. Press’ four retail stores in New Haven, Conn.; Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan — regatta and coach’s jackets, athletic pants, a rugby shirt, vest, hoodie, shorts, long-sleeve UV T-shirts and a bucket hat. The pieces will retail for $45 to $174.

To promote the collaboration, they’ll shoot a digital ad on Boathouse Row (the company was named after the famous boathouses that line the Schuylkill River where rowing regattas have been held since 1835) featuring members of the Vesper Rowing Club. A launch party in April will be held at J. Press’ Madison Avenue location.

Last year Boathouse was introduced to Philadelphia native and pro skater Jimmy Gorecki, now a Los Angeles-based streetwear designer of JSP (Jimmy Sweatpants) who got into fashion through skateboarding and working with designer Pharrell Williams. He designed a limited-edition clothing line with the Philadelphia Eagles last fall and wanted to create a small collection that celebrated the skate culture at Temple University, his alma mater. He studied Temple’s old logos and vintage apparel for graphic inspiration, then toured the Boathouse facility spotting a mannequin with a hoodie, jacket, track pant and bucket hat, saying, “That’s the fit,” he says. “We wanted to make the clothes look like it would be an unofficial skateboard outfit if Temple had a team.”

The Boathouse, Gorecki, Temple University collaboration includes the Boathouse retro coach’s jacket, journey pant and bucket hat. JSP will produce a hoodie and T-shirt. The pieces, which will retail for $45 to $180, will be sold in Philadelphia stores (Nocturnal Skate shop, Lapstone and Hammer), online and at the Temple bookstore. An on-campus launch party is planned for April 4.

The shared connection to the water and the U.S. provenance also were the draw for DiPietrantonio to work with Portland, Maine-based Sea Bags, which uses recycled sailcloth for their bags.

“They have a rich history of sailing, sail making and coastal life; their bags are made from recycled sailcloth. Our company was born on the water,” DiPietrantonio said.

When the company chief executive officers met, they said “wouldn’t it be cool to do a jacket out of sails?”

Boathouse will ship a windbreaker of full sail cloth and another style with sailcloth and their waterproof material (retail $130 to $170) to sell in their stores and online in June. They have also made UV T-shirts, a bucket bag and cooler. Later in the summer, Boathouse will drop a new varsity-style jacket, made of heavier weight recycled Dacron sails.

“These collaborations have helped us tap into new markets. They also allow for the exchange of creativity, innovation and expertise with our collaborators,” said DiPietrantonio.

Beyond the collaborations, Boathouse has created a line without a logo or license to reach new customers. The Destination collection launched last fall during a season when both the Phillies (baseball) and Eagles (football) teams were a point of pride.

“Philly was having a moment. We thought, how can you still be a fan in a subtle way? Why not just put PHL, the airport code, as the logo,” said DiPietrantonio.

The PHL plain gray sweatshirt ($108) and hat were born ($28) and are sold in-store and online. They have since added a BOS, ATL and ACK and will expand to other cities. “We are shipping them all over the country. It has been a real hometown pride piece,” she added.

Boathouse is working with professional sports teams like the Wings (lacrosse) and Flyers (ice hockey) to make custom fan apparel to sell at their arena stores. “We have applied for an NFL license to make apparel,” said the CEO. “We receive numerous requests from both fans and teams for NFL apparel due to our exceptional quality and the preference for domestically made products.”

As other athletic brands left the U.S. to produce overseas, Boathouse resisted, feeling a responsibility to their workforce. Many at its production facility have been there for decades. A vertical operation with 130 employees, Boathouse is capable of cutting, sewing, embroidering, sublimating and shipping. Because of that, they are contacted by private label companies to produce under their brand name. Last year they completed a large project for Boston-based New Balance for their Made in the USA line, a collab with Teddy Santis. They made a track short and matching short. Santis specifically requested all components of the apparel be made in the U.S., including those that involved sewing.

The biggest challenge to meet their production demands is training and keeping a skilled labor force. “Finding skilled workers may be more challenging domestically and why we need to have a continuous cycle of teaching,” she said.

DiPietrantonio is part of a planning group in Philadelphia with a few other cut-and-sew operations in the city working together to train garment workers. She is also working with the state of Pennsylvania and city and a consulting group to teach people in the community the craft of sewing, patternmaking and other skills related to the industry. The consulting group helped Boathouse apply for a $25,000 grant through the Workforce and Economic Development Network of PA for training. “We want to have the ability to bring in more to learn this trade. The company pays a competitive living hourly wage instead of a piece rate and provides health benefits and a 401K to their employees. “We are contributing to the employment of more people.“

The CEO said bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. on a larger scale requires a multifaceted approach involving government, businesses and consumers. She cited the recent closing and layoffs at North Carolina textile plants as an example of trade policies, namely the de minimis rule in this case, that are hurting the industry. (A coalition of Congressional and industry leaders is examining closing some of the loopholes in this rule to help domestic manufacturers.)

“The government can implement policies that incentivize domestic manufacturing such as tax breaks, subsidies, and tariffs on imported goods to level the playing field,” she contended.

As other athletic brands left the U.S. to produce overseas, Boathouse resisted, feeling a responsibility to their workforce. Many at its production facility have been there for decades. A vertical operation with 130 employees, Boathouse is capable of cutting, sewing, embroidering, sublimating and shipping. Because of that, they are contacted by private label companies to produce under their brand name. Last year they completed a large project for Boston-based New Balance for their Made in the USA line, a collab with Teddy Santis. They made a track short and matching short. Santis specifically requested all components of the apparel be made in the U.S., including those that involved sewing.

The biggest challenge to meet their production demands is training and keeping a skilled labor force. “Finding skilled workers may be more challenging domestically and why we need to have a continuous cycle of teaching,” she said.

DiPietrantonio is part of a planning group in Philadelphia with a few other cut-and-sew operations in the city working together to train garment workers. She is also working with the state of Pennsylvania and city and a consulting group to teach people in the community the craft of sewing, patternmaking and other skills related to the industry. The consulting group helped Boathouse apply for a $25,000 grant through the Workforce and Economic Development Network of PA for training. “We want to have the ability to bring in more to learn this trade. The company pays a competitive living hourly wage instead of a piece rate and provides health benefits and a 401K to their employees. “We are contributing to the employment of more people.“

The CEO said bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. on a larger scale requires a multifaceted approach involving government, businesses and consumers. She cited the recent closing and layoffs at North Carolina textile plants as an example of trade policies, namely the de minimis rule in this case, that are hurting the industry. (A coalition of Congressional and industry leaders is examining closing some of the loopholes in this rule to help domestic manufacturers.)

“The government can implement policies that incentivize domestic manufacturing such as tax breaks, subsidies, and tariffs on imported goods to level the playing field,” she contended.

Boathouse Sports — a true life apparel maker in Philly — has ambitious plans to grow

Former Olympic rower John Strotbeck dreams of employing thousands of people at his sports apparel factory in North Philadelphia. His firm is also opening five physical stores.

by Kathleen Nicholson Webber for the Inquirer
Dec 27, 2021

Workers sew garments at the Boathouse Sports plant floor on Hunting Park Avenue in Philadelphia. Boathouse is trying to reinvent itself with new products.
Workers sew garments at the Boathouse Sports plant floor on Hunting Park Avenue in Philadelphia. Boathouse is trying to reinvent itself with new products.JOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

John Strotbeck estimates he’s outfitted millions of athletes through Philadelphia-based Boathouse Sports, selling a million units of outerwear and athletic gear to professional, college, and high school athletes annually for the last 20 years.

Now he is betting that some of those athletes, now in their 30s to 50s, will buy Boathouse apparel for nostalgia reasons, reminding them of the “best years of their lives.”

The pandemic torpedoed Boathouse’s business in 2020, as it did to many others. Between the state restrictions placed on nonessential businesses and the halt to team sports for longer than expected, Boathouse could no longer rely on its typical customers.

“COVID cost us 50% of our business over the course of about 18 months,” said Strotbeck, whose company adapted in part by making tens of thousands of masks for doctors, nurses, and Wawa workers.

And while business has now almost entirely recovered, Strotbeck saw big changes in consumer behavior and preferences and felt the firm had to diversify its sales and marketing channels.

The plan: continue outfitting teams but pivot to more consumer channels. Strotbeck recognized he needed help building a consumer brand from the company he launched in 1985, between his appearances for the U.S. Olympic rowing team at the 1984 and 1988 Games.

“I was smart enough to know what I didn’t know,” Strotbeck said. So, 13 months ago, he hired a CEO, Cindy DiPietrantonio, former chief operating officer of Sidney Kimmel’s Jones Apparel Group who managed seven acquisitions for the $4.5 billion company and a multitude of labels like Stuart Weitzman, Nine West, and Jones New York. She also led jewelry brand Alex and Ani.

The ambitious 90-day plan that DiPietrantonio started with had to be tossed out when COVID-19 lingered. The firm’s labor force fell off drastically, Strotbeck was sidelined with the virus, and a malware attack had the new CEO scribbling financials on the back of a napkin.

Big changes are coming

It took some time to steady the ship, but now its e-commerce consumer business is ramping up, currently 10% of sales — representing a 34% rise over last year. The company has set a goal of 30% for online’s share of total sales for next year.

Cindy DiPietrantonio, CEO at Boathouse Sports, poses for a portrait at its headquarters in Philadelphia on Oct. 20, 2020.
Cindy DiPietrantonio, CEO at Boathouse Sports, poses for a portrait at its headquarters in Philadelphia on Oct. 20, 2020.DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

And it is investing in brick-and-mortar stores — this fall in Nantucket, Mass., and in the spring, five additional stores in other tony waterfront towns like Annapolis, Md.

“Our goal is to make it more accessible by selling in key retailers, Boathouse branded pop-ups as well as Boathouse.com and through collaborations,” DiPietrantonio said.

Nantucket was a natural because the firm has a strong customer base in Boston, a big rowing town. Boathouse sold to Nantucket’s TownPool, whose owner wore the product as a prep school and college athlete. And when inventory thinned there, it got a lift in sales on the website in the Boston area.

The CEO also beefed up her team and hired a director of e-commerce and marketing, directors of operations and finance, and merchandising and design associates. The firm uses an agency to help with search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising while in-house employees handle other digital marketing and social media.

DiPietrantonio also spent lots of time listening to consumers and learning the brand’s DNA.

“Our consumers have an emotional attachment to what they wore in high school or prep school, so we’ve made a few tweaks to styles and we have branded it with Boathouse,” she said.

Top sellers

There’s a new version of Strotbeck’s first rowing jacket, the Gore-tex Stevenson jacket ($108-$264), a refashioned long swim parka that just hit the site ($198), and in 2022, the restyled retro Coaches Only jacket ($168).

Top sellers include the “trou” compression (rowing shorts, $38 to $88) that customers wear to run, bike, or row in, the journey short ($52), and pants ($68), its version of a jogger.

Last spring the firm launched the Tailwind hoodie ($78-$88) and sold more than 1,000 units by repeatedly tweaking the product with new colors and patterns.

Founder John Strotbeck helped package an order of face masks for shipping at the Boathouse Sports factory in North Philadelphia on April 14, 2020. The company, which normally manufactures custom sports apparel, switched to making personal protective equipment during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic.
Founder John Strotbeck helped package an order of face masks for shipping at the Boathouse Sports factory in North Philadelphia on April 14, 2020. The company, which normally manufactures custom sports apparel, switched to making personal protective equipment during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

DiPietrantonio has worked with the design team to introduce new prints using a technology that Strotbeck invested in almost 15 years ago to compete with shoe brands called sublimation. It’s the process by which a digital image is fused to the performance fabric using a heat transfer process and expensive equipment.

The company added sublimation in 2007 to fend off the shoe brands like Nike, Under Armour, and Adidas that ate away at its college team business. It was a relatively unknown process but now accounts for 70% of uniforms. Strotbeck estimates he has invested $1 million in equipment alone to be able to customize apparel.

» READ MORE: This Norristown sports gear maker took a ‘Just Do It!’ attitude and whipped Nike in court

While the athletic apparel sector is wildly competitive, DiPietrantonio said there is room for more players. “Our competition is not the shoe brands and it’s not Lululemon, Athleta, or Outdoor Voices. I think there’s white space between those two categories for a quality, authentic outerwear and accessories brand. And that’s really where we fit.”

There are two groups the brand resonates with: the former athletes who wore Boathouse, and the 15- to 25-year-olds seeking an alternative to the large brands.

“They’re looking for companies that represent more than just making a buck,” said Strotbeck. “We make everything in the USA. That’s important to people. It should be. It’s more important now post-COVID than it was pre-, being a socially responsible company.”

DiPietrantonio said the firm pays at least $12 an hour for sewers — a rise from $10 pre-pandemic — along with health insurance and a 401(k). “We gave out [pay] increases in 2021 and will in 2022,” she said. “My goal is not to be competitive but to have some of the best wages in the industry.”

While many companies are dealing with far-off supply problems, Boathouse’s pain points have been closer to home: finding enough local factory workers and navigating the domestic trucker shortage.

Still, the firm has been lucky. “Where most companies are dealing with 14 to 19 weeks from order to customer delivery, we are dealing with five to seven,” DiPietrantonio said.

Pre-COVD Boathouse had 225 employees, 170 at the factory alone. After the pandemic drained the workforce, the firm now totals 170 and 80 at the factory.

“We are finding it very difficult to get people to come back or just hire new people,” Strotbeck said, despite the safety precautions in place.

The company is offering finder’s fees for new hires and training for new factory employees. Boathouse has had to find local factories to outsource work to fill orders or turn them down.

“This is a national issue; it might be an international issue,” he said.

Its current 100,000-square-foot facility was intentionally chosen where he could find apparel craftspeople. Boathouse was courted by officials in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Kentucky to move there in the late 1990s when the firm had outgrown its 20,000-square-foot Wissahickon Industrial Center facility.

“We made an educated guess that, while pay was lower in the South, it would be hard to find workers in a few years as the auto industry and data processing were investing heavily in the regions. We decided to stay in Philly.”

He took out a map and put pins on where all his employees lived. The company opened its Hunting Park Avenue facility in 2000, hoping eventually to quadruple the production capacity.

That hasn’t yet happened. But “I have this dream. I’d love to employ thousands of people in Philadelphia, and I think that is achievable.”

“I know product and she knows brands, consumers, and how to grow a business, particularly in the retail side,” said the founder, deferring to his new CEO. “ She’s definitely going to take us to very big places.”

A Brooklyn nonprofit comes to Philly to recycle clothing waste across the Mid-Atlantic

Fabscrap hopes to sign up 20 to 25 brands to recycle textile waste in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and southern New Jersey areas over the next year.

Camille Tagle, co-founder and creative director, and Jessica Schreiber, founder and CEO, posed for a portrait at the new Fabscrap location in the Bok Building in South Philadelphia, on November 15, 2021. Fabscrap is a textile reuse and recycling company.. … Read more

MONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

Fabscrap hopes to sign up 20 to 25 brands to recycle textile waste in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and southern New Jersey areas over the next year.

by Kathleen Nicholson Webber, For The InquirerPublished Nov. 15, 2021

In fashion, the design room is the laboratory where each new season begins — and where the waste stream starts, too.

Designers, seamstresses, pattern-makers and cutters hover around the dress form, cutting, pinning and draping a style that can eventually end up on a clothing line.

But once that sampling process is done, all around that mannequin are piles of cutting waste, leftover sample yardage, swatches of various colors, and mutilated samples that are of no use to the design house. This waste is generated every season and the responsible disposal of it is an enormous problem for the industry, one that has a multitude of environmental repercussions.

Fabscrap, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, is addressing it by opening a Mid-Atlantic hub in Philadelphia in the artist-and-designer-filled Bok building on Nov. 15, World Recycling Day.ADVERTISEMENT

Fabscrap hopes to sign up 20 to 25 brands for service in the Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and South Jersey areas in the next year. Companies send the group more each year “because they are happy to find a responsible good outlet for all their design materials,” said Jessica Schreiber, Fabscrap’s CEO. “They start with fabric, but then we’ll receive buttons, leathers, yarn, ribbon, etc.”

Volunteers sort through textiles at the new Fabscrap location in the Bok Building in South Philadelphia on November 15, 2021. Fabscrap is a textile reuse and recycling company.MONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

Fabscrap’s fashion roots

In 2016, Fabscrap, opened in Brooklyn to work with fashion, interior design, and entertainment companies, collecting their unwanted fabrics to recycle and save from landfills. It has worked with 550 brands and, for a small fee, picks up an average of 6,000 pounds of textiles a week from customers. It sorts and decides what can be reused, recycled or sold. The group will soon reach its one millionth pound spared from a landfill.

This facility will work with local recycling company Retrievr, a residential textile collection company, to collect waste here. The former Bok school’s 6,800-square-foot cafeteria now will house 16 fabric-sorting stations, a fabric resale shop and an area to showcase the work of one designer a month who uses recycled materials in clothes.ADVERTISEMENT

This month’s designer is the sustainable clothing store Grant Blvd.

Volunteers, totaling 7,000 so far in New York, are compensated with five pounds of free fabric per three-hour session and will sort the fabric by fiber for resale. Some smaller scraps are sold to companies that shred it for use as insulation or fabric stuffing.

» READ MORE: Text ‘Pick-Up’: Towns are partnering with an app to recycle residents’ electronics and clothes

Urban Outfitters eager to recycle

Fabscrap received a working capital grant from Philly-based fashion company Urban Outfitters Inc. to secure the new facility and provide general operating funds for the first two years here.

Fabscrap first began working with Urban in 2019 as Allie Noll, the firm’s manager of global sustainability and sourcing operations, searched for a company to recycle its waste from the sampling process. In 2019, she was connected with Fabscrap and shipped 246 pounds of cutting waste to the New York facility. In 2020, Fabscrap recycled more than 1,100 pounds for the Philly-based company. That’s when the partnership talks began.ADVERTISEMENT

“It happened pretty mutually,“ said Fabscrap’s Schreiber. “We were looking to grow and needed support,” while Urban wanted to explore a deeper commitment to sustainability.

The Anthropologie store at 18th and Walnut in Center City is photographed on Wednesday, March 25, 2020. Urban is helping the Brooklyn-based Fabscrap grow in Philadelphia.HEATHER KHALIFA / Staff Photographer

“Urban suggested Philadelphia and we already had great connections with organizations, institutions, and programs in Philadelphia so it seemed like the right next step,” she said. To date, the company has signed on Urban and its brands; Wolhide, Lillies and Loaves, and Cupid Intimates and just finished service agreements with eight other companies in the area.

“We’re expecting about 3,000 to 5,000 pounds per month, and then growing after that as we meet more of the industry here, as well as companies in Baltimore, DC, and southern New Jersey,” she said.ADVERTISEMENT

Globally, 53 million tons of textiles are used to create clothing each year and about 12% of that is wasted during design and production, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which aims to create a circular economy that eliminates waste and pollution.

The scale of the problem in Philadelphia is harder to quantify. While the Office of Sustainability has figures for residential textile waste (linens, clothing and towels tossed by households), it has none for commercial waste because businesses contract with their own private haulers, which aren’t required to report those figures to the city.

Nordstrom helps assemble the data

“The main thing that we are hearing is that it’s precisely because commercial textile waste is not measured or tracked that Fabscrap services are so needed,” Schreiber said. At its offices, each bag collected is weighed, sorted by company and fiber, and kept in a database. Each company can see how much it has recycled in a year, a useful metric for sustainability reports.

Nordstrom has also partnered with Fabscrap with a grant to fund the Fabscrap Partner Portal, which allows every customer access to its diversion and environmental impact data, increasing supply chain visibility, and improving decisions throughout the supply chain.ADVERTISEMENT

Residential textile waste is 6% to 6.5% of the total waste stream here. To calculate those figures, the city does a waste characterization study by picking through samplings of trash over several months and weighing it by category.

Bins of fabric scraps for sale at the new Fabscrap location in the Bok Building in South Philadelphia on November 15, 2021. Fabscrap is a textile reuse and recycling company.MONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

Helena Rudoff, waste reduction lead in the city’s Office of Sustainability, estimates that residential and commercial textiles together could be 10% to 15% of the total waste stream.

“Right now, if you are a design house or another business and only being serviced by the Streets Department, your textiles aren’t being recycled.”

» READ MORE: Fast-fashion heiress asks shoppers to buy less in green push

Philadelphia trash goes to landfills, such as the 250-acre Waste Management facility in Fairless Hills, Bucks County or to be burned at the Covanta facility in Chester. The Waste Management site, opened in 2016, is already close to 50% full and it is hard to know how long it will take to become filled.

“Their work not only conserves landfill space but also gives new value to the energy and raw materials that went into producing these textiles,” said Waste Management’s John Hambrose, referring to Fabscrap’s work.

The number of stakeholders interested in re-thinking waste here is growing each month. “The issue with waste is, we eventually run out of places to put it, ” said the city’s Rudoff. “Textiles are high-value waste, meaning the value of the material if you recycle it is higher than if it goes to a landfill.”

She works with such groups as Circular Philadelphia, which opened in June, and hopes eventually to work on the policy side of the problem. In New York, by law, if a fashion house generates more than 10% of its waste in textiles, it has to be recycled.

Samantha Wittchen, director of programs and operations at Circular Philadelphia, is working on a Textile Recycling Task force, along with Rachel Mednick of All Together Now PA.

Wittchen would like to attract a large-scale textile recycling facility to open in the Philadelphia region. Right now, the closest ones are in North Carolina. Better data can help them effect policy changes locally similar to what New York City has in place and would be even more powerful if statewide data could be captured.

“Are there opportunities at the state level to ban putting textiles in a landfill?” said Wittchen.

Kabira Stokes, CEO of Retrievr, said her broader vision for her group and for the city, is also to set up a full circular textile recycling plant somewhere in Pennsylvania. “It’s the only way we will be able to certify that the responsible outcomes are happening with what people are giving us.”

Volunteer Marsha Sickles, from West Philly, sorts through fabric scraps at the new Fabscrap location in the Bok Building in South Philadelphia, on November 15, 2021. Fabscrap is a textile reuse and recycling company. Sickles has volunteered at the Brooklyn location and is a designer who makes hats, bags and other accessories.. … Read moreMONICA HERNDON / Staff Photographer

For Schreiber and her co-founder and creative director, Camille Tagle, the mission for Fabscrap has always included education, especially at the university level.

For five years, Tagle has worked with Drexel University senior fashion design majors in a capstone project that has her selecting and donating fabric for them to create a design using zero waste design practices. “Those students have gone on and worked in the industry and they get their companies to work with Fabscrap or to focus on more sustainable practices,” Tagle said.

Zero Waste Fashion

By Kathleen Nicholson Webber

Originally posted in HAND/EYE Magazine on May 10, 2017.

Tonle has become a hit with ethical consumers worldwide.

In fashion, even the slightest imperfection on a roll of fabric can mean it is rejected, discarded and sent to an overflowing landfill. Ends of rolls are also tossed if they hold limited yardage. One fashion designer had an idea of using fabric that didn’t make the cut and creating a zero-waste line out of it.
 
Rachel Faller’s Tonle (https://tonle.com/) line is an ethical and sustainable collection made in Cambodia, a country she visited in college and where her business idea came to fruition.
 
Faller always wanted to work in fashion but realized she didn’t want to contribute to “an unsustainable and exploitative industry.” A trip to Cambodia with a friend during her studies got her thinking about both. This was a decade before the term fair trade was used that much. She wanted to merge her passion for design with something that was positive for the planet.
 
Winning a Fulbright grant allowed her to research sustainability through fair trade handicraft production there. For a year, she worked with craft groups and and NGOs. “The groups had best intentions, but many products they made were simply souvenirs. People would buy those products because of the story behind the piece but maybe not because they loved the product on its own. She knew she wanted to develop a fashion line she would want to wear.
 
Not long after, she started her first fashion line that was later rebranded as tonlé, a sustainable line ethically made. As the company evolved, she made it her mission to make it an entirely zero-waste company, using all factory leftover fabrics and not wasting a single scrap in the process. She started small, with five women working out of their homes. “My initial goal was to provide employment to support the community, but I also wanted it to be eco-friendly.” The biggest challenge was finding sustainable materials. “Few raw materials made in Cambodia were eco- friendly,” Faller explains.
 
[Show Gallery]
 
The mainstream garment industry in Cambodia mostly produces t-shirts, so she started working with remnant dealers who look for and sell cut waste and overstock (extra fabric that a brand has because they have simply ordered too much) or defective fabric. Defects could be small. “Here, they cut by machine and if there is a tiny hole in their yardage, they may throw a whole roll away.” They bought all of these unwanted fabrics, mostly jersey, and aimed to make a design that was nice enough to sell at a higher price point.
 
At tonlé, big pieces of fabrics are fashioned into sportswear–easy t-shirt dresses, bateau tops — many color blocked or with simple graphic designs- and easy pants and rompers. Smaller fabric pieces are used to make woven vests, cardigans, and scarves or knit into new fabrics. Some seasons they don’t know what their remnant finds will be and styles are dependent on the catch.
“I created tonlé to be for every-woman: our clothes can be practical, functional, and comfortable, but at the same time playful and chic,” says the designer. “You can ball them up and throw them in your suitcase and then wear them to a night out. Our materials are soft and natural, our shapes are loose and fit a range of body types, and most of our pieces can be washed in the machine.
“Our handwoven vests, cardigans, and kaftans carry the most intrigue,” says Faller. “They are made from tiny scraps of remnants so they are incredibly time consuming to make and very eco-friendly. The textures are really special. Our buyers consistently comment that they have never seen anything like these before.”
 
Almost half of her business comes from 60 wholesale accounts in the U.S., Australia, Europe and Asia, from their ecommerce site and stores in Cambodia, and from producing for other designers.
“Most of the buyers are attracted to the product first,” says Faller, but increasingly, more of the buyers want a product with a story.” Faller says more companies are under pressure to buy products that are ethically and sustainably made, and their customers are asking for it.
 
In the future, she hopes to partner with larger brands and factories to recycle their waste and do collections with them. They would also like to produce in other countries.
 
Faller has a team of 50 in Cambodia and more in marketing and sales in San Francisco, her home base.
 
Through her time creating tonlé she has been increasingly vigilant about staying true to her mission. “I think social justice and eco justice go hand in hand. The earth will continue on long after we are here.”
 
For more information, visit www.tonle.com.