Our Story

In the Blood

I’m the son of a London East-End coat and suit manufacturer. After graduation I decided to take a 6 month sabbatical and ended up in Hong Kong, penniless but proud. Chance knocked when I met another East-Ender, older and more experienced who took a shine to me. He offered me the opportunity to run his office on his behalf. I ended up running not just in HK, but also setting up production in Taiwan, Korea and several other Asian countries. All this before I hit my mid-twenties!

Early Learnings

Everything I learnt was actually not really from my business partner, nor the buyers! My most valuable learnings have come from the factory owners I worked with, in truth initially often from pity on their part. Something I resolutely will always stick to is that you always will have business if you have the trust from factory partners.

Industry Changes

I’ve seen many changes on my journey in the industry. My first experience of producing core products for retail groups was followed by a move to the power of brands, producing exciting fashion products for the likes of Pepe etc.

This phase was closely followed with private labelling directly for major retail groups in the UK, Netherlands, Germany etc.

Fashion discounters such as H&M, KIK and Zara introduced the whole concept of fast fashion. Fast fashion was kicked off with the market success of a €9.99 stretch jean, leading to apply the same thing to tops and other garments. We proudly engineered a method to reduce accepted lead times from 90 days to 35 via clever, innovative engineering.

Passion

Overtime I realized however that fast fashion simply resulted in disposable fashion, cheap and throw-away. The result we see today is not just the textile waste on the landfills and in our oceans, but also the poor, unacceptable treatment of the workers in the garment industry. I wanted to return to that point where I was proud what I produced.

Several years ago I began focusing on sustainable products, at the time that meant organic cotton, there was simply not much else around. I became convinced and passionate about sustainability.

Opportunity

Then nature had a say … the world was hit with a pandemic. For my business personally catastrophic yes. With many suppliers also struggling and forced to cancel orders, the bigger heartbreak was watching factories closing down. The thousands of garment workers losing their entire livelihoods with absolutely no government support to fall back on at all suffered the most!

It is often said that the Chinese word for "disaster" also means "opportunity" which resonates with me because I’ve always been an optimist.

During lockdowns when all retail stores were forced to close their doors that opportunity presented itself via online retailers who shared my passion for sustainability. I showed them that you could cost engineer and still maintain sustainable products. In truth, I saved them heaps of money with things I learnt from some engineering concepts from fast fashion.

Sustainability

Polyester production has increased twenty fold in the last 20 years and overtaken cotton production. Polyester is a big problem because even recycled polyester is still polyester, which will never degrade Having a swing ticket that says "Recycled Polyester" is an excuse, not an answer. There are better ways!

Organic cotton production represents only 1% of all total cotton production, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that is not sustainable.

I continuously research and explore many other sustainable and biodegradable yarns. There are so many alternatives available but, sustainability is not just about yarns. Sustainability is also about saving water, a precious commodity for millions of people. We take it for granted, but many villagers near poorly run factories are much less fortunate than us.

Sustainability is also about cleaning up the landfills we created and the all the mess in our oceans.

Fairness

I am also passionate about making sure garment workers receive a livable wage, not just an arbitrary bare minimum. It’s about helping them educate their children, help with medical, better infrastructure, everything we take for granted.

Achievability

I’m extremely passionate what we are trying to achieve, but I’m also a realist. Many responsible businesses want the same things, but we need to be prudent and mindful about the importance of cost. Everything we try to achieve will still focus on cost. I strongly believe sustainability and cost can go hand in hand, we prove it and we can show you how with no or very little compromises.
Reach out to discuss how 5 Cubed Next can help you make a difference. Together!