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FASHION ENTREPRENEUR BERT van Son would love to see Leonardo DiCaprio wearing a pair of his jeans.
“I liked his speech to the UN and I liked his speech when he finally got his Oscar,” van Son tells Fora. “He’s a good ambassador. He’s telling the story we’re trying to tell.”
A high-profile environmentalist, DiCaprio would likely approve of the thinking behind van Son’s sustainable clothing brand, Mud Jeans.
Founded in the Netherlands in 2012, the fashion startup wants to reduce the industry’s enormous manufacturing-generated carbon footprint by giving customers the option to lease – rather than buy – pairs of jeans.
“We try to make it look like a subscription system,” van Son says. “We ask for an entry fee of €20. We take €7.50 from your account each month through PayPal and then after 12 months that stops.”
Customers then have two options: they can keep their jeans or restart their subscription and swap them for a different pair.
“The funny thing is that people really like the idea of being able to switch their jeans after a year.”
Van Son – who will speak at the Community Reuse Network biennial conference in Dublin on Wednesday – says it’s easier to explain the concept using a washing machine – which, evidently, you can lease in the Netherlands.
“For people who don’t have big budgets, they can now afford a fantastic washing machine that is very low on energy and low on water usage,” he says.
“If you look at the total sum that you have to pay monthly, it might be less than when you buy a washing machine that you have to throw away after three, four, five years.”
The principle behind leasing jeans is the same, van Son says. “Do you want to be the owner of something or is the performance good enough?”
Vegan trend
As well as offering the subscription service, Mud Jeans also retails its products – which tick all the eco-warrior boxes, with vegan, organic and chemical-free production. Customers can even get a €10 discount on the €100-odd pricetag if they send back their old pair to be recycled in a factory in Valencia.
A typical Mud Jeans customer is your run-of-the-mill hipster: they are usually aged 25 to 35, well-educated and prefer organic food.
“It’s not 99% of the population, I know, but we are in a growing market.”
Available both online and through retailers in 18 countries, there are no Irish shops stocking the brand yet, but the company is in talks with three major retailers in the UK, which van Son expects will become the startup’s biggest market.
The profit margin for retailers is slimmer because the manufacturing process is more costly, but van Son argues that the more environmentally friendly stone washing method means “we don’t hurt the fabric so our jeans last longer”.
He claims you will never find a pair of his jeans on a sales rack because “we never have overstock”, a major contributor to waste in the often fickle fashion industry.
Sustainable
There was no eureka moment for van Son. Instead, the concept for Mud Jeans evolved over three decades when he first started out in the fashion business.
He launched his career in a textile factory in China, where he was contracted to cut costs and buy as cheaply as possible.
“You make a lot of money,” he says, “but it’s not really fair.”
In 2004, he went on to set up his own company in France, where he was licensed to make apparel for Disney.
“The good thing about working with Disney is that you have a really straightforward code of conduct, which makes you work with good factories,” he says.
“If you have a big brand, you can be a little bit more demanding and work with factories that don’t collapse and where people are given a living wage. That was an eye opener to me. We can do things in a more sustainable way.”
Circular economy
There is a paradigm in the fashion business these days, he says, where consumers still buy on price but are becoming increasingly conscious about where their clothes come from.
“You have the Primarks and the cheap prices and everybody loves it because it so cheap. But then, everybody knows that for a €2 t-shirt, there must be something wrong in the supply (chain) – somebody has been hurt.”
Young parents in particular “don’t want to leave the world behind the way my generation has created it,” van Son says.
“I’m 55 and we’ve been working in a linear economy, which is not a very good idea. We are leaving behind a lot of rubbish. There’s an end to that. In the circular (recycling) economy, if you reuse all the raw materials, you can keep it going for many years.”
Van Son’s ultimate goal is to change the fashion industry, which is the second largest polluter in the world, according to Greenpeace.
That said, the most important thing for van Son is to create “a fabulous pair of jeans”. The company expects to double its turnover this year and is close to breaking even after four years in operation.
“It’s all about (sales) volume, that’s the challenge at the moment,” he says. “I can invent any kind of system, but if I don’t have the right product then it’s wasted.”
The company has been gaining ground abroad and there is a celebrity endorsement in the works.
Will we see Leonardo DiCaprio sporting a pair of Mud Jeans any time soon? Probably not, but “we’re on the brink of something spectacular,” van Son promises.
Written by Conor McMahon and posted on Fora.ie
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I can tell you from personal experience that he’s lying.
Proof?
I had 2 friends whom worked with them at different times and said they were the worst place ever to work for. They had a button on their PCs that they had to hit if they wanted to use the loo and hit again on return, at the end of month their total loo time was reviewed. Said that there was large staff turnabout every month and some people didn’t even stick a full week at times.
Some people are just scared of hard work.
Lindsay the new resident troll. At least you’re consistent.
I just asked for proof. How is it trolling to learn more about something?
Get back to work… *whip sound effects*
get a job there and relay us your experience after a month.
Amazon pays it’s employees well and no one forces them to work there.
“Lindsay Price” and “Katie Byrne” are one in the same trolls, this appears to be in place of there full time jobs.. if he/she/it has one!
Don’t feed her guys
stinking troll
@Vincent f
Any call centre that takes incoming calls has an unavailable to take call button. Many out going have similar if using an auto dialler. You use it when you go to the toilet or deal with paper work then press it when you can take calls. They are reviewed to judge performance. It isn’t individual toilet break logging.
You made it sound so sinister but you are getting the information 2nd hand. You can see somebody not pulling their weight very quickly but it isn’t hard work but repetitive and doesn’t suit everyone . Call centres have a high turnover but generally people that last 6 months can handle it and stay. Not
Vincent, That loo button really hit the fan. I know someone who knows someone…
At this very moment I work for Amazon and for the past about 40min I was away from my desk, no one knew where. (Went to top up my phone and have some late lunch)
There are 2 guys that took their laptop with them and play 8 ball in the atrium, other 2 play ping-pong. Recreation areas are available and you can work from there. IE monitoring or babysitting processes that take long time to complete.
My work day is exactly 8h and it includes lunchbreak and even commuting time later so I miss the traffic. (I start my work in the morning at home) You can work from anywhere and some people take advantage of this and work from other countries a few days a week while going in longer breaks.
So, please… Don’t be jealous!
I am saying exactly what I said. Did not say NYTimes is lying, but I am 100% they can’t know better than me, working there for over almost 2 years.
However I believe there might be something going on in logistics part of Amazon. I’ve seen too a CH4? 1h insight in Amazon UK Logistics. I imagine there’s like pizza delivery. People have low education and some managers may have become too full of themselves. So I can’t say anything about that department. However I believe they prefer to leave than reach higher.
On the other hand Amazon is huge! They have also the largest fleet of servers, bigger than Google. Those servers account for more than 10% of total traffic on the internet.
I wish everyone had a manager like I do! Both of them actually (my manager’s manager too). I have been talking to managers my line more than half way up to Bezos and found them very open. (Amazon is a pretty flat company)
I even know that Facilities manager asked the cleaners contracted company to have the eastern-european girl promoted as supervisor because she was doing all the work (and well) pushed around by the two Irish bags who did nothing but hide and smoke or block us from using the kitchen at lunchtime. Now kitchen is available and that girl is having a lunch break (late like I do (because I like it this way)) too which is good. I think this is an example that whenever is brought to attention, the Amazon environment is very fair.
We are not a soulless company he says as we look directly through his hollow eye sockets.
Worked in a very similar environment. In an office of 3 staff a dozen employees had passed through the doors in approximately 5 years. I lasted 3 months. Was told I was good to last that long. One lad only lasted one week. Workers on the ground had no respect for office staff as they knew they’d be gone in a few months. Boss gave enough work for 2 employees. Your set up to fail. Life is to short to work in a place you hate.
Very easy to say that’s not the Amazon he recognises when everybody is falling over themselves to lick his arse.
Isn’t that the problem. It’s very hard to complain about what’s wrong and how things can be improved to your boss. They are usually surrounded in yes men and told what they want to hear. Unfortunately in my experience if you have a big ego and are willing to tramp on anyone who gets in your way you’ll go far. Sad but true in most cases.
Except in Amazon there is no boss just managers. Everyone has one to one meetings every fortnight with their manager and a bit more rarely with the next manager in line where you can say your piece. If two is not enough you can talk to HR at any time. You can walk in any office at anytime. You give reviews to your manager towards higher managers 2 times a year. I never had any feeling of reluctance that I can’t say anything I want.
However, I don’t know what is happening everywhere, but I doubt is any different since the what I described above here seems to be the general policy.
I honestly am sorry that Amazon gets targeted by such articles.
Same stuff goes on with other Multinationals here the one I worked for used to have a review process where co-workers had to review each other and find fault or areas of improvement for you. Basically if you didn’t like a co-worker you could hammer them! They also had the tendency to promote people into management positions who had zero people management skills and the stress and abuse these guys dished out was terrible.
I wonder would he be willing to go on the us TV show “undercover boss” and prove his point
‘Paid Volunteers’ what a load of crap. His thought’s are d
In my opinion any employer who refuses to engage collectively with their workers, through their trade unions has no right to offer an opinion upon the type of workplace it is.
I’m sure he does think it’s a great place to work. I wonder how many multiples of his employees average salary he earns.
Yes you are, Mister. Stop lieing and mend your ways you horrible git.
I love my Kindle fire……
Obviously not, it’s Amazon, not the Hunger Games.
Wow it’s amazing that people are just commenting on this now. Practices like those highlighted in the article have been in force throughout the companys history. For more information please read “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon”, business book of the year 2013.
It probably depends on the position and office. But on average, Amazon looks to me as a more demanding work environment. I have some colleagues there and it looks like they do work under bigger pressure and more hours then then the rest of us in other IT companies.
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