INTERVIEW #64 ETHICAL CLOTHING

Based in: Barcelona, Spain

Founded in: 2019

Founded by: Ben Heinkel, Jack Hesketh

Stores: Online only

Hi Ethical Clothing, welcome to A Sustainable Closet! We are so curious to know how you came up with the concept and idea for your platform, what's the story?

Thanks for having me. So the concept came around when Jack and I were hiking around the mountains close to Barcelona. We had worked together previously at an eCommerce tech startup that I had founded and were looking for something new to do together. Sustainable clothing has been an interest of ours for decades and we were talking about the difficulty in finding brands that produced ethically and sustainably. We were sure that hundreds of these brands, mostly smaller in size, existed but there was no easy way to find out about them as their marketing resources are usually limited. As a solution to this, we came up with the idea of a search engine that easily allows conscious consumers to find the clothes they are looking for across hundreds of sustainable brands. That was the birth of the Ethical Clothing search engine.

Your selection of brands is very wide and inspiring, how and where do you source your partners from? 

We are constantly looking for brands to include in our search engine and search the Internet regularly for new brands that have popped up across Europe and the US. Now that we've established a bit of a name in the sector, we do get brands reaching out to us directly that want to be included.

 What type of garment or product category is selling the best?

This is the kind of data that we would like to have, but have not been able to pull together yet due to a lack of time and resources. 

Where on the planet are your customers based?

All our customers are based between the US and Europe, with the majority coming from the UK and Germany. 

Where do you find inspiration?

Reading the stories of the many brands that we feature. It is incredibly inspiring to read the stories of these founders that go through insane lengths to bring their clothes to market, and to do so in the most sustainable way possible and mostly with limited budgets. Knowing that when we work harder, we can drive more traffic to these brands and ensure they continue to do what they do. That is inspiring!

 What have been and are the major challenges of starting Ethical Clothing and may we ask if this is your full-time job?

The biggest challenge for us is finding the time to dedicate to onboarding new brands onto our platform. Since this isn't our full time job, our time is limited. The second biggest challenge is growing the traffic to the site - our business model doesn't allow for paid user acquisition, so it has to be completely organic for us to be able to keep our lights on.

 What has been and is the largest gain? 

The technical challenges that come with developing a search engine are interesting on an intellectual level, however, more than that is knowing that all the effort we put in translates directly into more sales for the brands that we support, increasing their chances of staying alive and making a change in the fashion is consumed. That is what keeps us going.

What do you think needs to change in the fashion industry to make it more sustainable? 

 Awareness. I truly do believe that if more people truly became aware of the conditions that most fast fashion is being produced under, and that alternatives that don't break the bank are available, there would be a bigger push towards buying from sustainable brands.

What's up next, do you have anything fun to share with our readers?

We're adding a whole bunch of new brands in the upcoming months, which means more product categories and a bigger selection. These will of course all be integrated into our "Price Drop Alert" service that sends out a weekly e-mail with all the brands in our catalog that are currently on sale.