Green fashion green business

Vanessa Cantrell and her friends had only fourteen days to finish the wedding garments for an upcoming ceremony in Indianapolis. Burying themselves in Cantrell's home studio 50 hours a week with sewing machines, stitching and clicking, the group turned out seven gowns and four suits on schedule. \nThe ensembles were not cheap. Each wedding dress, especially, cost around $1,000. But each was stylized and embroidered according to the tastes of the wearers and tailored with soft organic hemp and silk fabrics colored with natural dyes. \n"Wearing environmentally friendly clothes basically means you can do good, look good and feel good at the same time," said Cantrell, designer and owner of Venus Hemp and Organics.\nCantrell started Venus Hemp & Organics in Bloomington in 2003 when she officially defined her business as an eco-fashion design house. \nEco-fashion, a rising star in the clothing industry, promotes the use of environmentally-sensitive raw materials, fair wages and safe working conditions for employees, as well as the health of the consumer. \nNike, for example, has introduced several apparel collections using certified organic cotton under the label Nike Organics since 2002. American Apparel manufactures all of the products at its Los Angeles factory, instead of outsourcing. Its Sustainable Edition line also specializes in T-shirts made of 100 percent organic cotton. \nWith the eco-fever boosted by the big names of the apparel industry, sales of organic fibers in the United States grew 22.7 percent, reaching $85 million in 2003, according to the Organic Trade Association's 2004 Manufacture Survey. Women's clothing was the fastest growing sector among the organic fiber market.\nCantrell's individual design house, which outputs mostly women's garments, is one of the small apparel shops running with green consciousness. She orders organic fabrics, most often hemp and silk, from a San Francisco-based company, and purchases low-impact dyes from a small business located on the east coast. Once in a while, she hires and pays part-time local moms and seamstresses at $8 to $10 per hour, the standard living wage in Bloomington.\n"Eco-fashion is the physical representation of my personal ethics," Cantrell said. "I feel like when I put on organic fibers that are made in more sustainable factories with living wages, I am putting on a good feeling. I know that I've paid some mother to take care of her child, and I've paid the factories enough money so that they didn't have to pollute."\nClinging to her belief, Cantrell started to develop her custom-made business by word of mouth. Wedding dresses, especially, have been the most profitable sources of her overall income. \nAs for the hand-made ready wears, Natural Elements, a local store that sells environmentally-conscious products, has been a major place for her to promote her label and retail her items, which vary seasonally. Her works range from sundresses and tank tops to peasant skirts and cargo shorts.\n"Her stuff has been pretty stylish," said Emily Crum, owner of Natural Elements. "I think she does appeal to a wider range of people because she makes some basic designs and she also makes some fancier designs." \nHowever, Cantrell has not reached enough population and capital to take her business to a higher level. The local market which she has depended upon still lingers at its grassroots stage, with designers and seamstresses sharing one another's customers.\nAside from the small-selling scale, Cantrell, like many other environmentally-conscious apparel makers, has been dealing with complaints from customers about her high prices. She has struggled to distinguish her business from large wholesale stores like Wal-Mart, where people can find similar-looking outfits at lower prices.\nCrum, who is also a seamstress, explained that besides the sweatshop-free production style, the higher costs of eco-friendly clothes derive from the raw materials. The hemp, in particular, cannot be grown in the United States. It is usually imported from other countries like China, Romania and Canada, which adds to the expense of the fabrics. Also, cotton is one of the crops that requires the most pesticides and herbicides; thus, cotton grown organically without the toxic chemicals, needs extra care and cost, said Crum.\nBut environmental awareness is no longer the only pitch used by players in the eco-fashion industry. Edun is an eco-apparel label established by Ali Hewson and her husband, Bono, of the rock group U2. It presents stylish and hip collections, while encouraging the use of family-run factories and all-organic materials. Linda Loudermilk, a Los Angeles-based designer, has also showcased eco-clothing as edgy, fun and playful with her "Luxury eco" line. The line presents clothing and accessories made of sustainable materials including exotic plants like sasawashi, bamboo, sea cell and soya. \nAn admirer of Loudermilk, Cantrell knows that her own style needs to be redefined to attract more customers, and her business strategy needs to be reorganized to expand the present market scale.\n"I consider what I have done so far boots-strapping," Cantrell said. "I take the savings I have and make whatever I want, turn whatever profits and put them right back to grow the business." \nAnd she has been boots-strapping all her life. Starting from the fourth grade, Cantrell bought colorful strings with her allowance and accepted orders of friendship bracelets from the kids in her hometown, Farmland, Ind. When she dropped out of college and hitch-hiked around the country, she supported herself by making street art in California, working at a small drapery factory in Pennsylvania and altering clothes in Oregon.\n"After two years, I realized that I have been sewing things, designing things and making things on the road," Cantrell said. "So I thought why not go back to Bloomington for a degree and learn how to run a business?"\nIn the fall of 1999, she registered at IU and chose to major in Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Entrepreneurship. While taking business and fashion classes, Cantrell began remaking and selling pants bought from thrift stores and later homemade A-line organic sundresses. With simple designs using less fabrics and higher labor cost, Cantrell's business took off. As soon as she was able to keep track of her earnings, Cantrell furthered her dream by putting on an official company trademark in 2003. \n"It's gone from me sitting at night just sewing things ordered by my friends to having a Web page and a business account," said Cantrell. "And I pay taxes, take care of clients and customer services." \nLast year was also a good leap for her business. She joined the Organic Trade Association, which provided her label with more Internet exposure by listing Venus Hemp and Organics on its Web site. In the same year, Cantrell, for the first time, took her collections to the runway and booth at the All Things Organic trade show held by the OTA. There she learned to present herself professionally as the CEO and head designer of her company.\n"It was a great experience," Cantrell said. "I met some designers, created a mailing list and got orders of catalogs from some small businesses on the east coast," she said.\nNow a part-time junior, with a five-year-old home-schooled daughter, Cantrell has decided to take a break from the day-and-night production and work on a specific business plan outlining her next goal: the human and financial resources needed to expand her business. \n"The process is a little bit confusing because the industry is so new and it's not included in most business indexes," Cantrell said. "They may have information about women's apparel but there are no resources of where the organic market is."\nBut by working with a local consulting group on eco-conscious businesses, Cantrell has built up some beginning ideas about her future plan. To lower cost and reach more customers, she would like to outsource designed items to factories in Mexican villages, wholesale them to apparel stores while managing an on-line retail shop. And she will still accept local custom requests. \nAs for her target customers, she envisions a crowd of sophisticated, professional, middle-aged women with higher spending ability, and wants to appeal to them with fun and functional clothing.\n"I want to create outfits that people could wear to relax and work, like a shirt that goes well with a business jacket but is also fun enough for evening drinking," she said. \nWith the sketch in mind, Cantrell sets to present her finished business plan to potential investors, including a list of local individuals supporting eco-friendly companies as well as her ready-to-give family members. Next fall, hopefully, she will switch on her production energy again.\nAs for the pitch: "Be and look like the goddess you are and wear eco-fashion," she said.