How two fashion industry outsiders stitched together a plan for a sustainable clothing company.

There’s a lot to be said for experience. But, now and again, don’t you just wish you knew a little less about the how-it’s-always-been-done so you could just bully through with your plans, unconcerned that you’re going against the establishment, that you don’t know the rules?

While we don’t necessarily agree that full-on ignorance is bliss—it usually leads to serious problems down the line—we’re pretty keen on going against the grain, shaking things up, keeping things interesting and evolving the industry.

There’s a duo determined to do just that in their own well-established industry: fashion. One of the greatest assets Kristin Glenn and Shannon Whitehead, founders of Austin, Texas-based {r}evolution apparel, have on their side is that they’re industry outsiders.

Glenn and Whitehead met while bartending in Australia in 2008. Back in the states, they reconnected in 2010 on, of course, Facebook. In their mid-20s, they were each unsure of what they wanted to do with their lives. Or, as Glenn put it in a Facebook message to Whitehead, they were dealing with a “quarter-life crisis.”

“We came together with this idea to start a business with the intention of being able to continue traveling,” Whitehead says.

The pair headed to Central America, planning to export products back to the states—but nothing jumped out at them as different enough from what was already on store shelves up north. But, while in Central America, two things happened: The well-traveled duo started designing a line of 10 mix-and-match clothing pieces that would appeal to travelers and, while on a cotton farm in Nicaragua, they “started to realize that the fashion industry is incredibly toxic and damaging to our environment,” Whitehead says.

The issues that caught their attention most: what goes into clothing, including pesticides used on cotton and the petroleum that’s in materials such as polyester, labor issues surrounding the people who make clothing (“in the process of making a garment, there turned up really sad [stories],” Glenn says) and how Americans have gotten used to buying loads of cheap clothing that wasn’t expected to last. They wanted to find a new way to produce clothing, one that was sustainable and encouraged consumers to dress well with less.

While traveling, they also started a blog, “All of Us Revolution,” to “document the prospect of two young women starting a business and for people to see the inside story of how that works.”

With sustainability on their brains and the determination to turn their sketches into a travel-perfect clothing line, Glenn and Whitehead started doing research, reaching out to anybody they thought could help them figure out the how-tos of launching a fashion company. {r}evolution apparel was underway.

“Not a lot of people responded to us,” Whitehead says. “This is a very small industry, pretty closed off.

“We didn’t talk to too many people in the traditional fashion industry. We got some negative reactions—‘Oh, it’s been done before. American Apparel does that scene’—but for the most part, we didn’t even reach out to the traditional industry. Our entire business model has been so incredibly untraditional from the get-go.”

But, as they continued to do their research, the duo realized they wanted to put American textile and accessory workers and resources to work on their line. They decided to produce their products in North Carolina and source the materials from Vermont, New York and elsewhere in the U.S. Of course, the sustainability issue had become one of the company’s earliest—and strongest—missions, so, along with drawstrings made in North Carolina and buttons from Vermont wood, they wanted to use fabric that was 100 percent recycled.

Their plan? Admittedly idealistic, but completely refreshing.

“We were not compromising on anything,” Whitehead says. “It was going to be perfectly sustainable, and we would settle for nothing less.”

But what they realized was that in deciding to stick to their sustainability guns, they would have to scale back somewhere to get things going. If they’d been in the industry longer and had more how-to experience, Glenn says, they probably wouldn’t have taken on such a massive challenge.

“We were such amateurs [on the design front], but we printed out these little drawings of an outline of a woman that we traced over,” Whitehead says. “We designed the entire line ourselves and then, when we realized how virtually impossible it would be to produce that entire line at once, we started designing the Versalette, which is our signature piece. It started out just a circular infinity scarf and then, within a few months, it got armholes. Then, it got drawstrings and then we turned it into, basically, a scarf that can be worn more than 20 different ways.”

The plan was in motion, they would launch with the Versalette, a “multifunction” piece that can be worn from head (scarf) to toe (as a skirt).

Of course, there was the money issue to figure out. Enter Kickstarter, the crowd-funding wonder-site. Glenn and Whitehead put the Versalette project up on Kickstarter hoping to raise US$20,000. By the time their funding drive counted down on December 22, 2011, they’d raised $64,246.

Were they surprised? Yes and no.

“We were expecting great things,” Glenn says. “We had been working on this project for a year-and-a-half at that point and had put so much into it. We thought it would do really well. We really believed in it, but at the same time, as the numbers started to climb, it was surreal in a way and a validating feeling that people want products with a story and…[that they wanted to be] more conscious in their purchases.”

Money in hand, there were still lessons to be learned. They placed an initial order for 1,400 Versalettes but production took longer than expected. As of this writing, they expected to ship the product in July, later than originally planned. But one of {r}evolution’s other central promises helped them keep customers from getting antsy: honesty. They kept Kickstarter backers and blog readers (and potential customers who found them once they started getting media write-ups) in the know about why things were taking longer than expected, and the community responded well, thanking Glenn and Whitehead in the comments sections for being upfront about the process.

“I think the community has been a big part in spreading the mission and also in keeping us motivated and not bored with it, because a lot of people who are following along are very supportive and they want to see change, as well,” Glenn says. “So they’re just as important to us, moving forward, as we are to each other. It’s super crucial.”

And the duo hasn’t rested on its growing popularity. While the Versalette is the company’s sole clothing product right now, Glenn and Whitehead are rolling—literally—ahead with their plans to expand the conversation about sustainability issues. They’re filming videos about sustainability issues in the hopes of sparking discussion and spent the summer driving a mobile pop-up shop around the Pacific Northwest, showcasing the Versalette and talking sustainability, consumption and the environment along the way.

Their goal, right now, is the message.

Next up for {r}evolution: more Versalettes, the launch of their Maxi dress and a plan to launch an incubator to “really help designers realize that there’s this new sort of industrial revolution of design and that’s where the change needs to happen,” Whitehead says.

She adds: “We’re really in it to win it from this point on and [it’s] also one of those things where you believe so deeply in what you’re doing, that the fact that you’re terrified doesn’t matter because whatever personal feeling we might have about failure or people not responding is so much less important than this overall mission and message.” One+

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Buddy Up

Interested in going it your own way? Both Kristin Glenn and Shannon Whitehead recommend finding a partner to help you move forward.

“When you’re doing something like this—something that really hasn’t been done—it’s very important to have someone [who says], ‘yes this is a realistic goal,’” Whitehead says. “If one person is down, the other person is up. So that’s something that still is really important as we’re going through production and facing challenges, just to have someone who will let you know that you’re not crazy.”

TAGS: corporate social responsibility, fashion, global, leadership, One+ August 2012