1. What inspired you to create a Fair Wear and GOTS accredited clothing range?

The idea to create 108 Degrees came in 2010/2011 when I wanted to wear Fairtrade, organic fashion, but did only solemnly find styles and designs that appealed to me. I wanted fashion that is fair and organic, but did look like normal streetwear, with nice colors and interesting styles. Fashion that you not right away rec-ognize as “fair” and “organic”. That’s also why we did not include anything like “fair” or “organic” in the name of our label. We then first started with a T-Shirt collection which then quickly was expanded by long sleeve shirts and a little later by underwear like retro pants, hot pants and socks. The latest additions were a Fairtrade backpack upcycled from used cement bags in Cambodia as well as cork accessories like belts and purses.

2. What were the main challenges you faced in order to get your range started; and are you still facing these challenges today?

It was important to us to get our label certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) right from beginning, so that we can offer our customers really organic fashion and not only to use GOTS certified cotton. The certification process was for a small label that just started a challenge, but it was definitely worth going through this process. We are still running a yearly GOTS audit, but by now our processes are fully developed and support this process so that it became less of a challenge.

Besides this, a major challenge was to find GOTS and Fairtrade certified producers who can produce the quality that we were looking for. For example, our first collection of underwear (pants) did not meet our quali-ty expectations even though the samples that we received as basis were ok. Hence, we hired a local quality manager and hoped for better quality in our second collection. The quality improved afterwards but still we were not fully happy with it so that we afterwards moved production from Mauritius to Europe where produc-tion is much closer and easier to guarantee the quality that we are looking for. Since then our quality expec-tations are met.

3. What were the most memorable, defying moments during this time?

On the negative side was to receive the bulk production of our first collection of underwear and realizing that the quality is not in line with our expectations (as described above already). On the positive side are the reactions of customers especially when meeting them on fairs, when they tell us how much they enjoy our designs and our philosophy of having not only fair, organic fashion but also supporting organizations in the sector of environmental protection, animal welfare and similar.

4. What helped you to see it through to the end?

What helped us most is definitely the positive feedback from our customers and to know that we are doing the right thing. We are not so much focused on our customers and what they may like but rather do fashion that we like and that we are happy with. This is good as it provides us a large freedom to try different things and not only focus on what may sell best.

5. What are your plans for the next 5 years?

We don’t like long-term plans and goals but rather live in the moment. But I can definitely tell you that we still have a lot of exciting ideas for new styles, new colors and fresh fashion! We will definitely keep doing organic fashion with producers that are certified based on Fairtrade.

www.108degrees.de