What a strange question to ask...A customer of ours recently stated that our T-Shirts are such good quality that they've still got one that they bought 4 years ago and it's as good as new so they're reclutant to buy another as they don't need one.
This is a strange conundrum for us because as a brand that supports slow fashion it's a good thing that customers are considering their purchases rather than filling their wardrobes with cheap fast fashion crap that will inevitably end up in land fill after only a few months. On the other hand though as a business we do need to sell products to make money to be able to live off, therefore I would argue that you're not going to wear the same T-Shirt everyday so you could at least have a few really good quality Otso T-Shirts, perhaps even one a day for the other 6 days of the week!
Another person I spoke to recently mentioned our T-Shirts are quite expensive and they have themselves along with three kids to clothe so they preferred to buy cheap ones from a certain big Chinese brand. I mentioned how they're only so cheap because they probably have people and maybe even children like their own making them who are not being paid properly and are being exploited. She said she knew this as she'd watched a documentary about it but then just laughed it off saying it's just too cheap and they cant afford to be worrying about stuff like that!
The thing is, even if you dont really care about people on the other side of the world that you've never met and you've not really got much money to spend because things are tight at home right now, it doesn't mean you can't make considered purchases and buy better quality garments. I've spoken to many of our customers with children who have passed their Otso T-Shirt down to siblings and cousins based on the fact that they're still as good as new by the time they've grown out of it. You could also sell our garments on Vinted, Depop or Ebay and make a good portion of the original cost back.
This I believe is the true mark of sustainability; the longer something can stay in circulation to be enjoyed by different people the better. But there's also nothing wrong with buying something new now and then. All of our T-Shirts are designed by myself or by local artists and printed locally here in Slaithwaite village, this helps contribute to our local economy by giving more local people more money to spend locally also. It also helps artists gain exposure for their work so they might in turn gain more commission's off the back of it.
There's never just one answer to the world's problems but more a complex sea of ideas and initiatives that when overlapped and joined together can hopefully make our world a more optimistic and better place to live in and I hope we somehow fit in to that.
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