Can 3D Knitting Fix Fashion? Slater McLean, Oliver Charles

In this episode of the Happy Planet Podcast, host Abigail Carroll interviews Slater McLean, co-founder of Oliver Charles, a sustainable sweater company. Slater discusses the significant environmental impact of the fashion industry and how Oliver Charles is addressing these issues using natural materials like yak wool and seaweed-based fibers. The company employs an innovative 3D knitting process to eliminate waste. Oliver Charles also relies on an on-demand manufacturing model to prevent excess inventory. The discussion touches upon the challenges and opportunities within the fashion industry, pointing towards a shift away from fast fashion towards quality and sustainability. Slater highlights the potential for localized garment production in the U.S. and provides advice for new entrepreneurs. This episode underscores the growing importance of sustainable practices in fashion and the innovation driving these changes.

00:00 Introduction 

01:00 The Environmental Impact of Fashion

01:57 Oliver Charles: A Sustainable Fashion Brand

03:22 Innovative Materials: Yak Wool and Seaweed Fiber

09:28 On-Demand Manufacturing and Its Benefits

15:29 Building a Brand and Finding Customers

27:46 The Future of Fashion and Sustainability

33:10 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

34:21 Conclusion 

Listen on Apple , Spotify, our website, or pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Thank you to our sponsors.

Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Bold Ocean Ventures have partnered to create a mission-driven venture capital fund, supporting the growth of innovative, sustainable ocean-related businesses.

Startup Marin Skincare has rocketed thanks to products made with Maine-lobster-derived glycoprotein that work on eczema and dry skin. Former guest on our show and co-Founder Patrick Breeding is offering listeners a 20% discount on their skincare products. Type HAPPYPLANET into the coupon code field!

Spark No. 9, ensures that companies - and startups - have successful product launches by testing their products online. Remove the guesswork before you launch!

Transcript

Happy Planet - Oliver Charles - Slater Maclean for content

[00:00:00] Abigail: Welcome back to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll. If you're over 40 and you've been on Instagram, you've probably seen an ad for Oliver Charles. The startup sweater manufacturer making waves in the sustainable fashion industry. Today, we have the great fortune of meeting the company's co founder Slater McLean.

[00:00:29] Abigail: We're going to hear all about how his business is more sustainable than most fashion brands. Why his model means he doesn't have to raise money and how he sees the fashion world evolving. Let's hear it from Slater.

[00:00:44] Abigail: Welcome to the podcast Slater. 

[00:00:47] Slater: Hi, Abigail. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:00:49] Abigail: This is a really a big treat for me. I actually learned of your business on Instagram. And so it's really fun to actually have you here on the podcast in real life. You are in the fashion industry and the fashion industry has a huge impact on climate and the ocean.

[00:01:06] Abigail: I thought maybe we could just start there. 

[00:01:08] Slater: Yeah, of course. The fashion industry is pretty well known as one of the largest polluters in the world. They use an incredible amount of petroleum products to make things like nylon and polyester. It uses an incredible amount of energy, and there's just a ton of waste involved in the fashion industry.

[00:01:27] Slater: Everything from clothes that never get sold and need to be thrown out, to the waste that is incurred or created during the actual production process of cutting. Thanks. Patterns out of large sheets of fabric in order to sew together and make clothes Waste that's created from creating huge rounds of clothes for trends that don't pan out and need to be thrown out.

[00:01:49] Slater: There's just So many different fashion facets in the fashion industry to create waste. And it just produces an incredible amount. 

[00:01:57] Abigail: You're making clothes and you're trying to do it in a different way. Tell us a bit about Oliver Charles and what you're doing 

[00:02:04] Slater: and how. So we started all over Charles about four years ago now.

[00:02:08] Slater: And the kind of concept behind the brand is a single sweater for all of life. So something that you never have to think about, you can wear all the time. It's always going to fit. You look good. Good make you feel your best. That's easy to take care of and you just never really have to think about it.

[00:02:22] Slater: It's always going to be there for you. And we wanted sustainability to be the table stakes of our business. So we worked really hard to only source the best natural materials. So we use a lot of wools like yak wool in particular and Marina wool. And. We never use any, any plastic, any petroleum based materials, recycled or not, for a number of reasons that I can get into a little bit later.

[00:02:47] Slater: And then we try and use a innovative manufacturing process that we call 3D knitting, but is considered whole garment manufacturing to those in the fashion industry, which knits the sweater all in one go. So there's no excess waste that's produced during the manufacturing process. All the yarn that's spent for the sweater.

[00:03:07] Slater: There's no seams either. Yeah. No seams. All the yarn meant for the sweater goes into the sweater. That's very automated process and it creates just a really beautiful garment that is very durable, lasts a long time, and they're really nice. 

[00:03:22] Abigail: You mentioned yak. That is really fun. And I saw from your website, yak is, it's apparently soft like cashmere, but it's more environmentally safe.

[00:03:32] Abigail: Tell, tell me about how that works and why is it safer? 

[00:03:36] Slater: Yak is considered a sustainable alternative to cashmere. And the reason for that is cashmere goats produce a very small amount of fiber every single year. And that's why it's so expensive. The goats produce only a couple hundred grams Every single spring, both cashmere and yak wool are naturally shed.

[00:03:54] Slater: It's essentially their winter coat that the animals are shedding that gets used to turn into a fiber. And because the goats produces such a small amount, you need thousands, millions of goats in order to supply the world with the amount of cashmere we need. And the landscape in which the goats live on is just not capable of Holding that many animals.

[00:04:16] Slater: I think 60 percent of the Mongolian grasslands have basically been devastated because of cashmere goat grazing. The joke in the industry is cashmere used to be expensive because of the little amount of fiber each goat produced. Now it's expensive because we have to buy feed for the goats. So they've just decimated large, the grasslands in central Asia.

[00:04:36] Slater: Whereas yak on the other hand, yaks are different animals. They're much bigger. They're much more hardy animals. When they graze. Just on the tops of the plants, they don't pull up the roots, which is something that goats do, which causes Basically the destruction of grasslands. They just eat the top of the grass.

[00:04:54] Slater: They produce a lot more fiber every single year from their kind of underbellies. That's where it comes from. It's called Kulu in the Tibetan language, and it's just collected off the ground and picked up. And it's almost a by product for a lot of the nomadic herders who live in Tibet. They raise yaks.

[00:05:09] Slater: They have large herds of yaks for things like meat and dairy. And they're a big part of their life and the fiber that sheds naturally in the winter is just an extra thing that they're able to sell and contribute back to their communities and people who are working there. So it's a pretty cool process.

[00:05:29] Slater: And the yaks are also just from, you think about a lot of animals altogether, burping and passing gas for a lack of a better term, produce a lot of CO2 and things like that. Yaks are actually one of the least polluted. CO2 producing animals that's out there. So they're super good animals for the environment.

[00:05:45] Slater: They're super easy on it. They're super friendly and cool animals and just much better than the cashmere goats out there. 

[00:05:52] Abigail: We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. I'd like to thank Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Bold Ocean Ventures for their support of Happy Planet Podcast.

[00:06:01] Abigail: GMRI and Bold Ocean Ventures have partnered to create a mission driven venture capital fund. Supporting the growth of innovative, sustainable, ocean related businesses. Listeners may remember Patrick Breeding, who was on our show last year to talk about Maran Skin Care and its clinically proven formula that uses glycoproteins from Maine lobsters to treat eczema and dry, damaged skin.

[00:06:26] Abigail: This company has since become wildly successful with this lobster lotion, and Patrick is inviting listeners to a 20 percent discount on their products by using the coupon code HAPPYPLANET on their website. MarinSkincare. com. I use this product myself and I highly recommend it. Welcome back to Happy Planet.

[00:06:48] Abigail: I know you, you were also working with seaweed based fibers and we did an episode about Kiehl Labs about a year ago. Tell me about that. How's that going? 

[00:07:00] Slater: Yeah, of course. So the, so we, Discovered and started using the seaweed based fiber in an effort to make clothes that are a little bit less warm. The yak wool is a super warm fiber.

[00:07:11] Slater: It's very breathable. It's very nice where a lot of different climates, but it's a wool, it's winter fiber. And so we were looking for something that could perform really well in the summer months. And that's how we discovered the C cell. So C cell is essentially a lyocell based fiber that is made from.

[00:07:29] Slater: Part wood pulp and then part seaweed fibers. And the way it works is essentially they take, the seaweed comes from Iceland. It's harvested once every four years to ensure that the ecosystem isn't damaged or anything like that. And only the tops of the seaweed plants are harvested, not anything below that.

[00:07:47] Slater: So the fish and the animals living in that underwater habitat aren't really disturbed by the harvesting of the actual seaweed. The seaweed is then taken and basically turned into a powder and combined with wood pulp and then turned into a fiber called lyocell in a closed loop system. So it means the chemicals that are required to extract the cellulose, which is what makes up the fiber, are used again and again, never released or anything like that.

[00:08:14] Slater: There's like a 99. 9 retention rate of the chemicals. And essentially what you get is a fiber that's. Called C cell that we then mix with organic cotton and knit into sweaters. And we call those our summer sweaters, but they're some of our most popular products. They're super awesome. Seaweed is such an interesting material because right now it's a mix between seaweed and wood pulp.

[00:08:34] Slater: Eventually the goal is to get to a hundred percent seaweed and remove the wood pulp, but it's. It takes some time to get there. Seaweed has so many advantages, grows quickly. There's no need for space. You don't have to deforest anything to plant it. It doesn't require any fresh water. There's unlimited lands to grow it on.

[00:08:54] Slater: You can harvest it in really sustainable ways by just taking the tops of the plant off. It absorbs a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere. So it's a, it's just a really fascinating plant that we hope finds its way into more and more aspects of our lives. 

[00:09:08] Abigail: I bet you didn't expect to be working with seaweed as a fashion entrepreneur.

[00:09:13] Slater: No, absolutely. Absolutely not. Yeah. When we found yak wool, we were like, Oh my God, this is going to be the next big thing. We're sure of it. And then a couple of years into the business, we found the C cell and we're like, Oh, this is actually going to be the next big thing. 

[00:09:25] Abigail: So I discovered you online. The business is completely online.

[00:09:29] Abigail: And I guess that's how you managed to do just on demand manufacturing. Can you talk to me a little bit about How, what that's like to build an entirely online brand. 

[00:09:40] Slater: Yeah, of course. So I'll touch on the on demand manufacturing real quick, because that is actually one of the most sustainable aspects of the business that I think is often overlooked.

[00:09:51] Slater: We. Essentially produce every sweater is made to order. So when you order from us online, buy a sweater on our website, Oliver Charles. com, we get that order. And then we push that order to our factory who then produces the sweater and ships it to you within six business days. And. That has a couple of big benefits to the earth and also just from a business perspective, but to the earth, a humongous portion of the clothing that's wasted in the world comes from excess inventory.

[00:10:22] Slater: It's the colors that don't sell. It's the sizes that don't sell. It's the lines that someone tried out and just didn't work out. The way the fashion industry works is often by doing lines every season in which they trade a set amount of inventory, they try and sell as much of it as they can, they discount it, and eventually just throw out whatever is left over, which ends up being an incredible amount of clothing.

[00:10:48] Slater: It's estimated that three billion pounds from that aspect alone of clothing ends up in our landfills every single year. And that three billion pounds of clothes is almost all petroleum based. Stuff which never breaks down microplastics from the polyester and the nylon get into our water systems. It's just a really big problem.

[00:11:08] Slater: So the on demand manufacturing solves that problem entirely. So you only make exactly what is required. For you to sell as a company, you don't have to worry about predicting exactly what colors are going to sell. You can try things with, without a lot of risks. So if we're going to launch a new color, we can put the color out there.

[00:11:28] Slater: If we sell one sweater, we only made one sweater. It's fine. We're not wasting 500 sweaters that we had to order. That is actually one of the parts of our business and our system that is. Probably benefits the business the most because there's waste in the traditional way of manufacturing, but that's about 30 percent of the material is wasted.

[00:11:47] Slater: It's not that big of a number at the end of the day, the real big numbers. Is actually the excess clothes that gets thrown out. 

[00:11:53] Abigail: Also the financial waste, you're not wasting money building things that people aren't buying. So that can probably bring down your product costs and make it more accessible to people.

[00:12:01] Slater: Absolutely. It's still a new technology, so it's still fairly expensive as we grow the number of machines that we have available to us. But. Yes, you can afford to charge less than you would have to doing this in another way, um, by using these machines. And the other interesting aspect to this is these machines are very automated.

[00:12:22] Slater: They don't knit any faster in the U. S. than they do knit in China or in Bangladesh or in India or somewhere else around the world. So if you really take a step back and you look at this And from a 10, 20 year horizon, you can imagine we could have a knitting factory in every single city in the United States that produces the sweaters and clothing for people who live in that immediate area.

[00:12:46] Slater: We can get clothing to people really quickly. The distance in which that clothing has to travel is greatly reduced. There's again, no excess inventory. You don't have to ship things all over the country from central distribution hubs. You can really localize these machines. And it's. It's great for American manufacturing too, because again, the way normal clothes are manufactured requires huge warehouses with giant production lines of people all sewing individual pieces of an item together.

[00:13:16] Slater: In this case, you can have 25 machines knitting the same sweater. One person attaching the labels, one person doing the laundering and the steaming, and then. Another person doing quality control, managing machines and things like that. All those people can be paid a good living wage and you can recreate the, the clothing industry in the U S if you really think about it.

[00:13:38] Slater: Yeah. 

[00:13:38] Abigail: Because the labor is so hard to find. I came out of a labor intensive business and it was always very tricky. 

[00:13:45] Slater: Yeah, it's really hard to have a cut and sew facility in the US. I think it's very hard to find the labor for that. 

[00:13:50] Abigail: Yeah. And the six day turnaround, nobody can complain about that. 

[00:13:54] Slater: It's not bad.

[00:13:55] Slater: We do get backed up around the holidays in particular, when we just have like influx of orders. The machines can only knit. So fast and for so long during the day. And we do build some inventory over the course of the year to just help manage the influx during then. But yeah, on average, it's about six business days, which is not too bad.

[00:14:15] Slater: I think most people are actually totally okay with it. We spend a lot of time explaining to our customers that this is what's happening. This is why it's important and innovative and no one really ever complains, which is great because as a business owner, It's stressful to think that it's going to take some that long for something to get to someone when we live in a world of Amazon prime delivery.

[00:14:36] Slater: It's on my doorstep in the next day. So it's nice. It's very reassuring that customers are okay with the long turnaround. 

[00:14:44] Abigail: but I, I actually think that the Amazon model has created more patients in the consumer. We no longer expect to be able to get in our car, go downtown or to the mall and pick up the item that we want.

[00:14:59] Abigail: It's ruined that type of shopping. But on the other hand, I do think. It's opened up this window for people to order things that are made on demand because we are used to a little bit of a wait between when we buy something and when we receive it. 

[00:15:14] Slater: Unbelievably good point. I think you're completely right about that.

[00:15:17] Slater: And I also think that as people shop away from Amazon and from other small businesses. They also are just getting used to the fact that sometimes things take a little bit longer to arrive when it's not bothering them as much. Yeah. 

[00:15:29] Abigail: So how did you find your clients? Are you guys like online marketing geniuses or was this something that kind of sold itself?

[00:15:37] Abigail: Cause I, cause again, I learned. I learned about you from Instagram and I was really intrigued and I saw that you use C Cell and so of course I wanted to hear about it being an ocean entrepreneur. So was that, is that a challenge? Is that going well? 

[00:15:55] Slater: Yeah, so it's always a challenge. It's the, definitely one of the harder aspects of the business and it's been a long Kind of a four year slog to find clients, I'll say, and customers, and we've been just really focused on building kind of a digital marketing flywheel.

[00:16:11] Slater: So we When we originally launched the business, we were thinking that we would sell clothes to young professionals who were really busy at work and didn't want to have to think about their outfit. Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day. A lot of very successful people wear the same thing every day.

[00:16:28] Slater: And that in a lot of ways was the concept that of the businesses, you can wear the sweater every single day. You don't have to think about it. And doing that is actually really good for your mental health. I must say like it. You don't have to think about your outfit in the morning. You're just starting your day off on a better foot.

[00:16:42] Slater: And so we considered, we thought, okay, this is going to be busy young professionals who are going to be buying this. And as we progressed and as we learned more and more about the brand and we learned more and more about what people thought of us, we did a ton of craft fairs. So in person selling where we would go on a weekend and set up a booth.

[00:17:00] Slater: Somewhere around San Francisco, the Bay Area where we're located and just try and sell sweaters whether it was, you know 50 degrees and perfect for selling sweaters or a hundred degrees and the opposite of what you want for selling sweaters We were all we out there for two years probably and Through that we learned a ton about who actually resonated with the messaging that was coming across and we realized that People are really drawn to the, the concept of a single sweater for all of life and kind of that original mission.

[00:17:32] Slater: But then there's, then beyond that, they're drawn to the interesting material and the benefits to the environment and just the fact that it's new and unique and cool. And they're drawn to the sweater's ability to look nice all the time and easy to care for and travability or versatility of the sweater.

[00:17:52] Slater: And as we refined that messaging, we actually started to find that the young people, Not so interested in this brandless non trendy sweater we had. It was actually older folks who were much more interested in what we were having to offer. And it was people who I think really appreciated high quality items and were really looking for high quality items.

[00:18:13] Slater: People who were traveling a lot in retirement who are in their golden years. Spending time doing really exciting and fun things and wanted a garment that was easy to care for. And it's people who also in their older age are caring more and more about the environment. So we found this little, this wonderful little demographic of older women and older men who are, not every customer is like this, but it's, that's where it's, we're not selling to young kids.

[00:18:39] Slater: I should say, we're not selling to Gen Z or millennials. We're selling to, to an older crowd. And that has just really resonated with folks. And our messaging has, we've started to tailor towards that group community and we have an awesome community on Facebook now. It's got about 17, 000 members in it and it's all people posting pictures of themselves wearing their sweaters on.

[00:19:01] Slater: We have these challenges called the 7 day challenge, the 30 day challenge, where we challenge people to wear the wool sweaters for 7 days. In a row without washing it, we challenged him to wear it for 30 days in a row without washing it. And the idea behind that is you can wear the same thing every day.

[00:19:17] Slater: No one is going to notice or care. And also the sweater is purpose built to be worn every single day without smelling or looking bad. It's going to, it's going to hold up to that. So 

[00:19:27] Abigail: is that because of the natural fibers, the natural, like lanolin and wool or something like that? How can it not stink? 

[00:19:34] Slater: Yeah.

[00:19:34] Slater: So it's, I'm going to have to try 

[00:19:35] Abigail: this. 

[00:19:36] Slater: Yeah, no, it's a fun, I always, it's one of my favorite aspects about it because it really, it is like an immediate, wow, that actually works type thing that you get from it. And so wool has evolved over thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of years to be an incredibly efficient material.

[00:19:53] Slater: And the way it works is essentially it has these crimps in it. So it's like a accordion almost each fibers is a little bit like an accordion and if you like zoom in if you like if You had a sheep and you opened up its fur like this and you looked at it you would see this like kind of accordion pattern at the base of its fur and what those crimps do are create little tiny air pockets between the skin of the wearer and the wool itself and What those air pockets do is they create basically like almost negative pressure systems where they expel out the bacteria you That is what causes sweat.

[00:20:29] Slater: So when you sweat, your body sweats and it produces bacteria. And on most clothes that don't have these crimps, so non wool clothes, that bacteria just sits on the clothes and grows, and that's what causes odor in the clothes. So wool actually actively repels those. that bacteria through these crimps that are, that the material is made up of.

[00:20:52] Slater: And not only that, it also creates a, almost like an air layer between your skin and the garment itself, which is what makes them thermoregulating. So whether it's really hot out or very cold out, that little layer of air is an insulating layer that helps the garment perform in kind of all different temperatures.

[00:21:10] Slater: It's how the animals thermoregulate themselves in the high desert. A lot of the large burqas or the cover ups that people wear are actually made from wool, believe it or not, because of the thermoregulating properties of the material, which you would never expect, where it's 110 degrees, someone to be wearing wool, but that's what they do because of this.

[00:21:31] Slater: So yeah, that's the superpower of wool, and some wool is better than others at doing this. Yak wool is the best at doing this. Those animals live in extremely harsh environments. Their temperature fluctuates from negative 20 in the winters to 80s in the summer. They're the highest elevation mammal in the world.

[00:21:49] Slater: They just have evolved to create this incredible. Fiber that has these insane properties. And so, yeah, we challenge people to try and make their sweaters stinky and they can't, they almost never can. 

[00:22:01] Abigail: That's fun. And what a fun road of discovery for you to learn about all these different animals and texts and fibers and things like that.

[00:22:08] Abigail: That's, it's just an interesting journey. I'm sure. And speaking of journeys. How did you get here? 

[00:22:16] Slater: Yeah, it's a very good question. I'm not sure, being honest with you, but my co, my, my co founder is my best friend. We've known each other since the third grade. We grew up in Colorado together. And when we were living in San Francisco, we were working together at a tech company in San Francisco, and it was straight out of the TV show, Silicon Valley.

[00:22:36] Slater: That was how our lives were. We're like a tech company we work for, their mission was a startup to help other startups startup, my God. And it was just quintessential tech. I'm saving the world through tech kind of environment. And after doing that about for about four years, we're both like, we have to do something with a physical product that we can touch and feel and isn't, we have to do something different.

[00:23:02] Slater: And so that's how we started thinking about, okay, what is something that we could start and what are the problems that we have in our lives? And one of those problems was just like dressing nicely for work. After four years of working at the same company, we had moved up and never really figured out how to dress nicely for work.

[00:23:16] Slater: I would wear dirty flannels. And most of the time in Silicon Valley, that's okay. But as you start meeting with people outside of Silicon Valley, they start having more and more problems with it. I actually got called out once, nicknamed the flannel guy. And so we were looking for clothes that we could wear to work.

[00:23:32] Slater: But that we could also wear in our normal lives because we didn't like the idea of having to wear button downs that had to be dry cleaned all the time and coming home and immediately having to change and feeling uncomfortable if you were going to do something after work. So, we were in that mindset already and we thought, alright, what if we just created something that solves this problem for us?

[00:23:50] Slater: And we started researching materials and that's how we found the Yak wool. And once we found the yak wool, we're like, all right, I wonder where could we make these? And that's how we discovered the 3d knitting. And when we were like, okay, we've got this really amazing, unique material. That's really soft and nice.

[00:24:07] Slater: We've got this incredible manufacturing process. That's good for the environment and has all these different benefits. And no one's really doing these two things. Like it was for Eureka moment. So that's how the company started. And yeah, we've just been putting one foot in front of the next ever since.

[00:24:21] Slater: Hoping it doesn't all fall apart. 

[00:24:23] Abigail: No. How long does it take to knit a sweater? I'm curious about that. 

[00:24:28] Slater: So, it depends on the sweater. But it can take between, takes between probably 45 and 90 minutes. Depending on the size and the material. So the thicker, bigger sweater, the thicker sweaters, Tend to knit faster because they're knit on an eight gauge machine where the very thin sweaters knit a lot slower, but yeah, they knit pretty fast and it's an evolving technology.

[00:24:50] Slater: The machines are basically just giant computers and the people who program them are like still learning how to program them effectively. They're always improving the program that feeds in the machine to increase the speed that it can knit without causing damages and things like that. So it's a pretty interesting problem that they have to solve.

[00:25:09] Abigail: That's very cool. So you and your best friend are doing this together. And what keeps you going every day? Yeah, it's ups and downs. 

[00:25:19] Slater: Yeah, it definitely has its ups and downs. That is a constant. I mean, one, is kind of our communities. So if you go look at our Facebook group, we call it the most positive place on the internet is how we reference it internally and to other people because it is just a ray of sunshine.

[00:25:37] Slater: It is, feels so good to see people just enjoying the sweaters and people commenting on their posts and saying, wow, how good they look and changing people's mindsets to I can wear the same thing every day. It doesn't, no one cares. It's actually a really healthy thing for me to do to myself. Just seeing that happen and knowing that people love the sweaters is really the biggest thing.

[00:25:59] Slater: We just, we're almost always shocked too. We, we wear, we love the sweaters, we wear them constantly. Sometimes we just get messages from people and we're like, oh, this is unbelievable. So that's, that's definitely a big piece of it. And also a big piece of it is I think there is a huge opportunity to Build back the American garment manufacturing industry.

[00:26:18] Slater: If you really draw this thing out over 30 years, there's a pretty clear way in which you could do that over time and really move a huge amount of clothing production back into the United States in a very real and economically viable way. And that's an exciting prospect to think about. And if it's not us, you know, we're at least providing the seeds that will eventually grow into that.

[00:26:41] Slater: The machines, these specific machines. Are the, at least it feels like to me and, you know, from all the information I have and everything I know about the machines, the natural conclusion to be drawn is, okay, this is what was missing from the, from bringing manufacturing, clothing manufacturing in particular, back to the U S and it's, it has to do with labor.

[00:27:02] Slater: It's just more expensive to produce things here. And that's totally fine and understandable. And if you can just reduce the amount of labor that's required, but actually it's very viable for us manufacturing. 

[00:27:13] Abigail: So are you raising money for all of this? 

[00:27:15] Slater: So we're not actively raising any money. One of the huge benefits to the on demand manufacturing is that we have a negative cash conversion cycle.

[00:27:23] Slater: So we can invest. It's pretty easy for us to invest in growth of the business off of just our balance sheet and not having to go and look for outside capital. So we're not raising money for the business at the moment. There's. There's projects that we have in the back of our head that we would consider raising money from the right person from, but we're not working on just continuing to grow the brand as much as we can at the moment.

[00:27:46] Abigail: What do you think the fashion industry is going to look like in 10 years, maybe globally or in the States, however you want to answer that. 

[00:27:54] Slater: Yeah, I think fast fashion is something that we will look back on quite negatively. And I think you're already starting to see hints of this trend, if you will, go like this.

[00:28:06] Slater: There's these giant fast fashion companies just are just, they're planet killers in reality and they treat their employees so poorly. I mean, you cannot create an article of clothing and ship it across the world and then charge six dollars for it. It's not economically feasible. There's someone who is getting hurt in that process.

[00:28:26] Slater: And I think there is going to be a big reckoning with that. And I especially think that people after the coming out of the pandemic actually re evaluated their clothing in a big way. They looked at what they had in their closet that wasn't being worn. And they just finally had some time to sit back in their house and think, Oh my God, look at all this crap I have.

[00:28:46] Slater: How do I like minimize and downside this? Like I don't need all these clothes. People moved a lot and realized they had too many clothes. So I think we're seeing a slow re emergence of. Of quality of a desire for quality. And I think people are much more interested in shopping for things that are going to last them a long time for things that are not necessarily just thrown together at the last minute to match something that a celebrity wore.

[00:29:16] Slater: I just don't think that is such a sustainable model. And you're going to see companies that are really committed to quality and heritage and durable construction, kind of, come in and take their places. So that's what, that's what I think about where the fashion industry is going. But yeah, I think, yeah, I just, yeah, I think there's no way that fast fashion can last in the long term.

[00:29:39] Abigail: In Europe, it's just going to be taxed out of business. 

[00:29:42] Slater: Yeah, I don't talk to, rarely talk to anyone anymore who are in my immediate friend group or friends of friends who are like very interested in shopping from Shein I mean, they like. These companies also shot themselves in the foot by getting their prices so low and destroying quality so much that now people don't trust them.

[00:30:00] Slater: They don't like, they just get crazy stuff from them. And it's like, all right, why waste your time on that? I 

[00:30:05] Abigail: think the opposite end of the spectrum is having problems with credibility to like the super expensive Gucci's of the world. Like people are over that, like the clothes aren't often that interesting.

[00:30:15] Abigail: They're ridiculously expensive. And the value isn't clear. Whereas you could go to a small purveyor or a small atelier and they can make you something that's really personal and feel special. 

[00:30:27] Slater: Yeah. 

[00:30:27] Abigail: I'm curious about the name Oliver Charles. Where does that come from? 

[00:30:31] Slater: Oh, that is a closely guarded secret.

[00:30:34] Slater: I'm totally kidding, but before I tell you, you do or you are required to make a guess as to where it comes from. 

[00:30:42] Abigail: Both had dogs when you were kids. One was named Oliver, one was named Charles. Oliver Charles. 

[00:30:47] Slater: That's a very good guess, but it is not quite right. We, it is our middle names. So it is mine and my co founder's middle names, but we get, yeah, we get lots of, the dog guess is a common one.

[00:30:58] Slater: We, a lot of people think it's like Oliver Twist and Charles Dickens. 

[00:31:03] Abigail: Are you optimistic about our future on this planet? 

[00:31:07] Slater: I think the way we've thought about sustainability in the business is essentially it's table stakes. Like we don't even question. Something that is not sustainability as an option that we can do.

[00:31:19] Slater: And we feel like that's how all businesses should operate is okay. The sustainability aspect of this is the norm. It's how it should be done. It's what customers expect to be done. I think you, you've seen in the last decade, a ton of sustainable companies really struggle to find audiences. And I don't think that is necessarily the right option is to go out there and say, Hey, I'm a sustainable fashion brand.

[00:31:44] Slater: You should buy from us because we're sustainable. And for no other reason, because in reality, a lot of those companies actually aren't even that sustainable. They just use polyester. It's recycled, polyester, recycled, polyester sheds, a ton of microplastics into our water systems that never. Decomposed, not that sustainable.

[00:32:00] Slater: And I think you want to make good 

[00:32:02] Abigail: product. 

[00:32:03] Slater: Yeah, you want to make good product. You have to make good product. Sustainability should be the baseline for everything. And I think that just, that model works a little bit better than trying to be a sustainably focused company. But I think in a broader sense, there are so many people out there who are working in the fashion industry in particular.

[00:32:24] Slater: On extremely innovative and sustainable solutions. And we're just seeing kind of the beginning of a lot of this. I don't think that there is like a huge incentive for a lot of these old factories to innovate and include new processes. So it's been slow in the fashion industry. And I think now there's lots of new technologies.

[00:32:43] Slater: There's lots of new materials. There's just like an endless number of. People actually really innovating in the space at the baseline level, material manufacturing level, who are just creating some incredible things that are only going to benefit us in the future in a big way. So I'm pretty optimistic about it.

[00:33:02] Slater: It's great. I think humans are endlessly clever and as long as we work hard and don't lose sight of how important the problem is, we will overcome. 

[00:33:10] Abigail: I love it. And do you have any advice for entrepreneurs today? Just starting out? 

[00:33:16] Slater: Yeah, I think my advice would be for entrepreneurs starting out is start simply don't try and over overdo it.

[00:33:23] Slater: If you were starting a clothing line, for example, just launch one garment. One item that you think is really good and see if you can sell that. If you're starting any other business, just get out the most basic version of the product or service you're trying to sell and see what people think about it and build from there.

[00:33:40] Slater: And the other thing I would say is It's like, you just have to do it. You have to try and do it. Don't worry so much about a business plan, slide deck, and all of this other crap that they say you're supposed to do when starting a business. Just go out there and try and sell whatever it is you're trying to offer.

[00:34:01] Slater: And once you do that once, everything will become clear and you can worry about the other stuff later. That would be my advice for folks is they spend too much time planning and not enough time doing. Just selling. Bye. Really just try and sell it. Yeah. They'll know really fast if it's something I 

[00:34:20] Abigail: love it.

[00:34:21] Abigail: Thank you so much later for coming on the podcast today. It's really been great to talk to you and to learn all about what you're doing. 

[00:34:28] Slater: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor to to come on and share our story a little bit and talk about the future of sustainable fashion.

[00:34:40] Abigail: Thanks again to Slater McLean for coming on the podcast. His company is Oliver Charles, the online sweater manufacturer that aims to reduce waste and create products for a lifetime of. Thank you once again for listening, please follow happy planet wherever you tune in and leave us a rating and review.

[00:34:57] Abigail: Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me, Abigail Carroll. I am also the executive producer. Composer George Brandl Eggloff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast. com.