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COMPANY PROFILE
recognizing that the context of each supplier's
situation will determine the best approach.
Q. On your website, you state the 40 per cent of
the Spring Summer 2008 collection was
produced in Africa. How much will be produced
in Africa this year?
A. What is more relevant is that Edun Live is
100% African.
Q. You also state that 50 per cent of the Spring
Summer 2008 collection is organic. What per
centage will be organic this year?
A. What is more relevant is that Edun Live is doing
more and more organic (though it isn’t a static
figure; it obviously depends on customer
demand).
Q. How has the garment decorating industry
responded to the launch in 2006 of Edun Live –
the line of blank T shirts created for
merchandising purposes?
A. Incredibly well! Q. How have customers responded to
Edun Live’s ethos?
Q. Does U2 use Edun Live T shirts for official A. Incredibly well! Brand loyalty is really
merchandising on tour? quite strong and many people want
A. Yes, along with other musicians such as REM, to become actively involved in
Coldplay, Dave Matthews, Ludacris and others. contributing to our mission. We always
say that you can do this simply by
Q. Any other notable clients? recommending to the organisations,
A. Hard Rock Café sells Edun Live T shirts globally companies, schools etc that you
as part of their Signature Series program. are part of, to order Edun Live
PUMA uses Edun Live T shirts for their Peace tees. That is the most
One Day campaign and the build up to the effective way to help as that
World Cup in South Africa in 2010. drives more orders through
MAC Cosmetics have been a great champion in our African supply chain.
the fight against AIDS. They chose Edun Live T
shirts for their Viva Glam campaign which has Q. How do you see Edun Live
raised more than $85 million for AIDS support growing over the next
and research. decade?
A. We see Edun Live growing in
Q. Is this strategy of providing high volume sales terms of awareness, product
of blank T shirts to the wholesale market offering and, of course,
increasing long term sustainable employment in volume. We are still a young
Africa? brand so there is a whole
A. We have seen our factories hire additional lifetime ahead of us. But the
people, learn new skills and invest in new early signs of success are quite
infrastructure, so we believe it is providing long encouraging.
term, sustainable impact. Factories we work
with have hired additional employees (50 in Website: www.edun-live.com
one, 30 in another), after gaining Edun Live
orders. They are also able to buy new
machinery in part due to Edun Live’s support
and one factory said they have learned
merchandising skills. Another said they had
learned how to be better managers since
working with Edun Live. Factories have also
learned new skills and have been able to
develop more sophisticated fabrics and skills
with the help of Edun’s production and design
teams.
Q. Tell us about “grow to sew”, your 100 per cent
African T shirts?
A. All our T shirts are grow-to-sew African,
meaning that from the cotton we source,
through the spinning and knitting stages, all
the way to the final logo print on the inside of
every shirt, the benefit of each step of the
supply chain goes back to the people working
on the product in sub-Saharan Africa.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk July 2009 | 51 |
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