It has been over 2 months since I posted to the blog.  Needless to say, I am long overdue!  I think I do have a good excuse.  Things have been really busy at Camp Atayne, and that’s a good thing!

I recently read a blog by Judith Samuelson, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and it gave me the inspiration for this post. Samuelson references Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis and his research partner, Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami.  Emmons and McCullough suggest a regular habit of listing five things for which you are grateful. The results of their research “suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.”

There is no better time than now to list some of the many things for which I am grateful.

1. I am grateful that everyone at Camp Atayne is buzzing around with plenty to do.  Yes, we wish we had more time to run, bike, hike and play.  However, being busy is a good thing.  I always tell people that if I were not busy, I would be concerned.
2. I am grateful that we continued a great partnership with Freedom’s Run in 2011.  This race is organized by a fantastic group of people in the Shepherdstown/Martinsburg, WV area.  If you have not run this race yet (or even if you have), I would put it on your consideration set for 2012.
3. I am grateful that we started new partnerships with some great events in 2011 including:  The Vermont 100, The Dempsey Challenge, The Loon Echo Trek, Fight Back Festival, Virgil Crest Ultras, Catharine Valley Half, and the Newburyport Half Marathon.  I am equally grateful that we have some great new partners for 2012: Mid Winter Classic, Old Port Half Marathon, Bicycle Coalition of Maine, Great Lakes Endurance, and Tri for a Cure.
4. I am grateful that every day I get to wake up and build a company that is making a positive impact on the world.
5. Finally, I am grateful for all the Atayners who continue to support us.  It has been a tough adventure over the last four and a half years; however, I would not trade it for anything.

I hope everyone takes the time to enjoy the end of 2011 and spends at least a few minutes thinking about all the things you are grateful for (even better, try to make it a daily practice).

It is no secret that at Atayne we use plastic bottles to make our performance apparel.  For every shirt we make and sell, we prevent 8 to 14 plastic bottles from going into a landfill.  However, Atayne is definitely not the only company/organization making cool products from recycled plastic bottles.  In honor of some of our trash-hoarding peers, here is a list of 5 of our favorite non-Atayne things made from used plastic bottles.

5.  A courier bag for your commute (bike, walk, or public transit of course).  The Elroy from Osprey Packs.

4.  A tent for your camping adventures.  Salt Creek 2 Tent by Big Agnes.

3.  Carpet for your home.  EverStrand Carpet from Mohawk.

2.  A boat sailing from San Francisco to Sydney.  The Plastiki.

1.  A school in Guatemala.  Hug it Forward Plastic Bottle School.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”  Great words by my favorite author, Dr. Seuss.  I recently came across an article written by Nicholas D. Kristof that reminds me that a person can make a very big impact on others’ lives, even if they are a tad small.  Enjoy…

RACHEL’S LAST FUNDRAISER

By Nicholas D. Kristof

Perhaps every generation of geezers since Adam and Eve has whined about young people, and today is no different. Isn’t it clear that in contrast to our glorious selves, kids these days are self-absorbed Facebook junkies just a pixel deep?

No, actually that’s wrong at every level. This has been a depressing time to watch today’s “adults,” whose talent for self-absorption and political paralysis makes it difficult to solve big problems. But many young people haven’t yet learned to be cynical. They believe, in a wonderfully earnest way, in creating a better world.

In the midst of this grim summer, my faith in humanity has been restored by the saga of Rachel Beckwith. She could teach my generation a great deal about maturity and unselfishness — even though she’s just 9 years old, or was when she died on July 23.

Rachel lived outside Seattle and early on showed a desire to give back. At age 5, she learned at school about an organization called Locks of Love, which uses hair donations to make wigs for children who have lost their own hair because of cancer or other diseases. Rachel then asked to have her long hair shorn off and sent to Locks of Love.

“She said she wanted to help the cancer kids,” her mother, Samantha Paul, told me. After the haircut, Rachel announced that she would grow her hair long again and donate it again after a few years to Locks of Love. And that’s what she did.

Then when she was 8 years old, her church began raising money to build wells in Africa through an organization called charity:water. Rachel was aghast when she learned that other children had no clean water, so she asked to skip having a ninth birthday party. In lieu of presents, she asked her friends to donate $9 each to charity:water for water projects in Africa.

Rachel’s ninth birthday was on June 12, and she had set up a birthday page on the charity:water Web site with a target of $300. Alas, Rachel was able to raise only $220 — which had left her just a bit disappointed.

Then, on July 20, as Rachel was riding with her family on the highway, two trucks collided and created a 13-car pileup. Rachel’s car was hit by one of the trucks, and although the rest of her family was unhurt, Rachel was left critically injured.

Church members and friends, seeking some way of showing support, began donating on Rachel’s birthday page — charitywater.org/Rachel — and donations surged past her $300 goal, and kept mounting. As family and friends gathered around Rachel’s bedside, they were able to tell her — even not knowing whether she couldn’t hear them — that she had exceeded the $47,544 that the singer Justin Bieber had raised for charity:water on his 17th birthday.

“I think she secretly had a crush on him, but she would never admit it,” her mom said. “I think she would have been ecstatic.”

When it was clear that Rachel would never regain consciousness, the family decided to remove life support. Her parents donated her hair a final time to Locks of Love, and her organs to other children. Word spread about Rachel’s last fund-raiser.

Contributions poured in, often in $9 increments, although one 5-year-old girl sent in the savings in her piggy bank of $2.27. The total donations soon topped $100,000, then $300,000. Like others, I was moved and donated. As I write this, more than $850,000 has been raised from all over the world, including donations from Africans awed by a little American girl who cared about their continent.

“What has been so inspiring about Rachel is that she has taught the adults,” said Scott Harrison, the founder of charity:water. “Adults are humbled by the unselfishness of this little girl.”

Yet this is a story not just of one girl, but of a generation of young people working creatively to make this a better world. Mr. Harrison is emblematic of these young people. Now 35, he established charity:water when he was 30, and it has taken off partly because of his mastery at social media. (He’s not as experienced in well-drilling, so the wells are actually dug by expert groups like International Rescue Committee.)

Youth activism has a long history, but this ethos of public service is on the ascendant today — and today’s kids don’t just protest against injustices, as my contemporaries did, but many are also remarkable problem-solvers.

As for Ms. Paul, she’s planning a trip on the anniversary of her daughter’s death next year to see some of the wells being drilled in Africa in her daughter’s name. “It’ll be overwhelming to see Rachel’s wells,” she said, “to see what my 9-year-old daughter has done for people all over the world, to meet the people she has touched.”

Rachel Beckwith, R.I.P., and may our generation learn from yours.

A few weeks ago I posted a response to the argument that buying American-made products is not really the best thing for our economy.  There are many people claiming that the best thing for our economy is to buy the cheapest product you can find without sacrificing quality.  While my response was much more in depth, I think I can best summarize it with the following question: Does it really matter how cheap the goods are?  With all the jobs we send away to manufacture our products, we can’t afford the products anyway.  Check out my post, “Is Buying American Made Good for Our Economy?” if you would like to read more.

Beyond low prices, I think a lot of people justify buying cheap imported goods because they think manufacturers in developing countries have cleaned up their act since the sweatshop days of the 80s and 90s.  While there has definitely been some improvements, I have to break some bad news.  Many of the world’s most beloved brands are still working with facilities that exploit people and the planet.  In just the last few weeks I came across these examples:

• Apparel contractors for major U.S. clothing brands in Haiti work closely with U.S. Embassy to block minimum wage increase.  Apparently, increasing the minimum wage of garment works in Haiti from $0.31/hr to $0.62/hr would increase the cost of a $2.00 t-shirt too much.  I guess $2.10 would put it out of everyone’s price.  And just so you know, the $10.00 t-shirt you bought at Wal-Mart only cost Wal-Mart about $2.00, that is the average price of an imported t-shirt.  Someone is making a lot of money off the hundreds of millions of t-shirts sold each year in the U.S.  At $0.31/hr I can tell you it is not the factory worker living in poverty-stricken Haiti.

• Major international brands are importing materials from a Chinese conglomerate found to be discharging a range of hazardous and persistent chemicals with hormone-disrupting properties into rivers.  The brands involved can not necessarily be charged with being evil, however, we can definitely say they did not do their proper due diligence.

• Can’t Stop Abuse of High-Top Workers.  It was recently reported that Indonesian workers who make Converse sneakers say their supervisors throw shoes at them, slap them and call them dogs and pigs.  Nike, the owner of Converse, acknowledges that abuses have occurred among their contractors.  However, they claim there is little they can do to stop it.  Nike had over $19 billion in revenues and $1.9 billion in profits last year.  Apparently threatening to take their business elsewhere (maybe the USA, like New Balance) would not convince their contractors to clean up their act.

I do not want to be Debbie Downer, but I think it is important for people to consider the dirty baggage that comes with cheap products.  In most cases, someone (factory workers) and/or something (the environment) were exploited to enable the company to manufacture products at such a cheap price.  So what is one supposed to so?  I would recommend taking the advice from Eddie Vedder, as he so eloquently said at Lollapalooza in 2007:

“Just think of it as like a boyfriend or girlfriend who never brushes their teeth.  Don’t kiss them.  You wouldn’t kiss them.  So, don’t show BP/Amoco any kind of love until they clean up their act.”*

*This comment was said in response to BP/Amoco dumping toxic waste in to Lake Michigan.

I recently came across an article titled “What if I had to Buy American?” The author of the article, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, makes the argument that if we were all forced to buy American, we would be missing out on a lot of products.  She writes:

“Our homes would be stripped virtually bare of telephones, televisions, toasters and other electronics, and many of our favorite foods and toys would be gone, too. Say goodbye to your coffee or tea, and forget about slicing bananas into your breakfast cereal — all three would become prohibitively expensive if we relied on only Hawaii to grow tropical crops.

We’d have to trash our beloved Apple products because the iPod, iPad and MacBook aren’t made in the U.S. Gasoline would double or triple in price, given that we now import more than 60% of our oil. And you couldn’t propose to your true love with a diamond ring: There are no working diamond mines in the U.S.”

She then goes on to argue that “a complete end to imports would actually hurt the U.S. economy, because consumers and domestic companies would lose access to cheap goods” and “it’s best for America if you buy the cheapest product you can find without sacrificing quality.”

I can certainly agree with the fact that some products just can’t be produced in the U.S particularly where we don’t have the natural resources or climate to produce the product or obtain the raw materials.  As much as I would love my morning cup of coffee to be Made in the USA, unfortunately it is not very feasible.  I can take solace in the fact that my organic fair trade beans are roasted about a half a mile from my house.

However, as someone with a company, Atayne, that manufactures our products fiber to finish in the U.S., I was a bit taken back by this article.  I cannot agree with the author in that buying the cheapest product you can find without sacrificing quality is the best thing for America.  I would call that argument the Walmart Theory.  In a recent ad campaign Walmart claimed they save the average family $2500 per year.  What is ignored though, is how much Walmart costs the average family per year.  For example, what about that retail worker making $7.25/hr at Walmart, but they used to make $12.50/hr at the local pharmacy before Walmart’s cheap pricing put them out of business?  Walmart costs that particular family $10,920 per year ($5.25 less per hour for 2080 working hours in a year).

The intent of my post is not to bash Walmart.  My intent is to address the belief that buying the cheapest product possible is best for America.

Let’s consider the most ubiquitous product from the apparel industry, a t-shirt. If given a choice to buy a $5 cotton t-shirt that is made in China or a $10 cotton t-shirt that is made in the USA, most people would take the $5 cotton t-shirt.  It would save them $5 dollars that they can use to “support the economy” in some other way.  So we lose the manufacturing job of the person making the t-shirt.  No big deal, right?

Unfortunately, it is not that simple.  One thing the article overlooked is the positive economic impacts of localized manufacturing.  For every dollar in manufacturing activity, an additional $1.43 of economic activity is created in other sectors, while service jobs add only $0.71.  On top of that, the national average job multiplier for manufacturing is 2.34.  That means for every manufacturing job, an additional 2.34 jobs is created in other sectors.

Consider again the t-shirt.  By sending that sewing job to another country, we are sending a lot of other economic activity and jobs as well.  The pattern maker’s job followed quickly behind the sewer, as well as the mechanic who kept the sewing machines running, and we can’t forget about the person who made the sewing machine.  They probably moved to the new apparel cluster in another country.

We did not just lose the sewing job; we lost a lot of other support jobs and services.  With all these people out of work, does it really matter how cheap the goods are?  We can’t afford them anyway.

I am not advocating that all our products should be made here in the U.S.  I am saying there is a major ripple effect when we choose to buy cheap goods made in developing countries, when there is a domestically produced alternative.  On the surface it may seem like it is good for our economy.  However, when you dig deeper you realize there are not only economic consequences, but plenty of social consequences (such as exploited garment factory workers), safety consequences (such as lead in children’s toys), and environmental consequences (such as dye polluted rivers that are visible from space) of outsourcing our manufacturing to other countries —many of which have less advanced regulation/enforcement and weaker citizen action groups.

P.S. Yesterday, Jun 10, I toured New Balance’s manufacturing facility in Skowhegan, ME.  It is great to see people taking such pride in crafting the shoes we wear.

Plastics have come under a lot of fire recently.  There are many reasons why people, especially environmentalists, have such an aversion to this ubiquitous material.  Here’s just a very small list:

• There is an island of waste about the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it is known, is largely made up of plastic.
• In the US, we send nearly 75% of all plastic bottles to landfills.  That is about 9 billion plastic bottles per year (or 30 bottles per person living in the US) that we are trashing.
• It is estimated that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used each year.  Only about 5% of these are recycled.

Looking at just this small list, it is understandable that many people want to see the end of plastic.  Some people have gone so far as to claim that giving up plastic is one of the best things you can do to reduce your impact on the environment.

Yet, as a card-carrying treehugger, I must say that I wholeheartedly DISAGREE!  Before all you fellow treehuggers put a hit on me, let me explain.

The problem is not with plastics per se.  The primary problem is with how we use plastics.  Approximately 50% of all plastic is used in single-use products.  Use it once and then toss it in the trash.  Unfortunately, it does not magically disappear.  It goes into a landfill.  All this single-use plastic adds up.  Each year we send about 500 billion pounds of plastic to landfills—that’s over 1,600 pounds per US resident (which is like throwing away your own body weight in plastic 7-14 times a year).

So the problem is not that we use plastics.  The problem is that we insist on throwing plastics away.

A lot of the plastics we send to landfills can be recycled into something of higher value.  For example, the 9 billion plastic bottles we send to landfills each year could be used to make clothing, carpet, or backpacks.

I do not write this as an endorsement to drink more bottled water because it can be used to make other products.  I don’t support the use of bottled water for everyday use.  In times of emergencies or disasters (Hurricane Katrina, Haitian 2010 earthquake, the recent devastating Japan tsunami, etc.), it serves a very important purpose.  But in everyday life, there is almost no excuse for not drinking tap water from a reusable vessel (maybe filtered depending on your local source and state of your home’s pipes).

I write this blog post to point out a very certain fact – certain types of plastic are not going away any time soon.  Instead of wasting time and energy trying to get rid of plastic, how about we spend the time and creative energy addressing the real problem: our culture’s insistence on disposability!

We don’t necessarily need to change the product.  We need to change the system and the mindset that created and perpetuates it.

Last week I had the honor of giving the keynote address at Techtextil NA.  In addition to having a captive audience listening to me (something I do not shy away from), I got to escape the tail end of the Maine winter for a week in Vegas.  I definitely took advantage of this, hitting up the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and a few other natural wonders of the Southwest.

For the keynote, I was tasked with talking about innovations around “green” and “sustainability” in the textile industry.  I thought I would share an excerpt from the speech.  While I like to think it is more exciting when I deliver it, I hope you all enjoy.

——–

As I stand up here, I can’t help but think about why I am here today.  Looking at the slide on the screen, the answer is rather obvious.  I am here to give a talk on “Moving from Sustainability to Thrivability.”

But the real reason I am here today is because about 4 years ago I bought this red performance top.  You might be asking, “What does a red shirt have to do with giving the keynote at a textile conference?”  Well, that is a good question and here is the answer.

The first time I wore this red shirt, I went out for an 8-mile run on a very hot and humid day.  Just a few minutes into my run, I was sweating quite heavily and noticed that red dye was starting to trickle down my shorts.  By the end of my run, I was completely covered in red dye from the neck down.  Bear in mind, this was after washing the top twice.

As you might imagine, I found the experience a bit disturbing.  I decided to do some research to find out what sort of chemicals my body was absorbing when I was trying to make myself healthier by running.  The more I read, the more I uncovered facts such as these about the textile and apparel industry.

Textile waste occupies nearly 5% of all landfill space in the world.  Where does all this trash come from?  Well, it doesn’t help that the average American throws away about 68 pounds of clothing per year.  85% of this goes into a landfill.  That is about 18 billion pounds of apparel we are sending to landfills each year.  We, here in this room, may think this problem is out of our control.  It’s the consumers who are throwing all of this away.  True.  But it is also true that our industry has not shied away from fast fashion and the planned obsolescence of products.  This throw-away mindset does not only create environmental problems, it creates economic ones.

An estimated 30 billion dollars worth of materials is lost each year in the US by not recycling.  Plastic bottles, a great resource for our industry, are recycled at a rate of less than 30%.  That’s right, more than 70% of plastic bottles go to landfills in the US.  That’s a lot of money we are throwing away.  And don’t forget about the taxes we all pay to handle the processing and burying of our waste.

In 2009, 3 trillion gallons of fresh water was used to produce 132 billion pounds of fabric.  Those can be hard numbers to get your head around, so look at it like this:  23 gallons of water was used to make 1 pound of fabric.  Unfortunately, as a global industry, we do not return the water back to the earth in very good shape.

20% of all industrial fresh water pollution comes from textile treatment and dyeing.  You can actually see dye pollution from satellites in space.  This picture shows blue dye washing down river from textile mills in Xintang (SHIN-tahng), China.  Our industry treats water like it is an infinite and plentiful resource.  Unfortunately that is not the case: about 1 billion people lack access to clean water.

At least we can say that we are a well-traveled industry.  The average t-shirt travels the equivalent of 1 time around the globe during its production.  That travel rivals the amount of miles us car-addicted Americans drive on a yearly basis.

I know I am not painting a very pretty picture.  And believe it or not, at heart I am an optimist.  That is why within a couple days of the red shirt incident, I quit my job and became what some call a social entrepreneur.  There are a lot of definitions out there for social entrepreneurs, but I like to think about it like this.  A social entrepreneur is someone who sees environmental and social problems as business opportunities.  We find things that are not working for society or the environment and develop new business systems and models to solve the problems.   And while we are trying to drive positive environmental and social change like a non-profit, one of our core goals is to make money.  Essentially, social entrepreneurs leverage business, the most powerful machine out there, to create positive change.

However, you do NOT need to start a company to be someone who leverages the power of business to drive positive social change.  That just happens to be the road I took.  You can also drive positive change within an existing business.  You can be a social INTRA-prenuer.  A social INTRApreneur leverages the power of an existing business to create new business models, processes, or products to tackle environmental and social challenges.

So, if I have one audacious goal for this talk, it is that a few of you might be inspired to blaze ahead as a social intra-prenuer or even an entrepreneur.

Based on all I have said so far, you might imagine a guy like me gets pretty excited to hear people in our industry talk about “going green” or “being more sustainable.”  Well, you’d be wrong.  I actually hate those terms.  I find them counter productive.  First of all, green is a color.  It is a very nice color, but at the end of the day, it is just a color.  And when it is used in the context of business, it typically conjures up images of Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging hippies fighting against any sort of economic growth.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love Birkenstocks, hugging trees, and hippies.  But I also believe economic growth is positive for the world if done intelligently.

Now take the word sustainable.  If I were to ask my wife what she thought about our relationship, and she said it was sustainable, I would be very concerned.  I would rather her describe it by using words such as passionate or thriving.

So when I hear people throw around the words green and sustainable in the business context, I get concerned.  I think they are counter-productive.  They suggest that we have to compromise economic growth.  In my opinion, economic growth and creating positive environmental and social change go hand in hand.  It just requires you to look at things differently, sometimes very differently.

As Albert Einstein said and I’m sure we’ve all heard before, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it.  You must learn to see the world anew.”

I say we change the way we think and talk about environmental and social issues in our industry.  Instead of talking about creating a green or sustainable textile industry, let’s talk about creating a thrivable one.  Let’s move from sustainability to thrivability.  So, what am I talking about when I say thrivability?

——

If you want to hear the rest, well, I guess you might just have to go through the agony of seeing me talk in person. : )

In 2010, Atayne had a great year with our custom apparel program.  From Bowdoin College and the Army National Guard to Freedom’s Run and the Maine Track Club, we have found many organizations are actively seeking apparel made in a more responsible way (both for people and the planet).  Because of last year’s success, we decided to make our custom program a major priority for 2011.

Organizations are definitely attracted to our 100% recycled materials, made in the USA story.  We also saw a huge opportunity in promoting the product safety story of our products.  We thought a lot of races and events would want to buy apparel that has 3^rd party certifications for human safety (all our yarns, dyes, and fabrics meet the Oeko-Tex 100 Standard).  Since races inherently attract a very health conscious audience, it seemed like a great story to tell.  This story seemed like a no brainer for races raising money for cancer (the Community Cancer Center shared this sentiment by purchasing Atayne tops for their 2010 Combat Cancer 10k Trail Race).

Alas, what we suspected does not seem to be true.  While we have a handful of events and races who are seriously considering Atayne for their 2011 apparel needs, many of the cancer-oriented events have decided to go in another direction.  The reason we are always given is cost.

I know cost is an important consideration for events, especially events whose mission is to raise money for a cause.  I also know that Atayne will never be the cheapest option. But, we don’t want to be the cheapest option: we want to be the safest option, for both people and the planet.

Very understandably, many events are focused primarily on price for their event-branded apparel.  What isn’t usually considered is the other costs that come with cheap apparel. When events are purchasing cheap apparel and other merchandise, they may be unknowingly contributing to a problem they are trying to solve (human health, environment, etc.).

Let’s consider the “other costs” of a couple of common event apparel items: 1) a conventional cotton volunteer t-shirt, and 2) a technical polyester participant top.

The conventional cotton in that cheap (probably $2.00) volunteer t-shirt took about 1/3 of a pound of pesticides to grow.  An event with 500 volunteers contributes to the use of over 165 lbs of pesticides.  Should the event consider the harm and potential cancer those pesticides could be causing for the workers in those cotton fields or even the people living near the fields who are exposed to the pesticides?

The $5 to $6 “performance” top was likely dyed with products containing carcinogenic heavy metals.  Should the event consider the harm and potential cancer those heavy metals could be causing for the people working in the dye facility, the people living near the dye facility where the factory pollutes the ground water, or even the wearer of the top?

But the questions don’t stop there.  If an event raises a few thousand dollars or even a million or more dollars for cancer organizations, is it worth it if their activities might lead to even one new case of cancer?

The most popular of these events sell out hundreds or even thousands of entries in minutes.  Should they consider raising the entry fee a couple dollars to purchase gear made in a more responsible manner, where the company making it actually cares about the health of the wearers, the producers and the planet?

I think anyone reading this would assume my answer to all these questions is yes.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of the people working on these events go by the theory that the end justifies the means.  Or maybe they just have a hard time getting their head around the “other costs.”  That is definitely a challenging task.  Here is one way to look at it.  The EPA estimates the value of a life lost to cancer between $9.1MM and $13.65MM.  That is a wide range, but here is the key takeaway.  Let’s take an event that raises $1MM for cancer research. If through the course of their activities they contribute to just one case of cancer, they are actually down somewhere in the range of $8MM to $12MM.  Does it even make sense for the event to exist?

I am not saying that all events should be buying Atayne apparel, although, I certainly would not complain if that were to happen.  There are several other companies that offer similar responsibly made products.  One of my favorites is fellow certified B Corp, TS Designs.  They focus on organic cotton and have one of the most innovative screen-printing processes out there.

What I am saying is that event organizers, especially those tied to an organization promoting human health or the environment, should base their purchasing decisions on more than just “What is the financial cost?”

So next time you consider entering a race, maybe ask the organizers if their apparel and other “freebies” have been proven to be safe for people and the planet?  If not, you might want to run the other way.

“Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretense that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.”

-Charles Dickens

When I first came up with the idea to start Atayne, I set the goal of manufacturing our products right here in the United States.  Not only did I want to minimize the miles our products travel and the resulting harmful emissions, I wanted to support jobs in the communities where people were buying our products.  Consider these interesting facts:

• It is estimated that the average t-shirt travels the equivalent of one time around the globe during its production.  That is almost 8,000 miles!
• Since 2001, the U.S. has lost nearly 400,000 jobs related to the garment manufacturing industry.  I can’t even imagine what that figure is if we go back to 1980.

In addition to making our apparel from 100% recycled materials, I wanted to go against the norms and trends.  Despite the fact that many industry vets said we would have to manufacture overseas, Atayne has manufactured all of our products in the US and Canada from day one.

What we pay for in extra cost by manufacturing in the United States is almost always made up in superior quality and customer service.  Most manufacturers know that they cannot compete on price and provide value in other areas.  Unfortunately, I have to say “almost always” and “most manufacturers.”

There are times when manufacturers in the states seem to be encouraging companies to manufacture off shore.  For example, we are finalizing the development of a men’s and women’s long sleeve 1/4-zip top.  This is requiring us to source zippers.  We are looking for a recycled zipper that is made in the U.S.  Here is the kicker; we are being told the minimum order is 10,000 units!  Not quite sure what we would do with 10,000 zippers at this stage in the game.

This situation leaves us with a couple options.  We could purchase a recycled zipper made in China at a fraction of the cost and at a much lower minimum.  Or we could purchase a non-recycled zipper made in the USA at a lower minimum (but still more expensive than China).

This is definitely a frustrating position to be in.  With a higher cost, you would expect more flexibility.  But in the world of zippers, apparently that is not the case.  So, the search continues for a recycled zipper made in the USA at more reasonable minimums…

I can remember back to New Year’s Eve 1987.  I was thinking ahead to the year 2000.  In my mind it was so far into the future, and my exact thought was, “Wow, I will be sooooo old in the year 2000!”

As a 10 year old in 1987, 23 was “soooo old.”  I wonder what that 10 year old would think about me turning 34 this year?

Anyway, Happy New Year!

As far back as I can remember, even as a naïve 10 year old, I have always set New Year’s resolutions.  Now, I like to think of them more as goals.  Around the start of the New Year, I typically set career and personal goals that I hope to accomplish in the coming year. Some of the personal things on my list for 2011 include:

• Running a sub-3 hour marathon (assuming my left knee finally comes around)
• Running an ultra-marathon (I think that I will start with a 50k)
• Starting to play guitar again (although I am really hoping to learn the Mandolin)

Being recently married, I added relationship goals for 2011.  Becca and I have been sitting down and talking about things we want to do in 2011 to make sure our relationship continues to strengthen (and that we continue to add capital to the “love bank,” as one deliriously happy married friend advised).  It has been fun to talk together about what we want for the future.

All this resolution making got me thinking about Atayne.  Atayne also has resolutions.  They are the goals in our strategic plan.  I would put these types of goals in a similar category as the personal and career goals that I set for myself.  But what about Atayne’s “relationship” resolutions?  What about the goals that we develop with our community of loyal friends?

I thought I would try something new in 2011 and get people’s thoughts on what you would like to see us accomplish together in 2011.  Please share with me any thoughts or ideas you have for Atayne in 2011.