The Next Generation
Fabric
NewLife™ is the beginning of Lookfly moving ever closer to a completely sustainable and carbon neutral business model. We feel it's only a matter of time before all sportswear companies will need to be seen to be making a conscious effort to make their production a closed loop. It was estimated that polyester production would exceed 50 million tons in 2010 (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester). That's 50 million tons of new plastic per year that the average person who will avidly recycle their drink bottles hasn't even considered when making choices about their clothing purchases. Lookfly NewLife™ garments are not only made from recycled PET from European recycling centres, but the garments themselves are also recyclable. This is called a closed loop process.
Garments
The tendency to use developing nations like China and Vietnam is a tempting one. Over past 20-30 years, the textiles industry in North America and Europe has taken a devastating hit. Most major manufacturers of clothing and specifically sportswear have moved all manufacturing to the nations like these in an effort to exploit lower wages and all but non-existent employee rights to lower the production costs of their garments and increase profits. Lately, there has been a increased awareness amongst buyers to find out where and how their garments are being made, with a tendency to choose companies who can provide evidence that "sweatshops" have not been used in production. Organisations like the Fair Wear Foundation and WRAP are independent, non-profit and dedicated to the certification of lawful, humane and ethical manufacturing throughout the world.
Lookfly is one of the rare companies that still uses local manufacturing for its sportswear whenever possible. All of our technical tops and shorts are made only a few miles from our headquarters and our fabric is woven even closer. Our manufacturing facility is a top notch UK factory that reserved 90% of its capacity for Lookfly and can turn around large complex custom orders in a remarkably short time. It can also react quickly to feedback from our customers to make design changes and trial new product ideas.
While our carbon footprint is already relatively low, we are current working with the Carbon Trust to map out our full carbon footprint from yarn production to garment completion, so we can become a certified Carbon Neutral company within the next two years.
The Company
Lookfly is proud of its manufacturing decisions and sticks by them. We follow environmentally sound methods and use ethical workforces not because market pressures dictates that we should, but because we believe in them and choose to lead by example. We believe our customers wish to do the same.
The Three Year Plan:
