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Last August, the Sierra Club unveiled its new line of men’s and women’s
apparel, part of a major new licensing initiative for the Club. Now the
Club is set to introduce its new spring line of clothing, due to hit stores
in
March.
The clothing line is the brainchild of O’Kelly and licensing manager Grainne
Ferrigan. The two drew up a business plan, researched the market exhaustively,
and have gone to great lengths to ensure that the green credentials of each product
are validated. For example, not only are the dyes used in Sierra Club clothing
vegetable-based, but O’Kelly found a vegetable-dye tanner in Italy
that ships wastewater to a treatment plant for disposal, rather than
letting it
leach into local streams.
About 70 percent of the clothing consists of organically grown cotton, renewable
materials such as hemp and wool, or synthetic fibers like EcoSpun, made from
recycled plastic bottles. All synthetics are manufactured in Oeko Tex ecologically-certified
fabric mills, and each garment is cut and sewn in factories that adhere to Fair
Labor Association standards.
Since environmentally friendly products tend to cost more to manufacture
than the conventional products they compete with, they usually have a
slightly higher
price tag. But marketing studies show that consumers will pay a little
more for a product if it is associated with a non-profit group they care
about. "Plus," says
Ferrigan, "we feel this line of apparel matches the Club name: high
quality, high integrity, with a modern edge."
"
We were in more than 300 stores nationwide for our initial launch, and we’re
getting re-orders every day," reports O’Kelly. "Holiday
sales were very brisk, and we hope to see a profit of about $1 million
over the
first 18 months."
In addition to generating income for the Club, the goal of the licensing program
is to increase the amount and visibility of earth-friendly products on store
shelves, while exposing the Club to prospective members. Direct advocacy is part
of the program; for example, each item of clothing in the inaugural shipment
came with a postcard addressed to Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, urging protection
for Alaskan forests.
Also introduced last fall was an eco-friendly line of Sierra Club mail-order
coffees and teas. Several companies sell shade-grown coffee or coffee
cultivated by labor-friendly methods, and a few sell organic coffees
and teas. Sierra
Club coffees and teas meet all three criteria, and the coffee has a quadruple-green
pedigree: it’s organic, shade-grown, fair-trade, and processed
by a certified organic roaster. To view the complete line of Sierra Club
products,
or to make
purchases online, go to sierraclubgear.com.
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