What makes a brand, an ethical one? When does a brand has a social impact?
Those are questions going through my mind right now. Are they just marketing strategies, to position ones brand and make sales?
Well, one thing is sure, we need a huge system change and i do not personally see it any soon.
Back to the question…When is a brand ethical?
Is it when you make your goods as a true artisan or when you outsource abroad and pay a fair/minimum wage and what is a fair/minimum wage. Questions after questions.
No matter your efforts and in my case, i came to realize that ethical production has it’s limits. Just like the environment we can’t exploit it’s resources infinitely. There are rules and limits, we humans we ignore them for profit all the time till it’s too late.
I make all the stuff i sell and there are limits to my productivity. If i want to make more stuff, i have to hire. From time to time i have interns. When they are here, the character of my work changes, i spend more time in managing and planing.
So if you outsource, mainly abroad in Asia, where labor is cheap – Turkey, Romania, Portugal – all of that is out of your hands. All you have left, all you have to do is then sale – marketing. And that is where we come back to my question.
When is a brand, an ethical brand?
Most ethical brands are functioning in the same system we are pretending to change and that will sooner or later just end up to be that same one we didn’t want in the first place.
When you outsource all that matters to you is the product and it’s price per unit. It’s strictly profit. I do not think that a minimum wage is what is needed to change the fashion industry. Because the products are to be sold and used in an environment where they true value is not recognized or cherished. Consumerism will kill it, capitalism will.
You will never change your life and environment until you change something fundamental you do each and every day.
Where is Gautier Jaza to be positioned?
Is Gautier Jaza an ethical brand, does Gautier Jaza has a social impact.
As long as we will not see people as people. Be less materialistic, the system will be subject to create more profit and that is only possible when exploiting, outsourcing where labor is cheapest. In fact just a small group of people will decide over billions of others, and not in an ethical way. For their personal benefit and those of their shareholders.
If we don’t change our ways, how we consume, nothing will change.
I am doing my best to make Gautier Jaza a real alternative. Be the change i want to see in the world. For that, i changed, a lot.