Here's How Your Old T-Shirts Can Create Jobs

When you're done with college you get a degree, lifelong friends, time management skills, and a whole lot of t-shirts. A t-shirt for the basketball game, for your student club, for a party, or for community service events. They become your scrapbook—representing your highs, lows, mistakes, and triumphs.

This is why it made sense for us last summer to go to a school like Harvard, and propose that we turn all those Harvard branded t-shirts into upcycled tote bags that can be given out to alumni. Not only are the bags not adding more waste to the textile stream, but they're also creating fair wage work in the USA.

Our pitch fell on deaf ears, just like it did at many other schools. They were used to a price that could only be offered in the far east, where the cost of labor is 90 percent lower than U.S. wages. We learned that universities want to be green, but are addicted to fast fashion prices. Instead, at Harvard reunions they passed out a hat, with a big “Made in China” tag on it.

While America’s t-shirt production has almost entirely gone overseas, we at Project Repat saw an opportunity to create fair wage jobs out of people’s sentimentality around their shirts.

There is a lot of talk now about re-shoring, and bringing jobs back to the U.S., but it’s hard to translate broad sweeping policy talk with tangible ways for all of us to help. A lot of times in the very undefined "social enterprise" sector, something that seems like a good idea, isn't something people will actually buy. While it was difficult for us to get universities to pay for U.S. labor, we felt the American consumer would appreciate knowing that their clothes were made responsibly.

We also heard from customers that they wanted something made from their t-shirts. We liked the tote bags option, but it wasn’t something consumers were really looking for. The terms "t-shirt quilts" and "t-shirt blankets’’, however, get more than 70,000 monthly searches. With these items, we found a way to simplify our production process to make them more affordable to the customer.

And apparently there was a lot of demand for a t-shirt blanket—surprising news to two boys in their late 20s. In the past year, we have sold over $750,000 worth of custom t-shirt blankets.

---

Rather than creating a one for one model, we wanted to integrate our social mission into the business. When someone buys from us they know they are turning some of the six billion t-shirts sold each year—made in the developing world—into fair wage jobs in the USA.

This past winter, we learned that our friend Brenna Schneider, was starting 99 Degrees Custom, a custom apparel manufacturing business with a social mission. Not only would she pay fair wages, but she was also planning to create a workplace that encouraged collaboration in a healthy environment. We felt our customers would appreciate Brenna’s work, and would want to see more textile jobs repatriated, so we partnered. We know how hard it is to get your first investment, so we decided to give 99 Degrees Custom cash up front to kickstart her business.

Now, through our Kickstarter campaign, we're giving you the opportunity to join us, and give her more orders so she can hire more workers and create a stronger middle class. This way you’ll also get a first crack at some of the new products we’re working on. Let’s show that Americans want to support fair wage jobs in the USA.

This project will be featured in GOOD's Saturday series Push for Good—our guide to crowdfunding creative progress.

Add Crowdfunding to your To-Do list here and check out GOOD's Guide to Crowdfunding Creative Progress.