business advice - Craft Focus Magazine

ethically sourced fabrics
We all know about the horrible working conditions many people endure in third world
countries so we feel it is important to think green By Phil Wheeler
We are a family-run fabric business in Mid
Wales and from there we run a shop and
website supplying organic and Fairtrade cotton,
colour grown cotton and bamboo, linen and
silk fabrics to designers, shops and outlets
throughout the UK and Europe. In order to do
this, we work with growers, spinners, weavers
and women’s cooperatives, herbal dyers, colour
growers and designers in India and China.
We are close to and have been involved with
CAT, (Centre for Alternative Technology), who
are the primary leaders in ecological thinking in
the UK. I think it was the connection with CAT
that was the primary factor in us searching out
organic cotton.
We started selling cloth for crafts, fashion
and furnishing on a market stall 30 years ago.
At the time there were fi ve stalls selling fabric
and business was very good for all of us.
Our four children all helped with the market
stall giving them useful experience such as
to acquire customer patience, service, and
business skills, as well as how to cope with
being cold, desperate for the loo, and tired
whilst still having a sense of humour at the end
of a long day!
As the popularity of the markets began to
fade, my wife Ann decided it was a good time
to open a shop and so we opened Fabrics Ltd
in Machynlleth. The shop is now run by our son
Sam and sells huge range of unusual and varied
cloth from patchwork to felt and haberdashery,
designer curtain fabrics to fashion cloths.
Ethical cotton
Being in this environment, in this green valley
and close to CAT we started looking at how
the cotton fabric in our shop was produced
and we were astonished to see what damage
was caused to people and ecology. Millions of
families farm cotton and 20,000 people die
directly each year from the effects of toxic
spraying of cotton and millions have their
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“We saw on our visit that
the small step of choosing
organic and fair trade cotton,
and choosing to connect
with rather than exploit the
people, can and does make
a difference to the lives of
many families”
lives affected or seriously shortened (WHO).
Worldwide about 25 per cent of pesticide
spray is used on cotton, but agriculturally
it accounts for only about 4 per cent of
land use. The sprays used are often banned in
the EU and are similar to the nerve gases used
in WW1.
Fabric Ltd sells lots of cotton based products
On a trip to Kerala, India, Nancy Wheeler
meets with a group of fashion students
and so we had the dilemma of knowing we
were damaging the people who produced
the cotton for our fabrics. Now we are trying
to promote organic cotton as an alternative
and customers online and in the shop are
increasingly turning to organic cotton.
We make and import over one hundred
plain and patterned organic and fair-trade
cottons for clothing, furnishing and bedding as
well as our own organic cotton towels. Most
of the fabrics are made on hand looms and
have the irregular texture and charm of silk.
Many have the words ’organic cotton’ on the
selvedge so that customers will perceive the
difference and sometimes use the wording as
decoration. We import colour grown cotton
that is grown in shades of ochre and green and
therefore requires no dyeing and herbal dyed
cottons which are dyed with medicinal herbs
and roots. We have bamboo fabrics, jerseys,