We want to know the full story behind our products. For the majority of our shirts we can trace back their journeys to the raw material. We are not 100% there as it is often difficult to trace back the origin of the raw materials such as organic cotton or organic linen. We are working on this to have full traceability of our supply chains.
On this page you get more insights into the journey of our organic cotton and organic linen shirts.
The vast majority of our shirts is made in Portugal. This includes our Flannel shirts, Linen shirts, Oxford shirts, Dress shirts and Overshirts. All of our suppliers are specialised in the production of men's shirts. They cut, measure and trim our fabrics and tailor our shirts under the highest quality standards. They check, iron, pack your shirts and make them ready for the shippment.
One of our two production partners in Portugal is Soci4. Soci4 is a shirt manufacturer in Frazao near Porto. The company employs around 100 employees. As it is with many of our suppliers, most of these employees are women (more than 90).
Our tailor-made shirts and many of our dress shirts are made by Bontex a shirt-maker in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The company is based in Maglaj and is specialised in manufacturing high-quality dress shirts. Bontex was founded in 2005 and employs 220 people. It is certified according to the SA8000 social standard.
We source our organic cotton and organic linen fabrics from the most renowned European weaving mills for shirt fabrics. Our fabrics are GOTS certified. This means that only organically grown raw materials are used to weave the fabrics. No toxic chemicals are applied when dying and finishing the fabrics. Amongst others, no formaldehyds are used.
Our main dying and weaving partner is based in the North of Portugal. The mill was founded in 1958 and employs around 550 people. The company dyes yarns, weaves and finishes our exquisite fabrics according to our specifications and our designs. All the fabrics for our casual shirts as well as for most of our dress shirts are made at our Portuguese weaving partner.
Other parts of our dress shirt fabrics are sourced from an Austrian weaving mill based in Vorarlberg. Our Corduroy fabrics for our overshirts are woven by a German weaving mill. A renowned Belgium weaver supplies us with high-quality organic linen fabrics for our summer overshirts.
We advise our weaving mills to source GOTS certified organic cotton or organic linen yarns for our fabrics. They buy these yarns from various spinning mills on the market.
Whenever possible we use organic cotton yarns that are made from cotton that was cultivated by the bioRe® projects in Tansania and India (more on this in the next section). This allows us to trace back the origin of our shirts to the cotton fields. These yarns are spun by Eurotex in India. We use bioRe® sustainable cotton for our Populus, Castanio, Ursido, Quercus flannel shirts, many of our dress shirts such as the Porto shirts as well as for our Bernina and Lynx shirts.
Other parts of our organic cotton yarns are traded or spun by a Portuguese spinning mill near Porto. Most of the organic linen yarns for our linen shirts are spun by a Chinese spinning mill.
Large parts of our cotton shirts are made from organic cotton that was grown in the bioRe® projects in Tanzania and India. The use of these cotton sources offers us full traceability of our cotton shirts. bioRe® India and bioRe® Tanzania are organisations founded by the Swiss yarn trader Remei AG based in Rotkreuz. Both organisations buy organic cotton from 4'000 (India) and 2'000 (Tanzania) small-scale farmers.
The bioRe® organisations teach farmers in the cultivation of organic cotton, provide them with GMO-free cotton seeds, guarantee the purchase of their harvest and provide them with a 15% premium (based on average 5 years market price). The cotton sourced from these organisations are cultivated, picked and ginned according to the GOTS standard. You find organic cotton grown by bioRe® farmers in our Populus, Castanio, Ursido, Quercus flannel shirts, our Lynx shirts, Bernina shirts and many of our dress shirts.
In other cases our organic cotton is grown in Turkey. Unless the cotton is sourced from the bioRe® organisations, it is still hard to receive information on the exact origins of the raw materials used to spin the yarns for our fabrics. We are working on this and try to push our suppliers to be more transparent.
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