our Journey
At Cheza we are at the very beginning of our journey. Just starting out with only a handful of product to ensure that we are supplying a product that is useful and valued. We have the highest ambitions for sustainability as we believe strongly this must be the foundation of every company.
We have hit quite some bumps on the road as we do not have the buying power yet to use the best methods, however we aspire to get there with your help and pledge that we will always use the best method available to us. Meanwhile we will be transparent as to what we are doing well and where we have been unable to do better - where we want and need to improve.
Product
Production
People
Packaging
Shipment
Distribution
Circularity
Travel
Headquarters
Product Production People Packaging Shipment Distribution Circularity Travel Headquarters
Product
We don’t make any concessions on sustainability on fabrics. These are the most sustainable options we can find based on end use and performance attributes.
We currently run two fabrics in which all our garments are made of.
Tencel Lyocell TENCELâ„¢
Organic Cotton
Recycled Polyester
These fabrics have a significantly lower carbon footprint than other comparable materials. For more information on each, please follow the links provided.
All our garments are washable at 30°C.
For further documentation please do reach out to us. We are happy to hop on a call with you and talk you through it. play@cheza.life
Factory Certification and Energy
Unfortunately only our garment production is Carbon neutral. Our suppliers are not set up to use renewable energy yet and have not started measuring their energy consumption in a way that we can calculate the impact of our fabric production. We hope to work on solutions around that.
PEOPLE
Whilst safety is a given in the facilities we use, Ayes has subcontracted the workers to sew our garments. They benefit from health and safety standards of Ayes’ infrastructure, however we do not have any visibility of how they are being paid and what kind of contracts they have regarding overtime. We accepted all delays to ensure they were not forced to do overtime, but we have no evidence either way. We have confidence in the integrity of Ayes but understand that this is something we have not done well at all is to ensure the peoples wellfare, fully relying on our partner to do so.
Ayes’ third party certifications and initiatives focussing on people:
PACKAGING
At the beginning of our journey we decided to use as few resources as we possibly could. So minimal packaging, sustainable mailing bags and no hangtags that just get ripped off anyway.
Unfortunately we had to return to individually wrapped product in polybags to ensure that the product remains clean and undamaged during picking and packing orders. Also since we removed hangtags, we needed somewhere for the identifying barcodes to be placed. It was a last minute decision and we intend to find better solutions for those polybags. Please do remember to stick them into your plastic recycling.
The mailing bags consist partly of sugar cane plastic (55-95%) and partly of ordinary plastic. Sugar cane grows quickly and is therefore CO2-neutralising. At the same time, the oil normally used to make plastic is replaced by bio-based oil from the plants.
They can also be recycled in your plastic rubbish.
B2B
SHIPMENT
We tried to keep the impact of transport as small as possible. This means the distances travelled by the fiber, the fabric and other accessories are all local.
We avoid air transport for obvious reasons of keeping the carbon impact as minimal as possible and have been able to do so entirely in this case.
B2C
DISTRIBUTION
All orders are shipped from Germany, using the most economic forwarder for the parcel size. In most cases this is DHL.
We understand that shipping is quite a significant impact. For this reason we are asking for you to buy sensibly, follow the size charts and avoid sending back if you can. We have decided to not absorb the cost of returns and are confident that you will love the product as much as we do and will not want to return it. This is a measure mainly to discourage the overbuying with intention to try on and send back excess product. It doubles the distribution impact and every bit counts!
Circularity
Circularity remains one of the biggest challenges. We have identified this as one of the most important missions. To be completely waste free, we must not only look at waste created in the production line, but also what happens to the product after our consumer is finished with it.
We consider recyclability highly and based on that we avoid the use of Elastane as much as we can though we do plan to use some in the next collection (we’ll keep you posted).
We do not use blended yarns which complicate potential future separation, but we do have a two yarn product which is also not perfect and we made the decision based on the fact that we would rather make garments of value to you than product that no one wants or needs. To compensate in the meantime, we use recycled polyester as a way to support closing the loop.
TRAVEL
We avoid travel as much as we can. This means making some concessions once again, however thankfully covid has taught us that we can do our jobs mostly by staying put.
We had two trips in the last 12 months: a workshop with dancers in Paris (1 flew, 1 took a train) and a fitting session in Switzerland (train and car).
We intend to have pop ups, but will endevour to always use the most sensible mode of transport.
Headquarters
We have no headquarters!
Mindful of our footprint we operate as a virtual office. This enables us to work from different locations in different countries without commuting and travel. We also have really good friends supporting us, also in different countries and also virtually from their locations.
We hope to retain this way of working for as long as possible. This way we can make the most of our resources and keep our footprint as small as possible.
SPECIAL MENTION:
our friends
Franck Arnaud-Lusbec: Our muse, model, advisor and creative power
Yusuf Arcan: Sourcing
Sameer Zavery: Branding & Website
Nora Houguenade: Photography
Thanks also to:
Camila Vesth: Design input
