ECO SPEAKS CLE

A New Era of Apparel with Aidan Meany of Found Surface

• Guest: Aidan Meaney • Episode 69

Share episode

Send us a text

Aidan Meany is a young clothing entrepreneur defining a new era of apparel. His team at Found Surface uses 21st-century technology and traditional, natural fibers to produce eco-friendly clothing for companies looking for ethically and thoughtfully produced garments. His new factory in Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood is one of the first in the nation to use digital knitting machines to make clothing that is plastic-free, waste-free, and guilt-free. Aidan found his place in the design industry after educating himself about the fast fashion industry and the toll of overseas production on our fellow human beings and the environment. His mission is to bring production back to Cleveland and rebuild our long-lost apparel manufacturing industry in a way that prioritizes sustainable and regional production and sets the standard for ethical fashion. Join us to hear the origins of his company's name, his innovations, and how he works with his partners in the Rust Belt Fibershed to enable local farmers to process their fiber and take it to market. We also decipher our clothing labels to help make informed choices about our apparel.  

Our Guest:

Aidan Meany, CEO and Founder of Found Surface

Learn More:

Found Surface - Products, Services

About the Stoll Digital Knitting Machines

About Rust Belt Fibershed

Weaving a Local and Sustainable Textile Economy - Eco Speaks CLE

Creating a Bioregional Textile Economy with Rust Belt Fibershed - Eco Speaks CLE

Designing a Circular fashion Brand with Faan - Eco Speaks CLE

Follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/ecospeakscle
https://www.instagram.com/ecospeakscle

Contact us:
hello@ecospeakscle.com


Diane Bickett:

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, a podcast for the eco curious in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together we speak with local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind. Hello friends, Today we're going to revisit the topic of slow fashion.

Diane Bickett:

We've covered this before in our interviews with Erin Jacobson of FAN, Jess Boeke of Rust Belt Fibershed, and during our EcoMeat event that we had about a year ago now. Since those interviews a year or more ago, there's been progress made by local textile enthusiasts developing a farm to garment clothing industry in the Rust Belt Fib Shed, which is an area within a 250 mile radius of Cleveland. This innovation in clothing production is a culmination of a dream of our guest today, Aiden Meany, who is the founder of Found Surface, a clothing brand and manufacturer in Cleveland's Slavic Village. Aiden's mission is to rebuild Cleveland's apparel and manufacturing industry in a way that prioritizes sustainable and regional production and sets a standard for ethical fashion. Greg and I are here at his factory here in Slavic Village, where he has installed a couple of Stoll digital knitting machines, which he'll explain. He'll explain what that means, why that's important and his progress towards making it a reality. We'll also ask Aiden to decipher some of my clothing labels to help us make informed choices about our apparel.

Aidan Meany:

Welcome Aiden. Thank you for for having me. Thanks for coming out to Slavic Village yeah, so trivia question.

Diane Bickett:

I know you're a wool lover yep do you know where the first merino sheep were first brought to the US or when the first merino sheep were brought to the US? I'm getting, I'm having, a rough start today. I'm'm just saying we're just coming back from a trip, but I'm still in my car.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know we were making high-quality wool goods in the 1800s. My guess would be in the mid-1800s.

Diane Bickett:

Okay. So I learned that Greg and I were with the family up in Stowe, vermont, and on the way back my husband and I stopped at the Vermont Flannel Company.

Aidan Meany:

Very cool, I have their pajamas.

Diane Bickett:

I'm wearing a shacket that I bought, which Greg?

Greg Rotuno:

I know you'll be jealous of I am jealous, I wanted to go there.

Diane Bickett:

So the gentleman at the store told me that the first Merino sheep were brought to Vermont from Portugal in the early 1800s by colonel david humphries and he was an ambassador, I don't know, to spain or something, and that the wool was eventually made into uniforms for the union soldiers. Super interesting. So, um aiden in your mission to kind of rebuild cleveland or bring back cleveland's garment industry um, in the 21st century, you have a lot of strong headwinds to navigate. You know just from the sourcing of fibers and figuring how to um manage labor costs and things like that. But your reasons are compelling. I read that the textile industry is the second most polluting industry after the fossil fuel industry.

Aidan Meany:

It is.

Diane Bickett:

And that 60% of our clothes are derived from fossil fuels and 95% of our clothing is made overseas.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah so go you.

Diane Bickett:

I'm trying to tackle this. What was the spark that led you on this path?

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, my light bulb moment for starting the company was while I was at a university. I was at Syracuse University when the pandemic hit. So I saw the supply chain crisis, like we all saw, for virtually every product. Some people were worried about toilet paper, some people were worried about various things, and I couldn't help but connect this real disconnect between product and the process behind it to the career and workforce that I was preparing to enter after I graduated, which was this you know huge fashion industry that had things being made thousands of miles away from where they were designed or where the the you know sales strategy was made or whatever. So I was, I had this moral kind of issue while I was you know had time to think.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, on you know virtual college where they said imagine making things while you're looking at your computer. And I just had a lot of free time to kind of sit and think like what am I actually going to do when I graduate? And it got me thinking like I need to really focus on reinventing the process or researching how that could get reinvented. And one thing led to another, and now we're you know, we're in our factory here.

Diane Bickett:

So you came back to Cleveland.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, yeah.

Diane Bickett:

And how long ago was that?

Aidan Meany:

That was 2021. Okay, yeah, and how long ago was that? That was 2021. Okay, so I, through the support of the school and the program I was in, they let me stay in school and go visit a lot of the partners that I had First research, that were real, you know, shining lights in our, you know, throughout our country, that were either farming cotton or, you know, milling that into a usable textile, or these small cut and sew teams. And they let me go travel and visit these folks that were kind of operating in their own parallel universes and not really talking to each other too much. They were making their product or service and then generally sending it overseas for the rest to happen their product or service and then generally sending it overseas for for the rest to happen. And that's where, that's where I learned a lot about how to string this together, how to put it under one roof, what vertical integration in the us can look like and why it hasn't really happened yet.

Diane Bickett:

So well, even the supply chain here in the us is really spread out. So we'll get to the garments that you're making for the calves and how you're sourcing the cotton and and and all that. But, um, tell us about your company and the name found surface. Curious about the name yes, the name.

Aidan Meany:

The name goes back to uh, a project I had in high school. Uh, in a in a art class in high school.

Aidan Meany:

Yes, yes, um. So we were. We were tasked with a um, uh, a found object, uh, sculpture assignment, that was. That was called found surface Um and that was to source. You know, don't, don't go buy anything, go find the materials for this sculpture.

Aidan Meany:

That had to tell a story about a family member and I remember hearing that phrase and I actually wrote it down on a piece of paper and I put it in my wallet and I didn't know why or what it meant to me in a deeper way, but I knew that I was going to use it for something in some way and actually at the time I was making clothes and I was hand-se some way. And actually at the time I was making clothes and, um, I was, I was like hand sewing clothes and I thought it was like, maybe this is a brand someday that I'll make or whatever. And, um, while I was in college and I had that supply chain, uh, light bulb moment, I realized I'm like, well, this company I'm thinking about starting is using what's around me and it's sourcing these things that are right around me. And, um, that's when I knew, like, I pulled that piece of paper. I was a little yellowed and gross after all the years, but I knew it was the thing.

Diane Bickett:

Brilliant when that all comes together, like that that's cool. So tell us about your factory here in Slavic village.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, um, so we are a full-time team of 12, just under 30 all in with our contractors and part-time team. So that ranges from our sales team here, our marketing team here. We are a knitting mill and we're a cut and sew facility. So we've got sewers, we've got knitting programmers, we've got machine operators, we've got account managers, we've got marketers, and it's pretty remarkable that you see all of them in one space. So I was actually just talking.

Aidan Meany:

Earlier today I had a conversation about our workflow and how unique it is that when our team is working with a client and trying to meet the needs that they're expressing concern over or what they're trying to solve in the apparel industry, that's how I really look at us is we're the folks you go to when you're trying to make something that's never been made before or you've got really strict material or sustainability goals or whatever it may be.

Aidan Meany:

There's really very little projects that we say no to. Sales can come back to production and have this really tight feedback loop of hey, we're hearing about this need, how specifically can we actually manufacture this or make a sample of this or pattern, make this and go back and forth that way, like I can't think of many companies or production facilities where the sales team even knows the production team right, like they're just like selling stuff that they're told to sell. So there's a really interesting this is a really interesting um communication structure we have here, um, where we're literally making you know, we can watch the, the goods that we make for clients uh, come out and then invite them to come watch with us, and you know it's pretty special.

Diane Bickett:

Wow, how did they find you?

Aidan Meany:

So I mean being in Cleveland we like to. We've been busy taking care of folks that are nearby, like the Cavs, and we make a lot of goods for the Cleveland Museum of Art right now. So otherwise, we have an incredible sales team that is just letting people know that we're here. So we do a lot of calling and emailing and letting people just know we're here. But word of mouth for this kind of business, word of mouth is really strong. We deliver high-quality product. Business word of mouth is really strong. Right, like we deliver high quality product.

Aidan Meany:

Somebody either buys that product or is asking that you know, customer of ours who, hey, who made this? Like I've got a business I want to. Word of mouth is really strong. And then, in that way for this kind of thing, um, but we do a lot, you know. We're busy on social media, we're busy on linkedin and it. Every time we make something new for a client there's there's a lot of good feedback and we get some calls and, oh, I want to make this too, or I have an idea, or you know so.

Diane Bickett:

so, um, what are some of the guiding principles of the things that you're making? Is it from the fiber to the manufacturing process? And I want to hear more about the Stoll S-T-O-L-L knitting machine which, when we first met 18 months ago, it was your dream to get one of these, which is a machine that literally you can, through a computer program, make a garment or a hat or whatever.

Diane Bickett:

So you're not operating today. I wanted to kind of record the sound of it. Yeah, we'll get you tomorrow. Tomorrow 9 am, it'll be too loud to do this. Oh yeah, okay, Okay, well, very good.

Aidan Meany:

But, yeah, we I mean. So, you know, the foundation of what success is for us really lies in how do we make producing apparel in the United States better, faster, cheaper than our overseas competitors? If you were to distill the whole thing down to one problem, that's what we're after. So, through this blend of traditional cut and sew, which is your normal person at a sewing machine, and hand cutting out yardage, coupled with this really incredible new tech, which is digital flatbed knitting, or call it digital whole garment knitting um, seamless knitting like these are some of the the words people used to describe the process. Um, we're able to combine the two of them. Uh, which is pretty new. This is a relatively new, especially in the us. There's nobody, really there's nobody doing this in the state. So what that looks like is either seamlessly knitting down product so good example that we do are um, beanies. We've gotten really good at doing seamless beanies. Um, we can do, you know, a beanie every six minutes and no one's got to touch it. Um, which is, you know, incredibly fast and cost effective.

Aidan Meany:

And we're not using any yarn. There's no waste yarn, right, there's like all these incredible benchmarks that you nail when you're doing seamless knitting. Um, then there's more complicated stuff that you can't necessarily knit the finished product down without any sort of hand intervention, but you can knit down the components of it. So you can knit, you know, sleeves and bodies and necklines and all these different components to a garment and then have that be assembled by hand. That you still hit awesome benchmarks. No, no sorts of material waste. You know, you're not hand cutting these things, um, and the pattern pieces are just ready to sew so you can streamline that production a lot. Um, those, those two ways, uh, kind of looking at new age, old age, um, as like one whole system is, is how we're really tackling that problem.

Greg Rotuno:

Go ahead, greg. Do all, or most of the people that come to you like. Is that why? Or is it just because they want to work with somebody in the US? Are they all local right now? I guess, like talk to me about who your customers are.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, so we're definitely nerds and experts and more so than buyers, for brands might be about the actual process, and a lot of that's because over the last 50 years we've just kicked our process thousands of miles away. So I don't blame a lot of the brands and buyers who really don't understand down to the fiber level how things work, because why would they waste their time learning that they don't need to like, it's all happening somewhere else. So what's cool is we get to not only educate people on that but, um, the conversations that move the needle for folks lie in. You know, you can come watch your stuff get made. We will have an incredible, you know, series of of ongoing conversations about your product in the development stage. You can come in here, you can meet with our team, you can go through product development in a collaborative, in-person often way, whereas if you're making stuff overseas, you're shipping a tech pack and kind of hoping for the best. You're shipping a tech pack and kind of hoping for the best and then, whenever it might get cleared through customs, you can see if they nailed it or most often not and then to go do that whole thing again and wait another three, six months. So it's.

Aidan Meany:

It's, you know, mostly we. We see that as what people really care most about is that you've got a team of people that care about your brand, that will, like I said, very rarely say no to a project, that also have these harsh guidelines of what kinds of materials we use, which I'm happy to elaborate on. How do we take that material limitation and still achieve a look or a feel or a color that a brand needs to have for their particular customer? So when you limit yourself on using organic cotton or wool that's from the US, that just limits the product lines that you can start to make or replicate. And what our team is really great at doing is perfecting finishes and dyeing and construction methods that get you the same sort of output that you would get overseas, but you're doing it in a ridiculously more equitable and planet-friendly way.

Aidan Meany:

We're really substituting in these sustainable versions of product that people are very used to. I think beanies are another great example of how to do that. Most of those are acrylic from overseas. We're using something that can biodegrade in time and there's virtually no you know cost change to that brand.

Greg Rotuno:

So are you able to stay like competitive pricing wise with overseas manufacturing at all?

Aidan Meany:

It's product by product.

Aidan Meany:

So like right now our core line of call it like private label product, which consists of things like t-shirts and hoodies and beanies, and these are like templates that brands can take and then go customize and, you know, put their logos on and print and embroider and do all these different things that they, they would do.

Aidan Meany:

Um, those products were getting really really like close. Um, there's some where we're even better, um, like, and again to mention beanies for the hundredth time, that's like, that's like one of the top ones that we're really we're really seeing, seeing a lot of good progress in and really all all the way we get there is our team, mostly our team are like computer hackers of this knitting equipment and the more that we have time to experiment and try things, the better we can find ways to tell the machines how to operate. So, because it's a digital thing, because it starts in a computer program, the sky's kind of the limit with how our team can coordinate and create these instructions for the machine how to work. So, week after week we're learning like, oh, we can bring down the knit time on this product by rearranging the structure in the program this way. So there's kind of a never-ending effort here to bring the cost of those products down.

Diane Bickett:

When did the machine first arrive and how long have you been learning how to use it?

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, so our NIT director and myself went down to the Carolinas, to Stull's headquarters, in May to go get formally trained on the exact equipment that we were first receiving. The equipment came that following month, in June, and that was our first machine. We got our second machine in October and I mean, yeah, huge, huge learning curve, like right now, other than a couple of educational institutions, you know you're looking at very little, very few companies that have access to this equipment. I mean, you know don't quote me on this but arguably single digit, you know, number of companies in the States that have access to this and certainly nobody using it in the way that we're using it.

Diane Bickett:

That's really exciting. So the machinery itself, 21st century technology, allows you to be, to Greg's point, you know, a little more competitive with overseas production. You don't have an ocean between you in terms of transportation and all the layers of of company that that requires. So, right, you know I I mean it can be done, right absolutely, you can be competitive. Color me jazzed do you think people are catching on to the impacts of the fast fashion industry in general, or is it just slow to break through that buying habits are destroying our planet?

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I like to think. I think the way I like to look at this issue is that I don't think our habits are going anywhere, so I don't think the foundation of People are still going to want to buy clothes, right, right, people aren't going to want to go out in the same thing they did last night.

Aidan Meany:

They aren't going to want to wear the same thing on their Instagram feed, every post. It's ingrained in our culture, right? Those things aren't changing, so now we need to look at it less. In my mind, we look from a again a material standpoint. Okay, if we are going to buy a lot of stuff, then let's make sure that it's made out of something that isn't bad, right, and? And that there's not a lot of waste generated in making a lot of stuff. So, like we, we compost all of our physical waste at our factory here.

Diane Bickett:

Because you're only using natural materials, right yeah, and so it's.

Aidan Meany:

You know it breaks down in your food and you know we work with rust bought riders and, uh, our bins are full over there, I swear they come up in every podcast they I mean they're saving. They're the. They're the most organized composting group I've.

Greg Rotuno:

You know that cleveland needs um and beyond is I want to follow up on that go ahead because I feel like the biggest issue and hurdle with people is always the cost, like I have no problem personally paying double for something I know was made in the usa or like made locally or with sustainable materials, but like I feel like you always still hear like oh, 90 for a t-shirt. It's insane, and how do we show people that it's not?

Aidan Meany:

yeah, I, I, I mean. I have a couple thoughts, first being we'll we will get to a place in the united states where it doesn't look that way and that there doesn't need to be this sort of like, a like you don't have to be an advocate to buy you know a made in usa thing. That's like. My goal is that we can go back to the the 80s and 90s, when you looked at your tag and it just said made in usa and you didn't have to feel like you were saving the world for it.

Aidan Meany:

It just like was the way it was. Um and my. My other thought is, if we don't invest in the capacity to make stuff here, then if there was ever a situation where we couldn't rely on another you know, global partner to make our stuff, your t-shirt would be a thousand dollars, like it wouldn't be $90. So it's worth working in this direction, because the alternative, if we can't manufacture overseas, is that things are way more expensive than we think they are now.

Greg Rotuno:

Politically speaking, I think you got in at a very good time too. I mean, there's a level of isolationism growing in the US and isolating against trade partners, so yeah, yeah, I think the world's a big place and we should use it.

Aidan Meany:

It's definitely not a bad thing, but you can't. It's like people that ask how the dark ages happened. It's like how did you forget how to do all this stuff? And it's in the middle of it.

Aidan Meany:

Well, if you shipped the whole process super far away, there's a lot of people here that are in their 80s, that used to work in knitting mills and their kids or grandkids have no clue how to make clothes right like that's how it happens and if we factored in the the life cycle cost of the garments we wear, they would.

Diane Bickett:

You wouldn't get a t-shirt for 1010. You might get a t-shirt if you factor in the impacts on our planet, or if the person who made it made a living wage and the labor and all that, and this is where the equipment comes in huge right.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, if we can replace.

Diane Bickett:

I mean if we could stop the exploitation of cheap labor overseas using these stole knitting machines. I think that's a good thing.

Aidan Meany:

Absolutely. It's a much higher paying job to be a programmer and operator of this equipment.

Diane Bickett:

Oh, that's a great point.

Aidan Meany:

And we are closely partnered with Kent State, who's educating on how to be a knitting programmer and operator of this equipment just 30 minutes away from us. So it's a really good ecosystem here in Ohio to be the catalyst on that. We get the best interns from them. 80% of our team is a Kent grad, probably higher than that.

Diane Bickett:

Honestly, now that we've just hired a few more people. Thanks for employing these kids coming out of the college.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I mean, it is the future, and a lot of it can happen through automation. Like a lot of, I think, this is where the US can be a leader in time, and what we're seeing is really understanding how to implement technology in a way to produce the right amount for folks. You know, brands don't want to have overhead either. The issue is overproduction, and the issue is all this stock that's getting burned or washed up in Africa and all this clothing waste that's made out of plastic is creating an island somewhere. Brands don't want this either, because they want their product to sell. So a lot of the issues lie in like. We all want the same outcome. This is where factories can get real. Like you know, I like calling us a like, a like. A smart factory is that we can understand how we deliver what brands want and what consumers want and what the planet wants, and do that in one. You know, one operation in one conversation.

Diane Bickett:

So I love. I love how you see the whole system. As part of this, can you let's talk a little bit about fibers? Yeah, I just pulled a couple tags off some of my garments that talked about the fabrics, because there's natural fabrics, there's synthetic fabrics, then there's this gray area of these bio based fabrics, which I'm not even sure what that means.

Diane Bickett:

so yeah I've got some labels here. Maybe we could just read them and you can maybe rank them on a scale of one to five, which is, buy all day long if you can, or put it back on the shelf kind of thing yeah so we'll start with with this one which, which is pretty, pretty common, I think, came off a pair of jeans, so read it.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, yeah 76% polyester, 24% spandex. Made, made in Vietnam.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, yeah, those are probably a pair of yoga pants or something.

Aidan Meany:

Right yeah, something stretchy, scale of one to five.

Diane Bickett:

So that's all synthetic.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I mean I wouldn't yeah, ideally avoid it. You know your skin is your biggest organ, so what you put on it matters and gets absorbed, and I don't want forever petroleum in my body, so get it away from me as an alternative to the synthetic yoga pants, I bought this brand.

Diane Bickett:

I won't tell you what brand it is still made in China.

Aidan Meany:

A different composition. Can you decipher that one for me? Oh, okay, um, yeah, so 78 bamboo, 22 bio-based elastane. Um, without no, so without knowing there's there's good and bad ways to do bio-based stuff um, our sourcing team spends a lot of time looking into these. You know, virgin polyester, uh, alternatives, so this, I mean my, I would still avoid this one, obviously really, oh, shoot what, now it's.

Diane Bickett:

What am I gonna wear to the gym?

Aidan Meany:

the the. Now this is me being a bit of a stickler, just because I know that it says made in China. So I'm assuming that this bamboo and the bio-based elastin are coming from China as well. That would be. Why is that? You know that this isn't organic and you know that this bio-based be prone to greenwashing would be my fear.

Diane Bickett:

How do you take bamboo and make it a bad material?

Greg Rotuno:

Bamboo is not a. You can't make a shirt out of bamboo, so what are they doing to it? What is textile bamboo?

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I mean. So you can blend. You can blend bamboo with cotton to soften things up and add a little bit of stretch. It's not a bad thing. This tag is undoubtedly better than the last one. It's way better than a 76% virgin polyester Way better. But the thing to look out for is there's a lot of even cotton being farmed horribly. There's a lot of cotton that's grown with Uyghur labor in China. That's really horrible, right. So you could even get a tag that's made in China, it's 100% cotton and you're like whoa, I'm on the right side, but it's still pretty bad. So that's where this kind of thing I would still be like yellow flag, you know, like that's all you know, like that's all you know. For the most part, if you're not seeing made in Portugal, made in Portugal is pretty good. If you're not seeing made in Portugal or made in the U S, it's your yellow flag on labor. Okay.

Diane Bickett:

Okay.

Aidan Meany:

So turkeys can be, turkey can be, okay, you know there's like a few that are all right, but so many things we have to think about. Yeah.

Diane Bickett:

Okay, all right, but so many things we have to think about. Yeah, okay, so I'll just. All these are bad 72 cotton, 23 polyester, rayon and spandex. Okay, we know that's bad.

Aidan Meany:

Here's one you'll like yeah, there we go, 100 extra fine merino wool.

Diane Bickett:

Where's it made, though Doesn't say oh Okay.

Aidan Meany:

Doesn't say We'll just assume it was made somewhere in.

Diane Bickett:

Portugal.

Greg Rotuno:

Yeah, I mean this is great.

Diane Bickett:

Those came off the leggings.

Aidan Meany:

I got to go skiing so I was happy that I could find wool, leggings, wool, I mean best material best material ever and we're, honestly, in my mind, we're in chapter one of understanding like its application. You know, we we need more time to experiment with how we can use it for, for its performance, like not just as a big, chunky sweater but as something that breathes and and heats you up and cools you down when you need it.

Diane Bickett:

So okay, um, here's another good one. This is not really a tag, but I promise I do a shout out.

Aidan Meany:

Yes organic cotton 100 flannel.

Diane Bickett:

So yeah, the guy at the vermont flannel company said that they source their flannel from portugal, but they do all the cut and sewing in Vermont. And they've been doing that since the 1990s, so it's supporting their local economy. It's a traceable fabric.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, that's about as good as you could do until found surface came around came around Nice.

Diane Bickett:

Talk about that sweatshirt that you made for the Cavs and how you sort.

Aidan Meany:

you know how you source that material and how that came to be and where people can buy it and how much it costs. Yeah, so, um, the Cavs do a city edition jersey every year, which means that they partner with a local institution to co-create a jersey that they're going to wear that season, outside of their normal home and away jerseys, and so this year they wanted to add in merchandise that was promoting a rigorous, planet-friendly initiative. So they wanted to, and this was led by Danielle, who is leading a relatively new kind of office in pro sports, which is this Sustainability.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, exactly, which is an awesome. I'm so glad to see that that industry and that you know category go in this direction and trust people like like Danielle. So, um, danielle uh approached us to be a participant in in the surrounding merchandise around that Jersey um that they were making with the Cleveland museum of art Um, and said hey, we, we know, like you know, shine some light on your, on your process and the kinds of materials you use. Let's go make this merchandise together as a it was a hoodie and a t-shirt Um, and together we used our, our pretty bread and butter normal uh way of making things, which is a co-op of farmers in Texas that pool their their cotton crop together.

Aidan Meany:

That cotton fluff is sent to a spinning mill in North North Carolina where it's turned into a yarn, and then that yarn was sent to Pennsylvania. It's turned into a yarn, and then that yarn uh was sent to Pennsylvania to get turned into a circular knit um Jersey and Terry uh yardage um fabric that we cut and sewed into hoodies and t-shirts. So those you know we we were able to trace that whole process. We were able to folks excited about the fact that this was getting applied into an industry that hasn't really pioneered apparel sustainability before. Cool connection. There. It was really sweet, surprising, yeah, and we got to have Clevelanders make a high volume of sustainable merchandise for Cleveland sports fans, which was super sweet.

Diane Bickett:

And who designed the logo? Did that come out of the?

Aidan Meany:

So the Cavs team handled the design. So the components that our design team worked on were tags, um, paper packaging, um those sorts of things. We really handled the material in the construction side. So we we made the vision come to life, um, but there were plenty of other players like the museum and like the calves that were kind of guiding their their vision.

Diane Bickett:

Yeah, cool so people can find this on your well in the Cavs team shop right Cavs team shop and then the museum store. And the museum store.

Aidan Meany:

So it's in-person only what about online.

Diane Bickett:

Can people buy that off your website?

Aidan Meany:

No, so it's their product.

Diane Bickett:

I see.

Aidan Meany:

It was a very collaborative process and we co-released all these goods, but it was. This is you know.

Diane Bickett:

You made it for them.

Aidan Meany:

It's a really significant step in the industry, because the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Cleveland Museum of Art purchased the most sustainable blanks and apparel for their sales team, for their retail team and their stores. That was made by Clevelandvelanders for clevelanders. Um, this wasn't, you know, it wasn't a charity play. This wasn't, you know, a one-off thing. This was a the first actual step towards them purchasing really sustainable apparel.

Diane Bickett:

Um I hope they get some recognition for that through the Green Sports Alliance or the NBA.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, I mean I've seen, I know Danielle's been raising the megaphone about it and it seems like that's been. I just know when I check in with her and then when I see on LinkedIn I know she's speaking at some global conferences about the impact of that, because I mean the Cavs have a ridiculous following and they're a huge yeah we learned that.

Aidan Meany:

They're a huge, they have a huge voice. So to lead that front is really, really sweet. And there's, you know absolutely more to come on that front, because Cavs aren't leaving Cleveland and we're not leaving Cleveland.

Diane Bickett:

So that's awesome. We don't have much time left, but do you want to briefly mention about um, the project you have going with, uh, the West Virginia university? Yeah, Um which is kind of um rounds out this whole fiber shed conversation, bringing bringing the uh fiber closer than right texas yeah, absolutely.

Aidan Meany:

Um. So I've. Since I started the company, I've been privy to and really interested in using raw material that is in our state or in our region.

Aidan Meany:

Um alpaca yeah, we have the most alpaca per square foot of any state in the whole country. Virtually no one is using that for apparel. I would love to fix that and use that. We're always finding ways to tap into that. In my mind, it's a gold mine what we're doing with West Virginia, led by an incredible professor named Jordan Masters, who has invented what we're calling a micro mill setup, piece of equipment that replaces the need for a farmer. That's got, you know, 20 to 100 sheep or five sheep or whatever, to go through the real, you know hard, uh, high barrier to entry, uh industrial process of turning that fiber into a yarn or into something that they can make a product out of and sell. Um, because right now they're just not participating in that they can make a product out of and sell, because right now they're just not participating in that, they're just not using their wool. We're burning half a million pounds of wool in just Ohio because they just don't know what to do with it.

Diane Bickett:

Yeah, they can't sell it.

Aidan Meany:

The quick facts are if you had 10 pounds to turn into a yarn that you wanted to make beanies out of and sell at the farmer's market, you're in the hole like $500, $600, and you lose a couple pounds on the way. And so you're just like there's just no and you're waiting years to do this. There's just no reason you would ever do it.

Diane Bickett:

Because there's no mills available to turn that fiber into yarn.

Aidan Meany:

Exactly. The costs are super high. The volume, the MOQs for them are super high. If you find someone that you're going to work with, there's already been a hundred people that beat you in line. You know. It's like really just, there's just like a million reasons why a farmer would not spend a second considering doing this. And now the plan is to deploy these micro mills to two farmers in West Virginia and Ohio, and eventually beyond, and train them on, you know, those that are interested, obviously train them on how to operate this equipment for themselves, so that they can take, uh, the, the fiber that they would normally just like throw in a barn or burn or, you know, throw away, um, turn that into a yarn themselves, uh, which you know so you go from a zero value product to something that you know, maybe dollars on the pound, dollars per pound.

Aidan Meany:

Oh I mean, you can sell wool yarn for 30, 40 bucks a cone. A cone could be anywhere from a pound to two pounds.

Diane Bickett:

That's got to help the farmers who are scratching by.

Aidan Meany:

We buy yarn, I mean we store yarn in here, and that's our main input. And the real ecosystem we're working on with West Virginia is to dedicate a team and equipment towards opening up the service of product making on our end in here in Cleveland as a part of this ecosystem. So farmers create their own yarn, bypassing the two-year wait list, the crazy overhead of expenses. They make their own yarn, they send it to us, they tell us what kind of product they want to make, we will make that and just charge them the service fee of using our incredibly efficient, low-cost production methods and then send that back to them in whatever sort of quantity that they can handle or would like, and then they can go sell that at the farmer's market for a way higher margin in higher volumes than they ever could before.

Diane Bickett:

Yeah, I just love everything you're doing. It's so cool, so interesting.

Aidan Meany:

Thank you, yeah, that's, that's a really exciting project. We're currently fundraising that with the school right now and yeah, it would be really awesome. And then you know, it opens the door for us to experiment and create alpaca cotton blends and use this equipment to go further and, you know, just further, regionalize. Things that can be scaled. I mean just the issues to solve are very doable. I mean it's very there for the taking. Yeah.

Diane Bickett:

Well, you've done so much in the last four years. I can't wait to see what this company looks like in 10 years. Thank you, yeah, and you're already growing out of your space. You said.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah.

Diane Bickett:

So that's, I guess, a good problem to have. Is there anything else? You want to leave our listeners with good problem?

Aidan Meany:

to have. Is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with? I mean, yeah, if you're, if you're interested in um learning about how clothes are made, follow us um. Found surface on found surface on Instagram. We have a really awesome email list, um. We have like a blog, um, and we're always educating. If you want to, if you're interested in making your own clothes or getting closer to that process, just reach out to us and we've got a couple of ways that you can participate in that. Um. And yeah, look at your tags before you buy stuff Um and if you're interested in the Rust Belt Fiber Show.

Diane Bickett:

They've got a great website that has uh ways for people to connect around different working groups and stuff.

Aidan Meany:

Absolutely.

Diane Bickett:

That's super cool. Fibershed episode 24 with the local clothing designer Aaron Jacobson, with fan and our eco meat panel from last year at this time, which was episode 51.

Aidan Meany:

So there's a lot to learn around. It's really cool to listen to the eco meat and then this one and just think that that was a year yes that's crazy a long way in a year.

Diane Bickett:

Yeah, just a year ago.

Aidan Meany:

Yeah, and that's because of demand, it's because there's a trend here and people want it.

Diane Bickett:

Well, said Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been fun. This was super fun.

Aidan Meany:

I could do another hour if you want it.

Diane Bickett:

And maybe we will Meanwhile have a good ski trip.

Aidan Meany:

Thank you, yeah, yeah, you got me extra excited.

Greg Rotuno:

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of EcoSpeak CLE. You can find our full catalog of episodes on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are available the first and third Tuesday of each month. Please follow EcoSpeak CLE on Facebook and Instagram and become part of the conversation. If you would like to send us feedback and suggestions, or if you'd like to become a sponsor of EcoSpeak CLE, you can email us at hello at EcoSpeakCLEcom. Stay tuned for more important and inspiring stories to come.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Diane Bickett

Host
Head Shot

Greg Rotuno

Co-host