People expect their fashion choice to be environment-friendly
Aizome Bedding combines the ancient Japanese art of indigo-dyeing with a modern, innovative approach to create organic bed linen that treats and soothes skin while sleeping. Using natural indigo, high-grade organic cotton and a 400 thread-count sateen weave, Aizome bedding offers a chemical-free sleeping experience that is kind to the skin and the environment. Co-founder Michel May describes the challenges faced and developments made by the company in just a year.
How did you come up with the idea of Aizome Bedding?
Originally from Munich, I have been working in digital healthcare here in Tokyo for eight years while collecting and selling antique Japanese textiles on the side. Wondering why we mostly ignore how bad textile dyeing is for the environment and in fact our skin and health, I felt that Japanese dyeing culture could teach us something. So, I gathered a team and started Aizome Bedding, a company that makes luxury natural indigo-dyed bed linens from premium organic materials that are so colourfast that they need no special care and last a lifetime while leaving out all of the usually added nasty chemicals in industrial bedding textile production.
What is your retail presence - online and offline?
We only sell online.
What about outreach? How much do you think you have been able to place yourself as a brand? Can you share any metrics?
We have received significant media coverage. It was astonishing and I am sure I am forgetting many of them. We had articles published in Forbes, realsimple.com, the FastCompany, The Independent, brit.com and many other top tier publications. We have not spent much on advertising but mostly on organic growth and recommendations. A brand value is transparency. If customers want to reach out to us for anything, they will have a response from a responsible person within hours.
Who are the founders and investors? What was the initial seed capital?
I founded the company with a Japanese business partner that has experience in quality management of textile manufacturing. The founding team combines expertise from various backgrounds like traditional Japanese dyeing, textile engineering and dermatology. The seed capital was around $100,000 used for extensive rounds of prototyping.
From conception to implementation, what were the significant challenges you battled with at Aizome?
A handmade indigo-dyed product is expensive but also has the problem of being less colourfast than chemically dyed textiles. Solving colourfastness and costs was our main challenge in making natural dyes suitable for the consumer market. We aimed to reach the price of other quality cotton linen and to achieve the highest ISO standard in colourfastness, while religiously using only natural materials and strictly avoiding any added synthetic chemicals. We solved this with a novel technology that amplifies dyes with sonic waves, a sound bath if you will, which accelerates dye molecules so that they penetrate the yarn deeply. The results are remarkable and exceed vastly what any competitor has done.
How many washes does the anti-microbial effect of the bedding last?
We have conducted durability tests and could verify that after 100 washes the indigo is not affected.
Which are your primary markets? Which new markets do you plan to explore?
Our primary market is coastal United States. We also foresee a large interest from Germany and of course here in Japan. We now work with private healthcare clinics, spas and organic hotels. We will soon have a dermatological certification, which recommends our products to consumers with sensitive skin, or those who have psoriasis, eczema, or atopic and contact dermatitis. That is exciting because we can really bring tangible benefits to people.
What are the sales of your products to date?
We have sold around 5,000 products in our first month of operation. We currently have two months' waiting time but have caught up with the backlog by March. We sold to 43 countries, which shows that there is a global demand for organic quality sleeping products.
Where are Aizome Bedding items manufactured? What is the current capacity?
Our headquarters are in Japan where we ensure that all products are of the highest quality. We manufacture in Yantai, China. China has large indigo fields as the Chinese revere indigo for its medicinal properties, for which indigo is mostly used. We work together with certified organic cotton farmers that produce quality long staple cotton. We are currently increasing our capacity from 1,000 sets per month to 3,000 per month.
What about revenues?
We are only a year old. There is still cake in the fridge in the shape of a big "1". The first year was spent mostly with preparations. We did two months of crowdfunding in which we collected $125,000 in preorders for business-to-consumer (B2C) costumers and in addition several large business-to-business (B2B) deals.
What is being done at Aizome to ensure a sustainable supply chain?
The advantage of a small company like ours is the short supply chain. We have a dedicated cotton grower, a dyer and a tailor. That is it. I have personally been at every part of the production chain. We work incredibly close to each other. Because transparency and trustworthiness are so essential in the textile product industry, which generally has rather opaque and long untraceable production chains, we require that every part of the chain gets independently certified. So we have three different highly reputable institutes certifying us. These are the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) for organic cotton, OEKO-Tex for the dye, and Q-TEC of Japan for the skin-friendliness and final product quality.
Which are your best-selling products?
Sheet sets sell a lot in America. In Europe, people also want to order duvet covers. But we find that most people want to buy a set, whereas in the beginning we thought a lot of people would only get a pillow case, which would make sense as our facial skin is very sensitive.
What is in the pipeline for 2019? Is any current research project under way? Do you plan to add new products?
We have made new prototypes with different colours made from plants. These are traditional natural materials like barks used in Japan and other cultures. In addition, we want to expand our product range to cover all health-essential textiles. For this, we will open strategic opportunities for small investors with regional expertise. We believe that there is not only a significant demand for healthier textiles, but that people want to know that their fashion choice does not harm the environment. And no matter how you see it, it makes you sleep better. (HO)
Published on: 19/01/2019
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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