Who Made My Bag?
From the beginning we knew that it isn’t only important to us to produce vegan handbags - they also had to be produced under ethical conditions. Because how cruelty-free is a bag that is free of animal ingredients, but is produced under terrible conditions?
Ever since Rana Plaza more and more people are interested in where their clothes, bags and accessories are made and ask, especially during Fashion Revolution Week: Who made my clothes?
Back to the start...
When we knew that we wanted to start nuuwaï, our first question was: Where and how do we want to have our bags produced? So we started looking for and visited various productions inside and outside of Europe and were shocked by some of the conditions there.
By chance we met our producers from India at a fair. We started talking, we told them about our idea and were invited to personally visit the production because we were skeptical.
So before and during our production, we went to India twice to make sure the production conditions were as good as we were promised.
Our production in India is now family-run in the third generation and places great emphasis on fair and safe working conditions. The building, where production and administration are located, was newly built 2 years ago and has all the necessary safety precautions, such as signposted escape routes, emergency exits, fire alarms, fire extinguishers, protective clothing for workers and much more.
All workers receive a living wage, a salary on which they and their families are able to meet their needs, and some of them have been with the company for more than 20 years. In addition, our production is SMETA 6.0 certified, which ensures social standards and excludes, for example, child labor, forced labor and discrimination and ensures regular working hours.
We are in close contact with the employees there and will be continuing to visit them in the future.
What about our materials?
Our APPLESKIN is made in Italy and is Ökotex-100 certified. It consists of 50% apple waste, which accumulates during the production of apple juice and other apple products.You can learn more about Appleskin here. The lining of our bags consists of plastic bottles and fishing nets, which are fished out of the sea as part of the "Upcycling the oceans" project by ECOALF. We buy up stocks that are too small to be used for the textile industry. This way we support ECOALF and their work while at the same time conserving resources and minimizing waste.