Dear Investor, It’s both an honour and a privilege to be able to write to you today with our first official annual round up. At some point in the last 12 months, you decided to take a chance on our start-up and it has been an unbelievable whirlwind of a year. I want to start off by once again extending my sincere and genuine gratitude to you for your trust, support, and faith as we have attempted to redefine the industry.
It has been a year marked by some fantastic highs, and some dreadful lows, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Our successes have paved a path forward for immense growth, and our failures have been our greatest teachers. The whole team has pulled more all nighters than we can count, have travelled around the world more than 6 times (legitimately by distance), and have experienced every possible instance of Murphys law in all its varieties.
We started with a simple mission: “let’s make jeans with pockets”, and it has blossomed into something more significant than any of us would have ever imagined. We have seen some of the darkest depths of humanity, and some of its brightest spots, often in the same place. It has shown me more than ever that the building blocks of our humanity are held together with pain, exploitation, and suffering, all in the name of greed.
We have however also seen some of the best of humanity, especially from people like you. Giving an opportunity and a chance to a group of people passionate for change, passionate for making the world a better place, and passionate about rewriting that system, and rebuilding it’s very foundation.
We have protected more than a million trees so far through our partners at OneTribe, continued to support ethical manufacturing at our fourth generation family factory in Italy, sourced more and more sustainable materials between launches, continued to hold true to our carbon promises to maintain our carbon neutrality, and have established one of the most aggressive roadmaps for sustainability the industry has ever seen.
But for every success, we had multiple failures, and while it has been emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting, they are failures that have established an even clearer understanding of the monster we are up against.
We entered the fast fashion arena with a different model, a different mission, a different ideology, and it has unfortunately been like jamming a square peg into a round hole. Like oil and water, every step of the way there have been set backs simply as a result of the stark contrast between our model, and the norm.
Every timeline we have ever been given has been missed, every quote we have ever been given exceeded, every pair of jeans produced has been an emotional battle, trying to convince people of our madness, that people truly do want pockets, that people truly do need sizes above “standard”, that people do care about sustainability.
We have come to the conclusion that our current system is not going to work for the foreseeable future. Our timelines are too long, our risk of losing orders in a convoluted system too high, and our inability to truly become what we set out to be keeps me up every night.
I set out to build a model with hundreds of sizes - we have so far only been able to offer about 75
I set out to build a model with numerous layers of personalization - we have been unable to offer this so far
I set out to build a model that changes the lives of people in the supply chain - while we have confirmed that everyone is making a living wage, we have yet to truly change anybodies life
I set out to build the world’s first true slow fashion system, one that allows people to build products that last a lifetime, are built to their body, and built to their preferences.
I have come to the realization that in order to do this, we will need to attempt something that no denim brand has attempted, something that to many will sound crazy, but to all of you, I hope sounds nothing but exciting.
We are going to build our own factory in India, a project we’re calling Groovy Labs.
A factory that is built for slow fashion, built for customization at levels that have never been offered, built to change people’s lives, built to redefine what it means to buy jeans, and fulfilled directly from within the factory, offering a one of a kind, custom experience in 21 days or less.
We will start small, with a facility capable of producing 200-300 units per day, with the potential and capacity to expand into thousands once the world knows. Why buy off the rack when you can have custom, personalized, ethically/sustainably handcrafted denim for the same price?
I have just returned from a trip to India where I met our new potential managing director. A sustainability expert with 20 years of experience working for some of the world’s most demanding brands, like Levis. He has built factories from the ground up, achieved the highest level of sustainability and ethics standards from all of the world’s most challenging audits, and is a straight up nice human being.
We plan to build an education fund, and a profit sharing system that we truly believe will change the lives of the people behind our jeans. Every step of the process will be documented so consumers will know the name, background, and story of the people behind each step.
This will truly be the world’s most sustainable and ethical garment facility, one that we will proudly maintain an open door policy, where we aim to be the first clothing brand to openly encourage people to come visit our manufacturing facility, where most brands would shiver at the thought of the PR nightmare that would ensue.
We will build a one of a kind eCommerce experience, reminiscent of a video game, where step by step people will have the opportunity to build their jeans, choosing from over 1,000,000 potential combinations, something that is impossible in every other factory on Earth.
Humans love experiences, humans love personalization, and the very reason humans love fashion so much is deeply rooted in our instinctual desire to showcase our personality and our desires, something that is very hard to do with off the shelf blue jeans.
People will be able to choose their fabric stretch, origin, and softness from a library of options.
People will be able to choose their cut of choice, whether that be boot, skinny, straight, etc (we will offer up to 10)
People will be able to choose their rise - Low, Mid, or High
People will be able to choose their color - from a selection of almost a dozen washes People will be able to choose their thread color - a classic gold? A striking red? A subtle blue? Black on black? Up to you.
People will be able to choose their hardware - black button/rivets? Blue? White? Up to you
People will be able to have their name, star sign, initials, or symbol embroidered onto their jeans
People will be able to choose their level of distressing - rips? Where do you want them? How much?
People will be able to choose their fly - button fly or zipper! Up to you!
The best part is we will be abolishing the sizing system, exclusively taking peoples measurements as sizing. Give us your waist, hips, thighs, and inseam and we will create a pattern built for your body, a world’s first outside of $500+/pair jeans.
We aspire to create the world’s greatest pair of denim, designer quality, built to last, built to your specifications, shipped straight from the factory to your door.
It will be an ambitious undertaking, but I promised you a revolution. I promised change. I promised that we would fight fast fashion, and this is the way. (*This is the way*)
We will be powering this build with a 200+ part docuseries on TikTok, written and directed by our new content team, who have numerous projects for streaming platforms like Prime and Netflix under their belt. Every step of the journey will be documented, a life reality tv docuseries posted on Tiktok daily, with a weekly compilation (10-15 minute) episode on Youtube.
Given our experience on TikTok so far, I truly believe this could be one of the most successful social media shows of all time, and we are so excited to give you all a look inside our lives, our company, and our project as we challenge the machine.
On another note, I owe many of you jeans as investors of our company and I would like your investor jeans to be the first jeans created in this factory, personalized with your names, special edition buttons, and a sincere thank you note. For that, I apologize for the continued wait, and thank you for your continued patience and sacrifice as we have fought tooth and nail to establish ourselves. Your understanding and patience has helped an unbelievable amount as we have struggled with the supply chains in Italy.
With this, I would like to officially announce our next investment round, powered by our new project - groovy labs, and our first true triumphant step towards fighting the fast fashion industry and giving everybody the revolution that they asked for.
I am asking for your consideration in supporting our project once again as we aim to raise capital towards building this revolutionary facility. We are well before the public announcement, and with significantly better terms, and we cannot do it without your support.
The Wefunder campaign is a work in progress, but if you would like to reserve your spot with our better early bird terms, your commitment is cancellable and refundable between now and the end of the campaign.
We truly appreciate your consideration. We were a team of five people, we are now an ever growing and ever expanding team of 8, and I am so unbelievably excited to be able to bring you all along for the ride as we take this challenge head on.
I am currently planning a series of live pitches on Google Meet, along with live Q&A sessions, you can also reach out to me at any time at kristian@slojeans.co.
Thank you for your time, your consideration in our next round, and your continued support. I am very excited to be able to be more active in our investor community as we continue to expand our team and have more and more time to interact with each and every one of you.
Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/groovylab
Hope you have an amazing weekend
Kristian Hansen