Happee is fashion with purpose. Generating positive social and environmental impact is one of our operating principles. Craftsmanship is the second pillar of rural economy in India. For this reason, our prints and embroideries are made by local rural artisans, valuing their knowledge, skills and generating work and income for their families. And we also seek to work with raw materials that reduce the environmental impact. We are a social company that believes in fashion made with meaning. The fashion that enchants, includes, embraces, rescues, develops, generates profit and opportunity. One that is capable of creating a more equal and fair system, where people and their well-being are parading on the catwalks, showing us a new way of looking, buying and trying on fashion.
WHY CHANGE THE WORLD THROUGH FASHION?
The fashion industry is the fifth most polluting in the world. Twenty percent of the world's garbage comes from fashion, and in the United States alone, 9.5 billion clothes are thrown away every year. The average consumer buys 60% more clothes than 15 years ago, but each piece lasts half as long.It's the fast fashion era.
Between 60 and 75 million people work in the apparel industry worldwide. In Cambodia and Bangladesh, the average wage of a worker is only $ 60 per month. On April 24, 2013, a building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 1,134 local workers making clothing for global fast fashion brands at low wages and unhealthy conditions.
HOW WE SEEK TO DO OUR PART
We are passionate about doing good and helping others. That's why our social project is called Happee to Help. This is why we have an ongoing social program, where we help communities at different cities and villages in India.
Read more about our initiatives below:
Women Empowerment
In 2019, we started a partnership with the Praveen Lata Sansthan NGO in Jaipur. In our partnership, we seek to empower young women (16 years old onwards) with stitching, designing and pattern making skills, so they feel are qualified to find work at different companies or take small orders creating clothes to customers in their communities.
This NGO also develops reusable and sustainable sanitary pads, which are made by local women. This way, they contribute not only to their health, but also provide them with work. We'll soon start a new one-for-one model (in September 2019), where we will donate one sanitary pad for each product sold.
Artisan Development
Since 2015, we have been teaching craftsmen who make our pieces about new craft techniques, design and quality control. This allows them to understand better the requirements and quality standards
of international markets. All of the artisans are hand picked by us at different villages in states in India, in order to assure we provide work to artisans directly (instead of middlemen) and make sure their is no child labor or exploitation involved. In addition, we are currently working with an artisan from Jaipur who makes handmade paper. He provides us with sustainable packaging made with seed paper that can be planted, and is biodegradable. We are also assisting him to create a fundraising campaign, to leverage his brand and business. If it's successful, we will develop this project with other artisans as well.
Education
In 2015 and 2016, we partnered with the NGO Rays from Jaipur. With the profit from our sales, we sponsored the education of 5 HIV-positive children throughout the year, donating new clothes and school supplies to 60 children. At that time we also developed educational activities with the children. At these activities, we encouraged them to dream, to develop self-confidence and respect towards other as well as women. It was a wonderful time for us.
Sustainability is a work in constant progress. It is impossible today for a brand to be 100% sustainable, because that would require no production at all. However, we seek to further enhance our efforts in this sector. Check out our efforts in this area:
WHAT HAS ALREADY IMPROVED
In December 2018, we started working with clothing as well as accessories. There is a good range of sustainable clothing fabrics today, which has optimized our sustainability efforts. We had already worked with organic cotton on scarves. Now we work only with sustainable certified fabrics, like Tencel, Organic Cotton, among others. It's been a major development for us. Our prints and embroideries are done by hand, providing work to artisans and reducing a lot the carbon footprint, as manual block printing or tie dye doesn't require electricity.
WHAT WE NEED TO IMPROVE
In the beginning, our creations were accessories with handmade embroidery and prints. Our best selling products were shoes. But shoe production requires manufacturing in large factories, many components, and finding sustainable alternatives for all components is a big challenge. So while we are already focusing on the human aspect, and have a good range of fabrics for clothing, we still need to improve the components used in our shoes and accessories. We need to improve in our impact. Being a very small team, it may be harder to assess it, but now as our team grows, our efforts towards impact creation are increasing considerably.
