“If you are the kind of woman who likes quality, longer lasting clothes and cares about where they have come from, you have come to the right place. Good for your wardrobe, great for your style and better value for money. Fashion is easy, style demands character,” Sam Roger, Ethics Girls.
Ethics Girls is an online ethical fashion retailer which promotes and sells beautiful fashion and lifestyle products. All products have been made to the highest standards in terms of design and quality but also, and most importantly, under ethical terms.
Ethics Girls was founded by Sam Roger, female co-operative entrepenuer. Today the co-operative has 60 members; including staff, suppliers and consumers. Ethics Girls is a co-operative business, which simply means it is made up of lots of small shareholders. Everybody who buys shares in Ethics Girls gets a voting share and the opportunity to take part in the business strategy. This means they have a share in the profits and a chance to be involved in a community based business.
At the heart of the Ethics Girls co-operative is the idea of developing an open sourced, participatory process within the business of fashion retail. This will allow for numerous contributors rather than just one person or the staff team making all the buying decisions. This idea is to help drive a more democratic process. One consequence of this is to experiment with the idea that the consumer can be part of the process of choosing fashion styles and designs. This is contrary to the more traditional approach where consumers get to choose from what the fashion brand and retailer dictates.
Ethics Girls believes that retailers have an important part to play in developing a more sustainable fashion industry. What retailers need to do is to encourage lots of different ideas as there are lots of issues to be tackled: from fair prices for the cotton farmers, to decent working conditions in the garment factories and developing textiles that create real sustainable answers. There is no one right answer to the current challenges. For this reason Ethics Girls supports designers, brands and students and aims to encourage new ideas that create great designs, top quality garments and ultimately beautiful clothes that women will love to wear.
These terms advocate the use of environmentally-friendly materials and methods of clothing production, as well as providing good working conditions for people employed in the industry.
Ethics Girls stands by the quality of its brands and its own ideas of how a retail business can help develop a more sustainable fashion industry.