Read about us in GöteborgsPosten

Today there is an article about social media in GöteborgsPosten, one of Swedens largest newspapers.

You can read the article here.

The journalist, Per Nygren, asked me how we are benefiting from our use of social media such as our two bloggs, our Twitter account, our Facebook group.

The lastest information from Govinda says that the fabrics will clear customs today! (YES!) and arrive in Nepal on Tuesday. Finally we can get started.

Lina and I are trying to take the weekends off, in order to save strength. It has been a lot of work for a long time now. We managed to take the entire day off yesterday. Today? We'll, I'm sitting here writing the blog, I'm communicating with Govinda in Nepal, I'm preparing a newsletter. But hey, one day without work is a good thing. I didn't even start up my computer yesterday.

Stay tuned, soon you will be able to buy our products from the live shop. Until then, have a look at the sneak preview at www.thefairtailor.com.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

The beta site is released

Today we released our beta site, a few luckey fans of The Fair Tailor have been given the chance to become one of The Fair Tailors first customers.

It was great to see that so many were interested in becoming one of the first customers. The beta site looks works quite well, but there are some things that need to be fixed before the launch.

It's going to be really interesting to see what kind of shirts the customers will be interested in, what their response to the web site will be.

Yesteday we took part in Språngbrädan, a process to gain access to a group of investors. There were a panel of eight and they had been given our business plan to review. We made a 12 minutes presentation of the company and our business idea.
They had both good and not so good feedback. It is always good to get a new perspective on things. We are working with this project day and night and that sometimes makes it difficult to take a step back and look at things from the outside.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Friday night at the office

It's little before 7pm and I'm sitting at the office together with Lina. It's such a romantic setting, the white office walls with nothing but our post-it project plan on them, the buzzing of the laptop fans and the magical light from the fluorescent lamp. This is one part of the magical, mystical life of this married couple.

On Monday we give a very important presentation AND we are launching the beta version of the site. Later today we are contacting every one who have been interested in becoming on of our first customers. Some of them have been lucky and will be given the opportunity to be one of The Fair Tailors first customers. Unfortunatley some of them will have to wait for the official launch to buy their first shirts. But I can not reveal that everyone who has expressed a desire to be one of our first customers during our drive will get a little special something from us when they become customers later on.

Well, it's time for me to get back to work. My goal is to get home before 10pm, it as after all a Friday. Good thing my wife is in this company as well. Otherwise it would be really difficult to explain why I spend so much time on it.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Working on that business plan...

Today I have been workin from 7:30 and it's now 23:30, quite a long day...

I started of with some communication with Govinda in Nepal, continued with taking some temporary pictures for the beta website that we will release this week. Have you signed up to get a chance to be one of our first customers?

After that it was time for the business plan. We have a deadline and need to be finished with the business plan before midnight. I think we will make it, but I'm not 100% sure. More like 99,5%.

We have met with the bank today and with our business coach Christan.

This evening we gave an inspirational presentation for Venture Cup at Handelshögskolan in Gothenburg. About 100 students were there and they seemed to like what we had to say. It is fun to talk about The Fair Tailor and we get so much energy in return from the audience.

I don't have the time right now, but soon I will write a post about our lecture at Rättvis Handelsforum in Malmö, but now I have to finish that business plan.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Front page news

Today we want to encourage all our fans to buy the newspaper Göteborgsposten.
If you do you will find a very interesting teaser on the front page, a small teaser and a picture on the front page of the financial section and a big article with a huge picture on the first spread.

If you do not want to see our pictures but just read the article you can also find it here.
We are really excited and very happy about this publicity. And the funny thing is that the reporter, Linus, contacted us. Lina spoke at seminar at the organisation Företagarna and they were so impressed by our story that when the reporter contacted them to find young people who have started a company they told him to contact us.
We really liked the pictures Magnus, the photographer, took. Our office is very, ehm, minimalistic. But he managed to find angles to give it life.

Today we are leaving for Malmö where we will speak at Rättvis Handelsforum and on Monday and Tuesday we will speak at Venture Cup. People must really like to hear what we have to say =)

We have put up a temp page at www.thefairtailor.com. Check it out if you want a preview of our website design and learn more about our company.

If you want to get updates on what happens with The Fair Tailor - send us an email (info@thefairtailor.com) and we will send you our newsletter.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

A radio star

Today we've got a packed schedule but I have something I want to share with you.

I have told you that Lina is currently doing a radio commercial for Venture Cup, a business idea competition that we entered last year. The really liked our idé and thus wanted Lina to do the radio spot.

Jonas at Venture Cup has uploaded a clip to YouTube and here it is:

On Friday we will be in Malmö to speak at Rättvis Handelsforum. Please check it out if you are in the area.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

A stylized logo and a press release

Earlier this week The Fair Tailor sent out our first press release. It is only available in Swedish, you can read it here. We used a service called MyNewsdesk to send it, I can highly recommend the service.

I promised you guys the new stylized logo and the black/white logo once they were finished and here they are.

We decided to go with a black button thread on the black/white logo to make it more visible against the grey button.

We wanted to keep the font of the logo and at the same time make the button cleaner, to be able to use it for example on logos.

The webdesign on our future site will follow the style of these logos and the x and the button will follow us for many years to come.

Our fabrics are currently on their way to Nepal. According to the latest reports we will keep our time plans. I just hope everything will work out well at the Indian/Nepali border.

The work at the production house is going well, Govinda and Tirtha are working together to get all things up to speed for the start of production.

As I wrote in my last post we are giving some fans of The Fair Tailor the chance to become one of our first customers and the response has been great. Next week we will have a raffle to decide who will get the chance.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Our new logo is here

Ok, I know this I have already posted once today, but since our logo is released today here is another post.

I just wanted to share the new logo with all of you to get some feedback.

This is the full logo with our company name and our company motto

This is just The Fair Tailor button, a symbol you will find on all our shirts

Please give us feedback on the new logo? It's nice, right?

Also, some luckey Swedish fans of The Fair Tailor will get the chance to buy our first shirts. Please contact us if you want a chance to become one of The Fair Tailors first customers.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Fabrics are on their way to Nepal

Monator, the guys who are creating our website, are doing a great job. What they have showed us so far looks great and we are really excited to see the final result.

Our logo is finished and I am currently working on a newsletter in which we will present it. So if you've not signed up for the newsletter yet, send an e-mail to info[a]thefairtailor.com.

I have been back in Sweden for almost two weeks now and I have not been able to lose the cold I caught in Nepal yet. It's starting to take its toll on me, so I'm trying to slow down a bit.

Right now we are working on improving our budget and business plan. Since all of Nepal is closed for Dashain celebrations until October 2, nothing happens in the production house right now. But the fabrics are on their way from India. The organic cotton fabrics have been dyed outside Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in the north west of India. The egyptian cotton fabrics are beeing collected from storage and packed for shipment to Nepal.

It's going to be really exciting to get all the fabrics to Nepal so that we can start making the tailor made shirts.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

2000m fabrics

After having spent a weekend spent over fabric swatches Lina and I have agreed on which fabrics we want to use for the launch of The Fair Tailor. We plan to have 25% ecological cotton fabrics and 75% Egyptian cotton fabrics.

The ecological fabrics are as ecological as they get. The cotton is grown without cemical pesteciedes and the yarn is dyed using aincent organic techiques.

The Egyptian cotton is the finest you usually are able to get a hold of. If a fabric is 100% cotton, the fibers are 15-40mm (more 15 than 40 to be honstet...) and when a fabric is 100% Egyptian cotton the fibers are more than 40mm. And the result is a longer, smoother, lighter and stroger fabric. Perfect for high end tailor made shirts.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

I'm back in Sweden

So after a 28h journey from Nepal to Sweden I am finally at home again. Right now I must admit that I am a little bit jetlagged. But come on, can you really blame me. But I do warn you, some of the words might come out a little strange in this post.

I have just got fabric samples of Egyptian cotton fabrics from India and the quality is so good. Much better than I had expected and I had high expectations. We have maybe 500 fabrics to choose from and we have samples of them all.

The trip to Nepal was a great succes. It took 15-16h workdays but we pulled it of in the end. But I could not have done it without Tirtha, Govinda and the other guys. Thank you all.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

We have organic fabrics!

We have found organic cotton fabrics! I have today received samples of organic cotton fabrics from a supplier in India. The cotton is basically as clean as it gets. It is grown without pesticides, it is dyed with organic natural dye from plants and it is produced under fair conditions. And I am impressed by the quality.

It is of course not quite as good as the top quality cotton fabrics that we have, but they are better than I had expected.

I am currently conducting the interviews for the position as quality inspector and I have met some really good candidates. Hopefully we will know more soon.

Every morning at 6am an orchestra across the yard from my hostel starts practicing:

I changed hostels to get away from a huge cockroach, but it looks like he found me after all. It took him three days to travel 1km. I hope some of his little friends will stay behind at the old place... One is OK, 10 is not.

The work here at Child Watabaran is really crazy right now, there are so much to do for all of us.

I made a video of what it's like in the office. Tirtha and Poonam are busy with the inauguration and I have my hands full with the start of The Fair Tailor production.

Who would have known it would be so difficult to make Fair Trade tailor made shirts =)

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet