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

A meeting with Björn Söderberg

After yesterdays tour of the fabric markets to look for fabrics for our fair trade tailor made shirts this has been a much calmer day. Saturday is the day of in Nepal so I thought it would be more quiet today. Little did I know that the neighbours have an orchestra and the orchestra had practice time a 6am today. I am glad that I can sleep fairly well despite of the noice.

Me using public transportation on the way to the fabric dealers

If the video doesn't work, use this link.

Today I have met with Björn Söderberg, a Swedish entrepreneur that is the reason that we have decided to put our production in Nepal. We had originally thought of having the production in Cambodja, but we started talking and here I am, 8 months later, in Kathmandu, Nepal.

We talked for hours about what can be done here in Nepal and why some things can not be done. It was interesting to get his insight to the situation in Nepal. He also had some really exciting projects planned for the future, but I can reveal here what he has planned. Today we discussed entrepreneurship, our business and Nepal. On Friday we are going out to see the Watabaran paper production facilities.

I have uploaded nine videos on YouTube now, you can find them if you search for The Fair Tailor.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Cockroaches in the room and ants in the laptop

Yesterday I met with Tirtha and Poonam at the new office of Watabaran. It was great seeing them again and the new place looked great. They have changed offices to try to get many of ther projects located in the same area.

This is a video showing me and Tirhta going over some CVs and Poonam working by the computer.

During my visit Tirtha and I set up a busy schedule for my time here. I'm fully booked until Thursday so far, but I have a feeling that more things will turn up.

Video showing the outside of the new Watabaran office and the production house.

After the meeting with Tirtha and Poonam i found myself involved in a game of some kind with the locals. I don't know the name for it in English, but it is a little bit like pool.

I didn't get much sleep last night. I am a little, but not to much, jetlaged. But one thing that definitly kept me up was my bed company...

Big Bob, the king of my friendly room mate cockroaches

My first night here I was to tired to notice it, but the rooms was filled with cockroaches. I know that they'r not dangerous in any way, but I still don't like them. When I started my computer this morning I realized that I had some more friends. Suddenly there was an ant on my laptop keyboard. I flipped it away but soon there was another. And another, and another. I guess they moved in to my computer over night...

I have already called a new hostel, I'm moving after I have finished breakfast.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Getting ready to go to Nepal

It's just two days until I'm going to leave for little more than two weeks in Nepal. The work has been quite intense these last weeks and I doubt that it will slow down anytime soon. If everything goes as planned I guess I will be able to take a week off in about a year... But hey, the trip to Nepal will take about 24 hours, I can rest a little then. Right now I'm working on getting some pictures to use to describe to Watabaran what we mean with certain things. I have a short window when I'm able to work before Lina gets up. She doesn't like me working on the week end... And she is probably right, It would be better to get some rest right about now.

I have not started packing yet, but I think I know where everything I need is at least. I should be able to make it in time.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

We are hiring! Please let people know

We are planning to hire a quality controller in Kathmandu, Nepal and an ad will be posted in some local newspapers.

Please forward this ad to anyone you know who might know someone who might know someone in Nepal. Use Twitter, Facecbook, your blog, Reddit, Linkedin and any other way you can find to promote this.

Wanted a Quality Controller (QC) for textiles product based company

About The Company
The Fair Tailor is a company located in Gothenburg in Sweden. We sell Fair Trade and organic tailor made shirts and other textiles such as towels and pillowcases. We work together with the organisation Child Watabaran in Nepal, which gives all profit from its production house to social projects. Child Watabaran runs a school for street children, a child home and medical services for street children. We are convinced that it's possible to combine a successful business enterprise with social responsibility.

About the work
We are looking for someone who can work for us at the production house of Child Watabaran. You will be the link between The Fair Tailor and Child Watabaran. You will be in charge of quality inspections and you make sure that everything is up to our quality standard. You will also help us keep track on stock levels and shipping statuses.

Desired Qualities of Quality Controller
Honesty is an absolute requirement for us and besides, you have:

· At least 5 years of experience working as Quality Controller in exclusive tailoring and export based garment and a knowledge and understanding of the quality expected by our European customers.

· Knowledge of quality related to fabric types, accessories, production process and process of quality check

· Excellent command of both written and spoken English and Nepali.
Computer proficiency in several Windows-based applications, such as Word Processing, Internet browser as well as experience of using a digital camera.Excellent knowledge of using internet and computer savvy people gets priority.

· The ability to work independently and as part of a team and that you can perform under pressure.

Women and candidates from underprivileged castes and ethnic groups are highly encouraged to apply. Interested candidates are solicited to send their complete application with CV, two referees and a recent passport size photograph.

Only short-listed candidates will be called for interview.

Apply before August 29 2009 with CV, name and address of two referees, recent photo and expected salary.
Send your application to info@thefairtailor.com and tirtha@watabaran.com

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Acceleration

The pace is picking up by the minute and even if I sometimes can feel that I don't have 100% control over the situation I really like it.

We are planning to employ someone in Nepal to work for The Fair Tailor at Watabaran to be in charge of quality and to blog about the work in Nepal on our website. For some reason the didn't teach us in school how to write Nepali wanted ads. But I have learned a lot of calculus and programing...

The plan right now is to go to Nepal in the beginning of September and stay for two weeks, but that can of course change. I will employ the quality control supervisor and, visit the fabric markets and talk to the people who will work for us at Watabaran. But the thing I'm looking forward to the most is maybe the inauguration of the new Watabaran Childrens home. The Inauguration is set for September 14, so I should be able to attend it.

Lina is doing a great job with setting up meetings with potential customers. She is going to Stockholm in a few weeks to visit the EcoNow fair and also to meet with people and companies we are interested to work with or learn from.

We are working on getting the website up and running, that's quite a challenge. Hopefully we will meet our deadline.

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

We're cutting up fine dress shirts and sending them to Asia

In order to show our producers, DEM Collective and Watabaran, what shirt quality we strive towards we have bought fine dress shirts on Second Hand. The plan now is to cut them in half and send one part to South Asia and keep the other part here as a reference.The shirts we are sending are Gant, Stenströms, Eton and Hugo Boss. It feels a bit strange to run a pair of scissors through such fine garments, but what else to do?

Lina, my wife, is in charge of sales for The Fair Tailor and yesterday she started calling companies that might be interested in doing business with us. It didn't take long for her to book two meetings, with Göteborg Energi and Semcon. I'm impressed by her and convinced that she will sell a lot of shirts.

We are in the process of registering the company The Fair Tailor, on Thursday we plan to send the forms needed to the government agency.

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Our sample shirts are here!

We have finally received our sample shirts and I must say that it looks promising.

These are the first shirts we have received from our suppliers DEM Collective and Watabaran so far so it was really exciting to open the packages and see what they looked like.

This was of course the first samples, so they were not perfect, but it looks promising. When we start production I believe that we will have excellent shirts.

The future looks promising for us, I am really looking forward to our start of production.

Stay tuned for the next news letter, you will have it in your inbox shortly.

You can read more about the shirts in our Swedish blog at Veckans Affärer.

Sebastian Stjern
THE FAIR TAILOR
-DRESS RESPONSIBLY

The last day of business in Kathmandu

Yesterday morning I met with Kumbeshwar Technical School (KTS) in Patan. It is an organization that works with the lowest of the lowest casts, people who are considered untouchable.
When they started the organization in 1983 they found that 90% of the members of the lowest casts did not even have names. No one could read. Some orphanages would not even accept orphans from the lowest casts.
The situation is still terrible for most of them, specially on the country side. But organizations like KTS are making a real difference.
The organization has 479 people in its programs and I was very impressed with what they showed me. Since 1994 the organization has been self reliant, so they don't need any external money other than what they make by selling crafts they have produced.
I visited their school and it really made my heart melt to see the children. They were all so cute and so happy to be in school, without KTS they would probably have to turn to the streets...

Yesterday I was contacted by a Swedish man called Claes who works an organization called Namaste Nepal. They have a training program to teach women tailoring and he has a program with 70 women in the south of the country.
He knows both Tirtha and Björn well, so we will be in contact again when I get to Sweden. Maybe we can work together.
Björn is by the way quite ill, Tirtha told me last night that he has some sort of typhoid and that he is in the hospital.

Last night I was invited to Tirhta and Poonam for dinner. It was really nice to see their home and learn more about the way of the country.
I'm looking forward to get The Fair Tailor up and running so that we can start working together for real.

By the way, a taxi driver told me that the road between Pokhara and Kathmandu would not open until 6pm yesterday. That means that maybe the biggest road in the country stayed closed for more than 30h. It seems I was lucky to get through to Kathmandu.

I have a long trip ahead of me, I suppose that it is about 40 hours until I will be back in my own bed...

Fair Trade students

Tonight I met with a group of Swedish Fair Trade students who are in Nepal to see how fair trade and fair production works in real life.
We talked for four hours and they gave me a lot of good information, including the name of some people I should meet when I'm here in Nepal. They had actually met with Watabaran here in Nepal and with Bjorn Soderbergs mother back in Sweden.

One thing we discussed was Ekobanken, a social banking bank. We will definitely try to meet with them when I get back to Sweden.
Ekobanken helped to finance a company called DEM collective, a Swedish fare trade company. What DEM has done is really impressive and we hope to learn a lot by studying what they have done.

Tomorrow I'm changing hostels, I'm moving to an are north of the tourist area. Hopefully it will be a bit more quite there.
Right now there is a guy playing trombone just outside my hostel, it is 11pm and tomorrow is a work day here... I've been to almost 40 countries but I think this is the loudest one =)

Aid through trade

Today has been a very interesting day.
I woke up at 3:30 local time after having slept for 3h30 and I could not go back to sleep. But at least it gave me a chance to see the city wake up.

Before lunch I took a taxi to meet up with Tirtha.
He took me to the Watabaran production. It is a quite small facility where the workers produce clothes and bags.
We discussed how Watabaran works and how we could work together. After a couple of hours there we went to the boys home. The Swedish company Xdin sponsors the boys home, where both the boys and the girls go to school. Every month Xdin sends money. By western standards it is not a huge amount, but it is enough to provide 16 boys who used to live on the street with housing, food, school, clothes, yes basically everything. It is hard do understand why not other companies does the same.
Tirtha told me about the history of Watabaran and how they have experimented to come up with the concept that they currently have. Tirtha told me about when he came across a boy who lived on the streets who had a bleeding wound on his hand. The boy tried to stop the blood flow by putting soil in the wound. That made Tirtha and Bjorn start an ambulance service where medical doctors seek up street children to provide them with health care.

After the visit at the boys home we went to the girls home. Everybody was really friendly and I talked a little to the girls. Some of them were making paper airplanes of their old homework assignments and I showed them my special paper airplane design and they were very impressed =)

It was good to see how the children live and how Watabaran makes life easier for them.

Our initial idea was to train our personnel ourselves but that does not seem possible. It takes years to make learn to make a shirt so we are thinking of a different method. Side by side of the general production we think about having children from the school studying how the professional tailors make shirts, thus learning the work faster and better so that they later can join the general production.
But there are still tons of details to sort out.

Tomorrow I'm meeting with a group of Swedish student who are here to study Fair Trade, it is going to be interesting to get their opinion on The Fair Tailor project.

By the way, "Aid through trade" is a slogan Watabaran uses. I like it.

First day in Kathmandu

This will be a short post, It's almost 8pm and I think the power will go out at 8pm, that is at least what happened yesterday.

After having slept for 13 hours I started of slowly today.
I have managed to get in contact with a group of Swedes traveling to Nepal to study Fair Trade and I hope to be able to meet with them on Saturday.

Today I have been walking around the city, trying to get a feel for it. It's loud, a bit dirty and crowded. And so far I like it =)
I got me a Nepalese sim card, so now it is easier for people to get in contact with me here. I actually had to leave my finger prints to get the sim card.

Tomorrow I'm meeting Tirtha again, I think we will go to Child Watabaran center together.

Back in Sweden I am a member of Mentor Sverige, an organization similar to the Big Brother program in the US. Anyway, in their news mail today Glenn, the project manager for Mentor in Gothenburg included some info about The Fair Tailor. I imagine that alot of the people that are members of Mentor are LOHAS so that is good PR for us.
Check out the Mentor website if you are interested in what they do.

I'm in Nepal!

Right now I'm feeling rather tired, except for a 10 minutes power nap on the flight from Abu Dhabi I've been awake for 30.5h. But I don't feel to bad, but the plan is to go to my hostel an sleep after I've posted this.

Apart from the time it took the trip here was ok, nothing went really wrong.
From Gothenburg to the huge airport in Frankfurt to the chaotic airport in Abu Dhabi to the kind of slow airport here in Kathmandu.

Tirtha was kind enough to come and pick me up at the airport and then we went to my hostel. We discussed some issues, but quite frankly I was to tired to think straight. We decided to meet on Friday, then he is going to show me Child Watabaran Center.

I like the little of what I've seen of the city so far. Right now I'm staying in Thamel, the tourist district, but I plan to re-locate in a couple of days.

Meeting with Björn

Long before we had even thought about starting this company Lina read a book by Björn Söderberg and got inspired by his entrepreneurship in Nepal. In the book Björn told the story about how he came to Nepal after high school and how that lead to that he now has started several CSR companies there.

Last fall we went to a lecture he held and it got us both inspired. When we some time later realised that he might want to work with us in the future we decided that we wanted to start the company in Nepal.

So, today we had our first meeting with Björn. Since he lives in Nepal he has very a busy schedule when he is in Sweden. Luckily he had time to meet us today, on a Sunday. Since I’m going to Nepal the day after tomorrow I felt that it would be good to get some tips before going.
We sat down together for one and a half hour to discuss what we want to do, what he has done in Nepal, how we can put our plans in to action.

Björn gave me some good leads to follow up on when I go to Nepal. One of the persons I’m looking forward the most to meeting when I’m there is his old friend Tirtha, the person who runs Child Watabaran Center.

Now I need to prepare, we are meeting with Iqube tomorrow and we need to have a good presentation of both The Fair Tailor and us to show them.

Some good leads

We had the meeting with Drivhuset this afternoon and we got some new good leads to follow up on. One thing we discussed was company from Gothenburg that has started up their own cotton fields in Sri Lanka, just to be able to make sure that everything is done with a fair trade focus. That’s impressive!
We will try to get in contact with them and see if they can give us any tips.

Skype is a very good invention!
I talked to Tirtha, the manager of the school we hope to work with in Nepal – Watabaran. He seems to be a really nice guy. He offered to come and pick me at the airport so we can talk. That seems promising. He comes highly recommended, so it would be great if we could work together with him.

I read today that Sweden imports goods from Nepal worth approximately 7MSek, about $850 000. If we get the result we hope to get we will increase that figure significantly =)

I had dinner with a couple of friends tonight and they are really exited about the project. It’s always good to get energized from talking to people who believe in the things you do.

I guess I’m going to Nepal

Yesterday I talked to the Children Centre in Nepal that we hope to work together with and even though I didn’t get a confirmation that they will have time to seem me if I go there I went ahead and booked the tickets anyway. So I guess I’m going to Nepal…
It feels good and it feels an important step forward.

I leave Sweden on March 31 and return on April 14. The flight time will be approximately 20h each way, so that is one thing I’m not looking forward to.
But it will be very interesting to seen Nepal, and make an opinion about the possibility to succeed with our project.

There is a nice flow to our work now, both Lina and I are rested after our vacation and things seem to go our way at the moment. Yesterday I talked to a friend who knows a lot more about tailoring than we do and she promised that she would help us with some facts.

I have to run now; I have a meeting in 30 minutes. But I hope to write more later today.