Sustainability in the textile industry is a worldwide topic and I had the possibility to talk with the Founder and CEO of Weaving Vibes, Shripat Jagirdar, a weaving company from India focusing on natural and sustainable fabric.
HSM: How did you came to idea of weaving hemp?
WV: In our family, the relationship with textiles is very long and started four decades ago, with my grandfather who was a professional weaver and worked for more than 35 years in the textile industry. Later, in 1988, my father bought looms and opened a weaving business. At that time, we mainly focused on cotton and cotton blends, which were a booming fabric in India. So given my father's and grandfather's passion for textiles, the recurring and ever-present topic in our family was textiles and their blends. This was a fascinating world for me and in fact, on days when school was closed, I would spend all my free time among the fabrics, observing the loom and learning from the weavers about the yarn, the process and the fabrics. My passion led me to finish a textile-specific course at an international university so that I could finally join my father in his textile company in 2014.
At that time, we wove mainly cotton fabrics and blends of cotton with polyester and/or viscose in our company. But being so close to the textile business, even "passively" as a family member and thus an outside observer, I began to realize how polluting and unsustainable the textile industry is. In particular, life after textile consumption shocked me, because once the clothes we no longer use and throw away, they are burned. This is a huge environmental problem, especially for polyester fabrics.
But because our family is very spiritual in nature-so reusing and recycling was the motto of my childhood-and because spirituality and sustainability go hand in hand, I could not look away and started looking for a more ecological way of making and producing textiles, putting aside mere profit.
So in 2016, I started to take advantage of natural fibers and options available in the market. But I encountered a lot of difficulties, because when working with big international brands, they require a huge amount of fabric and the availability of these natural fibers was very limited. I tried all the available natural fibers, such as banana, pineapple, bamboo and hemp. Once I completed a thorough analysis of the entire production chain, sustainable aspects, availability and versatility of natural fiber options, I decided to invest in hemp. However, the machinery we had available was not suitable for processing hemp yarn because we were only processing cotton and cotton blends, whereas hemp is more like linen and requires different machinery and production processes.
So in 2018, I started researching machines specifically for hemp yarn and began to adapt and replace the current production line to accommodate hemp. As a result, my customers have also changed, because with hemp fabric we have approached a whole new range of customers who are primarily oriented toward sustainability and fabric quality. With cotton, on the other hand, quality had declined significantly in recent years, sustainability was not a topic, and so the only important aspect for standard cotton customers was just the low price. We had a good cotton production capacity (800,000 meters per month), partly because we were working with very large customers. So if we wanted to offer hemp to our large customers as well, we needed a good production capacity, and that meant new machinery and specific skills in hemp fabric production.
In addition, we had to change our dyeing process, because sustainable customers look at the whole process, we also have to ensure harmless chemicals and apply different ISO standards. Today we are able to offer a production of 250,000 meters per month of hemp fabrics with gsm (grams per square meter - ed.) between 90 and 440, which can be used for a wide variety of products: clothing, accessories, furniture and luggage.
HSM: When were you able to launch your first collection of hemp fabrics?
WV: Dopo questo lungo periodo di ricerca & sviluppo, nel marzo 2020 siamo riusciti a lanciare la nostra prima collazione di tessuti di canapa; ma poi è arrivato Covid ed abbiamo dovuto rallentare il nostro progetto. Dopo Covid, però, un numero maggiore di aziende di moda si è reso conto della sostenibilità e dell'importanza che riveste in questo settore. Tuttavia, noi offrivamo un modello di business "made-to-order", il che significa che lavoriamo solo su grandi quantità di tessuti, ovvero almeno 1.000 metri, ed abbiamo notato che un numero sempre crescente di aziende che producevano capi in tessuto di canapa aveva in realtà bisogno di quantità inferiori. Pertanto, poiché il tessuto di canapa è ancora un tessuto di nicchia, abbiamo deciso di produrre anche quantità più piccole, permettendo al lciente di scegliere ogni aspetto dei tessuti, come la miscela, la tintura, la forma ed il peso. Nel 2021, abbiamo ampliato e creato una quantità specifica di tessuti di canapa, con un design specifico ma senza quantità minima d'ordine (MOQ), il che significa che ora i clienti possono ordinare anche 1 metro di tessuto.
HSM: Why did you decide to reduce the order quanitites to 1 meter?
WV: We decided to eliminate the MOQ because we noticed that, especially after Covid, many small brands have turned to sustainable fabrics and have an interest in producing even smaller, limited hemp fabric garments. Without the MOQ we ensure easy access to hemp fabric for small and private brands.
HSM: And the hemp yarn, do you supply it from China?
WV: China has a very long history of hemp production and also has a very high quality of hemp yarn. In the beginning, when I was testing and adapting my machinery, I was buying hemp yarn from China. However, some customers do not want a hemp fabric made from Chinese yarns, so for now I buy yarn mainly from the United States and Australia. We are also trying to produce a hemp yarn in India, but the process is very difficult, because in India we deal with flax and although hemp and flax plants have many aspects in common, the production process is not the same, especially for wet-process spinning units.
HSM: What are your special hemp products and prints?
WV: We produce 100 percent hemp fabrics and also offer blends, mainly 70 percent hemp and 30 percent cotton and 55 percent hemp and 45 percent Tencel (with certification from Lenzing); you can change the percentage of blend according to your choice. As for printing, we have developed a special eco-printing technology, in which we use leaves and flowers from nature, apply them to the fabric and then dye it. This process is produced completely by hand, and the resulting fabric is unique and special, as we can never replicate the same flowers and leaves and their location. We also have a limited production of these fabrics. The fabric is completely natural and unique, and as such also requires very gentle washing and drying (no direct sunlight), but it is highly sustainable and our customers appreciate every aspect of this exclusive product.
We also offer bamboo fabrics and bamboo blends.
We also offer bamboo fabrics and bamboo blends.
HSM: What are your plans for the future?
WV: We strongly believe that access to hemp fabric should also be provided to smaller brands, as well as to professional tailors, individuals and enthusiasts, who currently cannot find hemp fabric in traditional fabric stores. For this reason, we would also like to sell on ETSY and Amazon, because these platforms are also available to individuals, and thus to a B2C market. In addition, it would be very interesting if traditional fabric stores also added hemp fabric to their offerings, so that more and more people can have access to this fabric and understand the benefits of hemp fabric for our skin and our environment.
HSM: Thank you so much Shripat for sharing your journey to a more sustainable textile industry with in hemp fabrics!
Translated with Linguana