Rob Drake-Knight | Co-founder | Teemill

Teemill was established in 2018. It grew from Rapanui’s fashion brand, Rapanui. Teemill took Rapanui’s tech and supply chain strategies and made them freely available to anyone, anywhere.

We knew that we wanted to be part the solution and not the problem when we learned that clothing accounts for 10% of all global CO2. That’s why our products are made from organic materials, using renewable energy, and designed to come back to be remanufactured when they’re worn out.

Business-as-usual means that clothes are mass-produced and speculatively produced. This results in huge amounts waste. 40 percent of clothing is never worn. Because we print in real time, only the items that people actually need are made. This saves money, which we can use to make organics and renewables more affordable. The robotics do the exact same thing, which makes the packaging process 30% faster. We can now afford 10X the cost of packaging made from plants and not plastic. Teemill.com allows us to share this technology with other brands.

Teemill is an open-source, circular and sustainable supply system and ecommerce platform. It can be used by anyone to create an online store or plug into our circular supply chain. This will allow them to design and sell circular and sustainable clothing. All products are made of 100% organic cotton or our recycled Remill wool. All of our factories run on renewable energy and all products are designed from the beginning to return to us for new products.

Every item is printed on demand within seconds of an order being placed. This means that there’s no inventory sitting in warehouses, no waste, or overproduction. Our printers mix inks instantly, only using what is necessary for each print. Brother GTX DTG Printers are what we use, but it is not the hardware that matters, but rather the software. We write it to work with any digital printer and we also build our own machinery and 3D print parts that we can imagine, but that don’t exist on the market yet.

We have around 10,000 stores using the platform – from global organisations like Greenpeace, WWF, BBC Earth, to online content creators such as Yoga with Adriene, as well as many individual designers and creatives. There are many products on the platform. Our most successful stores stock only a handful of high-quality products. Others add new designs all the time. Because everything is print on demand, we only print what is needed when it’s needed—meaning stores can have hundreds of different designs that exist on the cloud, without having to worry about over-stocking.

Our biggest markets outside of the UK are the US, Europe and the US. However, we are keen to expand our work in Asia with our Indian partners.

Most orders are printed within 24 hours. Shipping times depend on where the order is sent and what delivery option you choose. Domestic orders should arrive in 5 days.

Yes, there are two factories located in the UK and one in Tamil Nadu. We also have third-party facilities in the Czech Republic, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

We are an organic certified company and use low-waste printing technology and inks that meet the GOTS/Soil Association organic criteria. Our printing technology is flexible and allows for a wide range of colours. It also gives off a high quality feel. Our inks are free from animal-derived products and have not been tested on animals.

For #TakebackFriday we’re reversing Black Friday. So, instead of asking customers to buy lots of new things, we’re paying them to send back their old Teemill products. Teemill products are made with 100% organic cotton or recycled Remill fiber. This allows us to turn old products into new products, and we can reward customers for it. We’re trying to involve as many of the 10,000 stores that use our platform as possible, and we have the backing of some big names like WWF, Rapanui, and BBC Earth.

The use of T-shirts has been a tradition in supporting causes, campaigns, and activism for a long time. This trend is now growing as tools make it easier for everyone to create their own brands. Teemill, a platform that allows people to create their own clothing and make it personal, has revolutionized the fashion industry.

There is a growing awareness of issues surrounding synthetic fibres and their poor recycling. This is causing more people to be interested in natural materials like wool and cotton and a greater focus on the production process. Since the beginning, we have focused exclusively on 100 per cent organic cotton that is grown in India.

Next year we will expand our impact and partner manufacture from the UK and EU, to US and EMEA. Through a partnership in India we will be able to serve customers throughout India, Singapore, and the rest of Asia.

We’re also working on being able to take back clothes from other brands. It’s harder to figure out because most clothes just aren’t designed to be circular, but it would be a huge step forward for the industry and we are definitely on the way to doing it. We do already use post-consumer materials from other brands, but we can’t yet accept them directly from the customer.

We’re also working hard to raise awareness of the solutions we’ve developed, because a lot of people don’t even know these solutions exist. We can make a bigger impact if more people get involved with the Teemill community. That’s why we’re also working on new ways for people to participate. A Shopify plugin was recently released. This allows anyone who has a Shopify shop to connect to our circular supply chains and create and sell products. An API has been created that allows anyone to connect to our supply chain from any platform, website or app.

Along with the focus on helping more people participate in creating a circular economy for fashion, we’re constantly evolving the products we offer, so that we can tackle different challenges in the industry.

(Interviewer: Shilpi Panjabi)