A Note from Allmade Founding Partner, Ryan Moor
I was sitting on an airplane, jamming out to the Goo Goo Dolls and typing aggressively on my Macbook as I pieced together my pitch to Allmade’s partners when I heard it. Still reeling from the stark differences I had witnessed on my recent flight to Haiti between the white sand beaches of the Dominican Republic and the scorched, arid landscapes of Haiti—right next door to one another on the island of Hispaniola—the song hit me like a ton of bricks.
I wanna see what you see in me
And never let you down
Can you still feel my love?
I walked away from the piece of me
A dying ghost in an old machine
Oh please, don’t cry, my love
I was a blind man chasing shadows
It was a cold hair man I’d known
Wherever you go I will follow
Like an orphan running home
You’re the flood, you’re the flood, you’re the flood that opened my heart.
The words “Like an orphan running home” jumped out at me. Overcome with emotion, I played it over and over, thinking about the opportunity at hand. The opportunity to improve lives, to create safe and stable homes, to keep families together, to change the world—all with something as simple as a t-shirt, made better.
I knew it then, and I still believe it now. There is a better way to make a t-shirt. A way to make a shirt that people can feel good about selling, buying, and wearing. Allmade’s founding partners believed it too, and that’s how we’ve gotten this far. We are 85% of the way to reaching our funding goal. A goal that will finance our initial production run of 67,000 shirts—creating 40 living wage jobs, and helping 320 Haitians in need.
The question is—do you believe it too?
If you’re a screen printer, do you believe that you can be an agent for change? That value is about more than cost, it’s about choosing to do things the right way? Do you care about the impact of your materials and supplies on the environment? Do you care about the people who make your shirts and the people who print them? Do you want to give your customers an ethical choice in t-shirts as well as a great quality product? Do you want to change the pattern of exploitative manufacturing in the garment industry?
If you’re a consumer, do you believe that you can drive real, meaningful change in the world with your purchasing decisions? That how your goods are made matters? That you can create demand for ethically-produced products? That you have the opportunity every day to make someone’s life better?
If you believe there’s a better way to make a t-shirt. If you can look in your heart and say “Yes” to all of the above—then we ask you to join us.