Outland Denim I James Bartle
Conversation with James Bartle
James Bartle is the Founder & CEO of Outland Denim, an incredible company shaking up the fashion industry. It feels like we’re on the front of the tidal wave of change across the fashion industry right now, as more and more information is coming to light about what a harmful industry it is. James talks us through his company and their aim for ‘Zero Exploitation’ throughout the whole chain - right from the cotton farm to the courier who delivers your jeans.
“At this moment in history, an estimated 40.3 million people are trapped in slavery worldwide, with 24.9 million in forced labour. Of these, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector”
James Bartle is paving the way for a new kind of business in the fashion industry. Outland Demin is all about less energy, less water and more conscious construction. Not only is it environmentally focused to minimise its impact, it is also, socially aligned. Aiming for for ‘Zero Exploitation’ throughout the whole supply chain - right from the cotton farm to the courier who delivers your jeans.
Now what we should mention here is that James didn’t have any kind of background in fashion. In fact, he didn’t finish year 10, he left school and took an alternate path to become a motocross champion. It’s been 9 years of hard work building the business.
In the early years James supported the brand by running a welding business on the side. He was able to move on 3 years ago to running the business full time.
Pretty impressive when you look at what he has accomplished - this guy has literally launched one of the most disruptive fashion brands in Australia, if not the world.
Outland Demin are punching well above their weight, and it’s so cool to see. Their jeans have been worn by Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and just wait to hear in this episode what happened when Meghan Markle stepped off a plane and into an Australian tour wearing their very own jeans.
You’re going to love James’s story, which we travelled up to Queensland’s Tambourin Mountain to record. There, at the Oultand Denim HQ, we saw the team in action, and in passing James' mentioned to me that although they’re not big enough for a marketing department, they do have a full time role in social and environmental responsibility. These guys are a BCorp, and are driven by their mission for fashion to become the solution to some of the world’s most pressing global social and environmental issues.
Ok, let’s dive in.
Mentioned in conversation...
Why Outland Denim was started, and their journey
The current state of human trafficking and the use of forced labour in the private sector
The company’s environmental impact improvements in the denim world
What the company plans to do next in spurring on an industry-wide change
Follow Outland Demin here:
Outland Demin Website
Outland Demin Instagram
Outland Demin Facebook
Outland Demin Twitter
Outland Demin Pinterest
Full Interview Transcript - James Bartle, Outland Denim
Pru Chapman:
Welcome back to the One Wild Ride Podcast. I'm your host, Pru Chapman. Have you ever been so fired up after watching a movie that you just knew that you had to take action? Well, that's exactly what my guest today, James Bartle, did. The movie was Taken, and the outrage was human trafficking. Just what did James do about it? He started a denim brand to provide sustainable employment and training opportunities to women who had experienced exploitation. Now, what I should mention here is that James didn't have any kind of background in fashion at the time. In fact, he didn't finish year 10 and took an alternate path, becoming a motocross champion. On the side, he ran a welding business, and this supported Outland Denim through its early years.
Now, this guy has literally launched one of the most disruptive fashion brands in Australia, if not the world. Outland Denim are punching well above their weight, and it's so cool to see. Their jeans have been worn by the likes of Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and just wait to hear in this episode what happened when Meghan Markle stepped off a plane and into an Australian tour wearing Outland Denim jeans.
You're going to love James's story, which we traveled up to Tamborine Mountain to the Outland Denim HQ to record. There we saw the team in action, and in passing James actually mentioned to me that although they're not big enough for a marketing department just yet, they do have a full-time role in social and environmental responsibility. These guys are a B Corp and are driven by their mission for fashion to become the solution to some of the world's most pressing global social and environmental issues. It's pretty damn impressive, and that is an understatement.
Now before we kick off, you are going to want to make sure that you're subscribed to the One Wild Ride Podcast because we're going to be giving away an incredible Outland Denim jacket, and subscribers will find out before anyone else. So be sure to head to wherever you listen to podcasts and hit subscribe. This will give you the heads up on our episodes and giveaways before anyone else. And then head over to my Instagram channel, @pruchapman, for full details of the giveaway. Okay. Let's dive in.
INTRO
Pru Chapman:
Hey James, and welcome to the show.
James Bartle:
Hey. How are you?
Pru Chapman:
Very well. Thank you. I'm here in beautiful Tamborine Mountain. It's amazing.
James Bartle:
Yeah, yep.
Pru Chapman:
Beautiful place to be. Now, you're the founder and CEO of Outland Denim, and with were just discussing offline, it feels like we are on the tidal wave, the forefront of ethical fashion right now. It's just the awareness around it is absolutely exploding. So I'd love to kick off, if you could just give our listeners just a top level, what is Outland Denim?
James Bartle:
Yeah, cool. Well, absolutely. I think it is exploding at the moment. It's a good time to be in fashion, I believe, and there's a lot of opportunities that exist because of, I mean, the challenges that our industry faces. But for Outland, we started nearly nine years ago in trying to build a business model that would combat human exploitation and how human beings were being sold for sex or for labor or a range of different things. Over those following six years, we refined a business model that we were able to prove worked and really spoke to women predominantly at the places where they are most vulnerable and gave them the tools that they needed to be successful going forward into their future. Really, I think one of the highlights there is that they would be able to be successful based on their own hard work and their own effort, and our job became about equipping them with what they needed to be successful.
We've been very excited, I guess, to see that this model works, and fashion is really the outlet for this. We believe that fashion and the industry itself is so big that we would be able to combat some of the greatest challenges we face in the world today, environmental issues as well as social issues, and really get back to the root cause of these things where poverty in fact is linked to environmental issues and really challenge the way we as consumers here in the West consume our fashion but all products that we take in every day and try and change that mindset.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. I love that. I love that, and you guys are really shaking the fashion industry up, aren't you? You've been around for nine years, but it's rapidly changing right now. We're going to dig into that throughout this podcast, which I'm really excited about because it's just shaking the industry to its very core and just exciting. I think the most exciting thing about using business as a force for good is how much power it actually puts in the consumers' hands. It's actually like we have so many purchasing decisions that we make on a daily basis, and if we can make them into the right businesses that have got this kind of larger world approach, then it literally, business can change the world.
James Bartle:
There's no question. I think businesses is the future. If we don't focus on business and give it the right attention and the tools that we need as business owners to be able to be successful ourselves, then we really are limiting the impact that we can have on these two issues of social and environmental challenges that I guess fill our inboxes and social feeds with the problem every day. I think that being creative around how do we combat these issues of whatever it is, it could be a community issue, but really I guess seeing business as a tool to do that. And in today's climate I think we've got a huge opportunity because consumers now want that. If we are prepared to move our businesses into places where we can meet the needs of our community or our country, then it's an exciting future that's awaiting us.
Pru Chapman:
It's really exciting, isn't it?
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
It's really exciting, and it's really exciting that people are now seeing business as this tool. That's actually the main thing that excites me about business. I think it's really, it's such a tool to impact change.
James Bartle:
Well, I think that we've been surrounded by charities and give back programs for a long time, and as important as both of those models are, they're not a genuinely sustainable model in creating change. This is where we came about three years into our conception up against this idea that it would be better for us to market and create our structure based on a give back, but it's not as powerful for what we want to create. Actually, what we need to create is something that does generate the real change for the people to be sustainable or live sustainable lives without us.
That was a difficult decision because from a marketing point of view, it became a lot harder for us to be able to communicate our story, tell our story and the impact that consumers would have by purchasing our product. But as a result, the social impact of that business model has been way greater than we ever expected it to be.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. All right, so take me back to the beginning, because I work with founders every day. I know a lot of people listening are founders of companies, and quite often it's not that we set out really to get into business. It's something that happened. You never saw this path for yourself. I don't think there's many people sitting there as their five-year-old selves thinking, I want to be a businessman when I grow up. You want to be a firefighter or a motocross champ or whatever that might be, but not necessarily a business owner.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
It was a Hollywood movie that kicked it off for you, wasn't it?
James Bartle:
Yeah. It was insane. My wife and I went to the movies with some friends one night and watched the Liam Neeson film Taken. I just remember being really impacted by the film, and at the end it had some text there that just said that these things still happen around the world. I was entirely ignorant as to that human beings would ever be stolen and sold. I thought that was just a Hollywood movie. Oh, man. Walking away that night, I just wanted to be a part of the solution. To me, immediately that seemed like well, I've got to start some sort of vigilante, and we'll go out there and we will kill every human being that's going to operate on this level and be a predator. They're gone.
Pru Chapman:
That really innate drive to fix what's wrong.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I just couldn't bear the thought that this would exist, and it just drove that... Yeah, but my wife was very quick to remind me that I didn't have the combat skills that Liam Neeson had and that we'd have to come up with a different way of doing this. A couple years later I was doing a freestyle motocross show at an event, and there was an organization there that were looking for ambassadors. They were actively involved in the identification and rescue process of women under the age of 18 that had been sold for sex. I went with them to look at what the problem looked like on the ground, and I saw a little girl for sale. When you see that, you can't unsee it. I mean, we've all seen lots of horrible things on TV, but that little girl had a look in her eyes that was fear and intimidation.
At the time I didn't have kids of my own, but I had nieces. And I thought to myself, what would I do if it was one of my nieces? I would happily give up my life to try and do something for her, and that little girl, I know her life changed forever. The representative of the organization that was there with me, he said, "It looks like it could be her first night just judging by how scared she looked." We walked away that night, and I often wonder what has happened to her or what her life looks like now. I guess that for me is one of the driving forces that I think of her often and think, well, I want to go deeper and I want to go further to create something that has a lasting change and it's not just a bandaid solution.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. That's one girl that you saw of...
James Bartle:
One of millions, yeah.
Pru Chapman:
One of millions. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you're over there. You go and do this trip, so it sounds a little bit serendipitous at the moment. You've initially had that feeling of rage, wanting to do something, and that's sat with you until you've had this opportunity. Then obviously again right into that core of a human being of seeing that little girl and this is not right. What comes next?
James Bartle:
Well, I guess yeah, that's really the challenging part is you have lots of ideas and you do lots of research. You start to learn about the problem, and to begin with the problem looked like okay, women are being stolen and sold for sex against their will or maybe not even against their will. They're being stolen. They're being convinced or tricked into or forced into because of the economic situation that they've been born into even, and it's just not okay.
Pru Chapman:
That that's kind of their norm.
James Bartle:
That that's normal for them, yeah. Because as you get to know these people and these communities, these countries, we work in Cambodia, it's the most incredibly country with the most beautiful people. We tend to take advantage of this, and it's not even just the West but their own people as well, and human nature of greed and all these things come into play. You realize that the problem that you're trying to attack is really complex, and it's not black and white as I thought it was after watching the Liam Neeson film. There's a lot of colors, and the perpetrators were once the victims a lot of the time, and so the solution has to go back further.
We realized that it's an economic solution that creates the greatest change, and therefore business has to be the best way to do this. In fact, we started as a not-for-profit. We still had this real charity mindset when we began, and we went, "Well, we're going to make clothing." I had always had a passion for denim. Never thought I'd own a denim brand or produce it, but it is one of those products which just has so much history and meaning. And there's just so much in a pair of denim jeans that I think represents so well of what it is we're trying to achieve. We started by making a couple of pairs of jeans, and that was a with a single needle foot-pedaled sewing machine. We had to put coals in an iron to heat it up.
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
It was really primitive. Yeah. It was amazing just to see the talent and the desire to have a better life that these women had. They would come into work and work their backsides off to try and learn how to use this machine to make denim jeans. I'll never forget the very first pair that I tried on, and my heart sank as to how terrible they were.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, no.
James Bartle:
Just realized that what we're up against was going to be quite challenging. Was very unaware that it was the most competitive fashion category to sell and also the hardest garment in fashion to make. If I had known that to begin with, maybe I would've chosen tee-shirts.
Pru Chapman:
What do they say? If it was easy, I wouldn't be doing it, right?
James Bartle:
Exactly, yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Awesome, awesome. So you started off, and then where does it grow from there? Actually, one thing I did want to touch on here, so you started as a not-for-profit. So you've got just this very small operation, and that was set up in Cambodia. Then, what happens from there? What's next?
James Bartle:
Well, I had another business at the time that I was operating, so I had one employee. Then I would-
Pru Chapman:
So this was your side hustle?
James Bartle:
This is my side hustle to fund the not-for-profit. I had a metal fabrication and powder coating business, and so I'd be working that and then coming to the office for a couple hours in the middle of the day and then going back to weld or powder coat into the night. It was just years of this where it had outgrown what we needed to fund it. It had outgrown my business, and it was just destroying myself and my wife. It was just too hard.
We got to the stage where we went, "Well, the only way we can scale this and grow it is if we have more money." Our options as a not-for-profit was to get donations, which we had had lots of little donations along the way. I mean we'd had a $20,000 donation, a $25,000. They were the two biggest we'd had, but they were substantial. And it gave us a lot of ability to grow, but it was still so micro.
Pru Chapman:
Especially in a product-based business.
James Bartle:
Absolutely. And we just knew we could never get the quality. We didn't have the right equipment. We just couldn't grow. We came to this crossroads where we really knew it was to get investors, and would investors even be interested, we did not know. But if we could get investors on board, then what would it look like? How could it change everything? We knew that if we had cash, then our desires could be realized.
Pru Chapman:
And at this stage, this is just a conversation between you and your wife?
James Bartle:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Yep.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I mean my wife's from a corporate background. She I think was concerned about how... She's a journalist, so she's like, "Well, how does that look? We've set it up as not profit, then to change to for-profit, what does that say?" My reason for setting up this not-for-profit was because I wanted it to be pure. I didn't want this to be about anything other than I want to see change. Didn't realize that that was actually just my own pride speaking. I want people to see me as pure and as a martyr for the cause, you know.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, good awareness.
James Bartle:
Yeah. It took me a while to get confident enough to go, "Okay, no. If I'm really about the change, it doesn't matter what people think of me." We made this change to go into a for-profit. One of the big things that gave me confidence was actually B Corp.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, great.
James Bartle:
B Corp gave me confidence in that I could be audited and kept to a higher standard of account that not every product business would be kept to. I guess that was the reason that it pushed me over the line going, "Yeah, I can go to a for-profit now that B Corporation." In fact, when B Corporation hadn't been legislated here in Australia yet, we were just sitting there waiting for it to happen. When it happened, we went for-profit, and it took a while then obviously for us to apply and get through the process. But yeah, an amazing...
Pru Chapman:
An amazing organization.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
We just actually had them in my studio a couple weeks ago.
James Bartle:
Awesome.
Pru Chapman:
There's a lot of Byron Bay businesses obviously that are becoming B Corp certified at the moment, and they've just been doing an incredible job. I agree because there is this kind of unusual thing, and I think particularly if you grew up in the 80s in Australia. It's like we've got a really funny thing about money. I can't earn money and give at the same time. There's just, there's so much around it. But really what we're saying is the companies that do make money, it's a powerful tool for change, so powerful. If you have that external body that's able to certify you and go, you know what, they're clean; they're doing a great job, it gives you that permission slip to go, right, pull the lever, let's go.
James Bartle:
Yeah, absolutely.
Pru Chapman:
Let's all win in this situation, and that's true sustainability, right?
James Bartle:
Exactly. I think the way we started was yeah, it wasn't real sustainability. It was we just wanted to create another charity. I guess that's because what we were raised with. We saw charities, but I think we've got our donor fatigue as a society. And I look at how hard charities have to work to raise their money, and I think well, to me it's a flawed model. I'm not saying there isn't a place for it, but it's certainly not what I want to start is another charity.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. I've worked inside of some of the biggest charities in the world, well known to everyone listening, and the people in there, their lives are not sustainable at all. They're working 16, 18 hours a day because it's almost like sweat equity but not. They're putting in all these hours, but it's not sustainable. The cause might be sustainable. Well, not really sustainable. It's not sustainable for the people.
James Bartle:
No, it's not.
Pru Chapman:
Like you, if you were still running your welding business and running Outland, that's not a sustainable model for you.
James Bartle:
Not at all.
Pru Chapman:
Therefore, the business wraps up in a few years.
James Bartle:
Exactly, yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Okay. So sorry, I just totally got a bit excited about B Corp. I'll bring it back.
James Bartle:
Yeah, B Corp is good. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
B Corp is good. You and your wife, you're having these conversations about okay, do we bring on investors? Where to from there? I mean did you have people that were already sitting in the wings?
James Bartle:
No.
Pru Chapman:
Or did you have to get your pitch deck and start knocking on doors?
James Bartle:
No. The funny thing is didn't have a pitch deck. Didn't have anything prepared.
Pru Chapman:
Just had your jeans on?
James Bartle:
Yeah. I had the jeans on. Actually, was doing a job for a client, a welding job, and went out there. This guy had actually made a donation to what we were doing years earlier, and I felt like I needed him to give me his blessing because he had given a substantial... one of those larger donations that I mentioned. I was out there delivering his job, and I just said, "Look, I'd love to share what I'm doing and how I want to make some changes." And his words to me were, "You should've done this right from the beginning. This is real sustainability."
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
He looked at it, and he said, "Do you have anything prepared?" I said, "All I've got is a forecast and basically a vision in my mind." He said, "I can I see it?" And I showed him, and they became our largest investor to get us through the early stages. They're no longer with us as investors, but they were just really, really key in seeing us go ahead. Big risk for them to take financially, the kind of dollars that they had to put in, but what it meant is we for the first time had the ability to start scaling and developing our foundations to be way more substantial than they were. We didn't realize, but three years ago we were very still charity minded. It still to this day takes... We're always trying to change that mindset, which is slowly happening, but it's ingrained deeply into our brains.
Pru Chapman:
Okay. So you get these investors on board. What are some of the first investments that you make into the business?
James Bartle:
Staff, yeah. Yeah, staff and equipment. We bought sewing machines, and I'll never forget. We were at this stage still operating on foot pedal sewing machines. We get this money. We go and buy electric sewing machines. We had this production manager, and we had all our staff around in Cambodia. He pushes this fabric through the machine, and it goes... They all squeal. It was amazing to see. They didn't want to use it to begin with because it was too difficult to use.
Pru Chapman:
Too frightened, yeah.
James Bartle:
It took time for them to get their confidence up. Even yesterday, we opened a package for a collaboration we have coming up, and the samples were in it. They were quite complex pieces to make, and my brand manager, Matt, and I were just sitting there just going, "Wow, like wow. These women made this stuff and for one of the, definitely in the Southern Hemisphere, leading fashion designers, just unbelievable." It's really cool just to see how that evolved and that investment gave us the ability to change equipment, to get the right training for the staff. And three years later we're producing products for the best. It's unbelievable.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. When you say the best, I mean there's some big names wearing your jeans, aren't there?
James Bartle:
Yeah. I mean and that again, all those sorts of things, it happened organically. I think that is one of the beauties of when your business exists for a genuine purpose, people will align with you. People will back you and support you. But if you're doing it because it is a marketing angle or ploy, then join the queue because we're tired of that and we've development a sixth sense to be able to smell the bullshit. It's got to be real.
Pru Chapman:
There's too much transparency now, especially with social media. It's like that blessing and curse, and this is one of the blessings, which has been amazing. How big is Outland Denim now? How big is the operation?
James Bartle:
Well, we're still a very small business. We have 110 employees.
Pru Chapman:
That sounds pretty big to me.
James Bartle:
Well, yeah. Yeah. But we've been growing quite rapidly our first two years of launching our brand. We launched the end of 2016. We then fairly soon after launched into Canada with their leading department stores, built some online stores. We'd only just signed David Jones, and then last October, so a year ago, Meghan Markle hopped off a plane wearing our jeans. That was a massive impact on the business.
Pru Chapman:
Did you know she was going to do that?
James Bartle:
No.
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
Well, I mean we knew she was coming to Australia. Obviously, everybody would be hanging their hopes on Australian brands. Yeah, as the brand, we didn't send her a product or do anything like that. It turned into an incredible, yeah, incredible impact.
Pru Chapman:
Incredible opportunity.
James Bartle:
Yeah. Yeah. We employed 46 new women as a result of her wearing the product.
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
I didn't even think that celebrity endorsement was a real thing.
Pru Chapman:
You got schooled.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I got schooled. I got schooled. I mean-
Pru Chapman:
Meghan Markle schooled you.
James Bartle:
I just, yeah, I didn't think people... Why would people care, but they care. Then as you learn about someone like Meghan in particular and you go, wow, she's actually a real cool human being. She's genuine. She cares about the issues that we care about, and for her to represent our brand and wear it in the way she did and consistently wear it over that tour, and she's worn it since, has been huge. Then for our women who produce the jeans, and when I say our women, that doesn't sound right. For our seamstresses who are producing this product, they've come from these terrible pasts, some of them, to producing jeans literally for a princess. I mean, it's a movie.
Pru Chapman:
That's fantastic. It's so cool. It's so cool. You started this off initially. I mean you were really driven by creating some change around human trafficking. I mean, can you share some stats with us? Because I think, how do I say this? I think maybe we don't realize it's still going on and to the extent that it's still going on. We think okay, slavery in America was banned X amount of years ago, and that's the end of it. But it's still a huge problem, isn't it?
James Bartle:
It's a massive problem. In fact, I think it's the second fastest, or actually, no, it might be the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, I think, above drugs and guns, I think.
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
It's a $150 billion industry. It's scary that human beings could be traded in this way. For us, we are trying to tackle the biggest problem that humankind face today on a social level, but it's very closely linked to the environmental challenges that we face as well. If we want to talk about using anything to combat that, fashion rated depending on which source you want to trust, but between the second and fifth worst industries in the world for pollution. I look at it and go, wow, we've got probably the greatest social challenge we face.
I mean poverty being tied into making people vulnerable and therefore trafficked and so forth, and then fashion being one of the greatest contributors to the environmental challenges. Then denim being the worst of them all. This is the perfect product to be able to try and change the world with.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. Do you have numbers on, I mean, how many people are still estimated to be in a human trafficking situation?
James Bartle:
I think roughly, gosh, I think it's around 40-odd million.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, so it's substantial.
James Bartle:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Just for everyone listening, it's huge.
James Bartle:
It's a massive, massive problem. Then what human trafficking is and how do you define that because like I said earlier, some of these women may have chosen to go and put themselves in this position not because they wanted. It wasn't because they as a little girl went, "I want to be sold for sex." They found themselves in a position where survival, that was necessary. I hear a lot of people often say, "Oh, it's the oldest industry in the world." I go, "Yeah, sure. It is, and I'm not making any claims as to anybody's decision to be there or anything like that, but people should have the choice, not be forced into it based on their economic position."
We in the West with our consumerism have the ability to change this, and I think that if you spoke to anybody on the street and said, "Hey, if you could choose something to purchase that meant that it protected somebody who made it from ever having to be in this position and their families, would you do it," everyone would do it.
Pru Chapman:
Everyone.
James Bartle:
It's only because we haven't been aware, and we lead very busy lifestyles. And so being able to engage with this conversation is also challenging. That's a part of what you're doing here today and what our job is, is to be able to educate people on the realities of human trafficking and exploitation and the environmental side of consumerism and what that really means.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. And how much power we do have in that to change it on a daily basis, which I touched on earlier.
James Bartle:
That's right, yeah.
Pru Chapman:
That's the exciting part, and I think we have to go through this shocking part in between and just to become more aware of what's going on. Because I think there's people shopping at big department stores that aren't even aware, and like you say, if you highlighted this, if you educated them, then they would make the right decision. But part of our job here is to highlight what's actually going on and for these industries that we thought were gone and still so big.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Okay. With Outland Denim, where do you step in? How do women go from potentially being in a trafficking situation to coming to work with you guys?
James Bartle:
We work with different nongovernmental organizations that specialize in identification, rescue, restoration programs. Our job is to come in after that process. We have close partners there that we trust and work with. As they will highlight a potential seamstress or somebody that would like to do a traineeship with us, then we interview them and they start the process. I mean the statistics would say that if the economic solution isn't in place, women can go through these processes of rescue and restoration, but a large percentage of them end up in a worse position after the fact.
For us, this is the most important part to get right, and that's through a range of different things that I guess accompany their employment. But we've seen the results, and the results, they speak for themselves in that women will get themselves out of poverty. And if you could get yourself out of poverty, all of a sudden you now have choices. And if you have choices, you also have accountability. It's really starting to give people everything that we probably took for granted in our country, and not saying that people in our country haven't got it tough in other ways and even similar ways, but we've had welfare. We've had something to back us up somewhere along the line, although we have huge challenges still.
These people don't have welfare, so it can be life and death for them in lots of developing and Third World countries across the world. We saw this, I guess, collaboration with the rescuing and then the employment side being key. We didn't want to take on the rescuing side of it because they're experts, and we should do what we do well, and we should work well together. We've seen the power of that.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, incredible. Now you're really saying this out there loud and proud, which of course puts a lot of accountability on you to really deliver in house. I've heard you talk about previously about providing your women with a living wage, which I've also heard you describe. It's we shouldn't get a gold star for doing that. That should be the basic kind of tick box really for employing people.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
But you've got four pillars inside Outland Denim. Could you talk to us a little bit about those?
James Bartle:
Yeah. Well, the first thing is we wanted to give opportunity to women that may not get it otherwise, and so you'll see women that might have one leg or severe vulnerabilities. They've been vulnerable on the street because of poverty. They've been trafficked and sold into another country, lots of different challenges that they've faced, and so they may not get the opportunity to get a job, and especially a job like this. I think the garment sector is between 800,000 and 1.2 million people in Cambodia, so it's a substantial industry. The government has brought in minimum wages, and so therefore although it can be very challenging in lots of ways for these people, it's a job. But they're not going to get it with those kinds of disabilities and challenges.
For us, the opportunity is key. We want to bring those people into our workforce. Training, they've got to be trained. When they start, most of them don't have skills. Some of them do, but they might not even know how to sweep a floor properly, and you actually got to show them the best way to sweep the floor. But over about a two and a half to three year period, they learn to make an entire jean. Like I said earlier, jeans are probably the most difficult garment to make in fashion, and so they're now making not just the back pocket like they might in factory elsewhere. They have the ability to make the entire jean.
It means that their skills are transferable, and they can go to a factory. We've had one women that I think of right now that she left. She got married, had to move to another province. But there was a denim factor nearby, and she became a section leader. She didn't start on the minimum wages, she started on management wages.
Pru Chapman:
Because she was skilled.
James Bartle:
Which meant her family were, yeah, well looked after.
Pru Chapman:
Right.
James Bartle:
Living wages is one of the other pillars that is so important, and it's different to minimum wage, not always. It can be the same, but it just means that their living standards has been taken into account, and they can have the basics that we get to enjoy here where they can pay their rent and have health care and education. They might be able to go out for dinner on a Friday night and save and have the ability to do those things. That's what a living wage means. We use a couple of different methodologies to be able to come up with what that looks, and that takes research on every province that you go to. It is different, like it is more expensive to live in Sydney versus it is in Western New South Wales somewhere, you know.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah.
James Bartle:
It's just different. Then the education being the last thing and one of the most powerful things. Again, most of us got to go to school. We got to learn about how to do math and learn the basics around finance and English and those things. Some of these people never got to do that because of poverty, and so it's our job then to educate them. We'll teach them things like finance because now they're earning more money than they've earned in the past, and they can end up in a worse position because of it, so they need to be taught how to manage their finances and household budgeting and save for the future.
Languages, we teach on English and then health care. Women's needs and how they look after infants and those sorts of things and just stuff that can be actually quite a simple course but can completely change the way they manage their families or their households. That's not to say that we've got it all right in the West either. A lot of their traditional ways are far better, I think, for lots of things, but just around breastfeeding for instance, teaching mothers about the benefits of breastfeeding if they're able to versus having to go and buy baby formula that they can't afford and then potentially mixing contaminated water with anyhow.
Pru Chapman:
Which they're doing because they think or they've been told is a better way than breastfeeding.
James Bartle:
That's right, because of marketing from baby formula companies. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Something else that strikes me is that you guys just go above beyond as well, like women's self defense classes as well.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Really getting in there and seeing what they need and delivering on it.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
It's really cool.
James Bartle:
I mean you look through the glass and sitting behind you is a manager for our social and environmental impact, and her whole job is constantly working with our team in Cambodia to be able to come up with what is it they need and how do we fill that gap. It's a challenging-
Pru Chapman:
That's a big deal for a relatively small company like yours to have someone in that role just dedicated to that space.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I mean we spend as much money on that as we do on marketing and-
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I guess hopefully not my naivety but my belief and what I've seen so far is that people are coming along on the journey with us because it's real, and so we don't have to spend as much on marketing as another company might have to spend. We've had millions of dollars in free editorial over the last three years that we haven't paid a cent for, and that's magazines and the likes of yourself, who's prepared to come and spend the time to interview and share our story with the world. I think that's how things will change, and we love this guerrilla marketing and organic grassroots kind of marketing where it's just real. And we just want you to join us on this journey.
Pru Chapman:
Isn't that cool? It's like doing good business is good for business.
James Bartle:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It is today.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. Cool. All right. So you're taking amazing care of your staff. You're providing opportunity. I think everything there is just, it's absolutely incredible, but you're also, like you said, denim is known to be one of the largest polluters in the fashion industry as well. You guys are committed to using organic cotton. Can you talk me just through that decision?
James Bartle:
Yeah. I mean, that's a difficult one. The jury's out on the organic cotton versus conventionally grown cotton and the benefits and negatives for both. For us, we chose organic, and the reason for that is obviously the lack of pesticides, but it needs more water in the growing of organic too. That doesn't get spoken about a lot because we all like to hang our organic tag on everything. But yeah, it's not black and white. There is a lot of work to do in this space, and we're certainly not tagging or tying ourselves to one certain method.
We will just always go with whatever we believe is the best for the environment and the workers that produce it. Right now, we believe that's organic, but there's some very exciting things within cotton. We see what Cotton Australia are doing, are working really hard to be able to come up with new ways of their production of cotton and how to manage it. One of our investors is a cotton farmer.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, cool.
James Bartle:
Yeah. He's very committed to trying to come up and look at better ways as well, and what does that actually look like. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
It's a bit of watch this space on that one.
James Bartle:
It is a watch, absolutely. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of big opinions out there, and I can be known to have one too. But I think that cotton and organic versus conventionally grown, there's still space for both, like BCI with the Better Cotton Initiative, and there's some good stuff happening there.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, cool. All right. I'll be interested to see what goes on then because yeah, it's been a good discussion for a long time.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
I think in the movie, The True Cost, there was some pretty alarming kind of stats. For anyone, I know I've talked about this a few times on the podcast, if you haven't seen The True Cost, it's just such an incredible eye opener.
James Bartle:
Absolutely.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, awesome. Also, something else was just the unique process that you use with your wash and finishing as well.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I mean the production of denim is dirty. There's no way around that, so it really has to start right back at the grassroots level. If you want to produce a sustainable product, or when I say a sustainable product, actually no one has one of those yet, including ourselves. If you want to work to a future where it's genuinely 100% sustainable, well, you've got to go back to the beginning and start there. For us, that means once the cotton reaches the mill, and we use a mill in Turkey called Bossa, what are you going to dye it with? Now for us that's organic or vegetable dyes, and we still have a black denim that has sulfur in it. That's the worst product, but there's no harmful chemicals or things like that in it.
We need to consistently be working towards the best outcome for the environment, and that can't be done if we're just going to use the chemicals that just have the best staying power or get the best effect. That limits or makes our washing processes harder down the line. Then we ship our fabric to Cambodia, where we process it all. We have two facilities. The first facility we do all the cutting and sewing of the garment. Then it goes to our finishing facility where the greatest impact is had on the environment from a denim production point of view, and that's in the washing process. The harmful chemicals that are used and then the way they're managed after they've been used, it creates all these marker plastics and sludge that comes out, and how is that discarded.
There is methods now that are just, they're insane. They're amazing. It's like we use lasers now, no water, to put all the whiskering and even stone washing effects on jeans before they're actually washed. Usually, to get a stone washing effect is fill the tub with pumice stone, and then it's filled up with thousands of liters of water and chemical and bleaches and all sorts of things, which aren't good, and processed. But for us, we've got our laser and then ozone and e-Flow technologies. With e-Flow, it's like nano bubbles, so it'll mist on this organic chemical to start to get these effects. Then we've got a process, and it'll go through a recycling process with the water and it goes back into the system.
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
James Bartle:
That's been a huge investment and a huge learning curve for us, but it's meant that we're able to produce a product which is as environmentally friendly as you can buy.
Pru Chapman:
As it can be now. Yeah.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
I think that's a huge part of sustainability, isn't it? It's just committing to that process of continual improvement.
James Bartle:
Yes.
Pru Chapman:
And particularly like the big ISO standards and stuff out there, I mean that's what it is. It's not about being perfect.
James Bartle:
No.
Pru Chapman:
But it's about committing to the process of continual improvement.
James Bartle:
That's right, continual improvement. I think when we have this conversation, we need to talk about no, we do need to be 100% sustainable. If we're not, we're not there. If we can maintain that, this is probably my beef with slow fashion is slow fashion isn't an answer. Slow fashion just slows down the process. We need the answers. I always talk about Richard Branson because I think he's a total legend, but he built a rocket and flew it to the moon, or attempted to. Now, that's got to be way harder than solving this problem, I would imagine, and so I think that the money's out there. What's exciting is that because now consumers are saying they care about this issue, companies will start to invest into it. I think the answers are just around the corner.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. I also think it's really interesting for investors at the moment. We've done some great podcasts, like I said, with Stone & Wood. I've been a fan of Patagonia forever. Also, Verve Super, who are the new super fund built for women by women, and the investors who are investing in good companies doing good things are getting better returns.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
I think as we sit, that's where we start to see this huge shift in business then and what we can do when the money's coming in so that big changes can be made. And then they can just be passed on to the consumer.
James Bartle:
Absolutely, yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Then I think, I mean I say this on a lot of our podcasts, but as consumers, we have choice. The choice is really in our hands to create the future that we want to create.
James Bartle:
We do have choice, but I would also say that we don't have an easy choice right now. Because the lifestyles that we've all become accustomed to means that we're always quite busy, it's very difficult to make those ethically minded choices. So I would then put that back on the brands, and I would say, okay, if we really believe that this will change the world, then we should make it accessible so that customers can easily get our products. Now, we're a premium product. We have a 200-plus price point, and so that's not accessible to everybody.
Pru Chapman:
Sure.
James Bartle:
But the ones it is accessible to still need to have the time to be able to go either some will buy online, but not everybody, so they've got to be able to try it on. Who are we going to align with to be able to do this? I mean you guys come from Byron Bay, and we stock Driftlab down there. We think that's the ultimate spot for a place like that, but where are we going to go on a national level? We need to be with the David Jones or Myers of the world to be able to make it accessible to people.
I also hear a lot of talk about I guess brands boycotting that kind of model, and I would say for profits, yes, a direct sale is the best, absolutely, and that's fantastic. But not everyone's comfortable to do it. If we're about change, then you need to put your product in places people can get it.
Pru Chapman:
Good point. I really like that. It's the up level. It's the big thinking that requires behind it. I think a decision... We're going to back and forth about this, about the consumer, both from the consumer and also psychology perspective. I think as consumers, just to have buying values in place. If you don't know where this thing came from or if there's not a level of transparency around it, just don't buy it. Maybe you don't need another jumper or you don't need another shirt. Make sure you know what that money is supporting.
James Bartle:
Yeah. I think as you have the time and as brands are able to market the reality of the situation to the consumer, then that will become easier for a consumer to make those decisions. Right now I think there's too much green washing and clutter. So for instance, if we talk about denim, there'll be a denim brand that, let's just say, produces 1% of its collection using organic fibers. Well, that's what's marketed, and that's what the consumer is told. So anytime I go and buy this particular brand, now as a consumer I feel like, oh good, I'm ticking the box. Well, you're not.
Even certifications, not every certification means what you might think it means. It might mean back to the first tier, which is manufacturing, it has been tick the boxes as there's no slavery involved; it's ethical. What about all the way back to who grew the fiber, and it could be full of slavery in that part of the supply chain. I think we haven't evolved enough yet with being able to certify products and having that marketed to consumers so that consumers can easily and clearly understand what that process was so they can make a decision.
I would say I think it's still too hard for a consumer to make a wise decision. I don't think anything exists yet that does that seamlessly, but I'm excited because there's lot of great companies out there which are working toward it and making it better and better all the time. I don't think it's far away.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Awesome. Super exciting, super exciting. Okay. You're a founder, obviously, and I love that you shared with us that you were side hustling for a while because this is the reality of growing a business, right. Any advice you'd give to anyone that maybe was you nine years ago that's looking to start a social enterprise or looking to use business as good or just start a business in generally really?
James Bartle:
Well, I can only speak from my experience, and it's the why. It's why do what I do which has driven me through the tough times. It was six years of side hustle, so only three years ago did I start working on this full time. Even since working on it full time with having some capital to put toward it, it's still been really, really difficult. If you don't know why you do what you do and that's not deeply ingrained in you, then the first puff of wind can blow you over.
For I guess those that have a deeper purpose and meaning to their business, and it doesn't have to be like what we do, it could be anything. It could be providing a better service to your community. That's awesome. If you really believe in that, then I think that you've got what it takes to be successful because what it means is you'll be willing to learn and change and adapt to become successful. Because I can guarantee you, first idea and how you think you're going to do it won't be how you end up doing it.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Sage advice. Very sage advice. James, what are you most proud of?
James Bartle:
Oh, man. There's so many things that I think I could look back on and say, I'm so proud of the way things have rolled out, but I think about just one story of one of our seamstresses that she was telling us her story about what she'd been able to do since having this job and what it had meant to her. There are some really powerful things in that story, but later on her going and buying fabric to set a girl that lived on the street up as a tailor, I often think of that moment and just go, "Well, that's the ultimate win."
If we can set people up so that they themselves will go and pay it forward, don't ever pay it back to us, pay it forward to someone else who needs it, the world will be an amazing place for us all to live. But our pride gets in the way, and we go, "Oh, this person gave me a hand up, now I need to pay it back to them so that I can feel good that I've paid my debt." But I would really like to see that we could all get the mentality that's like, hey, this person was able to help me, so I can help someone else. I think that takes the cake for me as far as things I'm proud of.
Then obviously, we've got a pretty epic team. The team in Cambodia get all the glory a lot of the time, but these guys you see that work out through these windows behind you, they give and give and give because they themselves are working for this greater vision, this greater cause to create this change in this world. It means that they work long hours, and they go without. They could have jobs at way more higher paying, more exciting places probably, but they choose to come here to create that impact. I think I'm just really proud to see how people in general will align with this brand. I just can't believe that it's happened. It seems surreal.
Pru Chapman:
It's amazing, amazing. Kudos to you. I think yeah, credit to all the hard work that you've done and also just that innate doing good as a human.
James Bartle:
Yeah. It's why we're here.
Pru Chapman:
I think that's the why. Yeah. Yep. It's very cool. Okay. Almost ready to wrap up, but I saw that your new collection has just recently been released with Isabel Lucas. It looks amazing.
James Bartle:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
You're in Canada, the US. What's next for Outland Denim?
James Bartle:
Oh, there's so much stuff we want to do.
Pru Chapman:
You're like, I'm just keeping a handle on what's going on now.
James Bartle:
Where do I start? Yeah. Look, from a design perspective, we've really started to hone in on that product. We started with beautiful core basics, which is important, but then we wanted to bring in more timeless fashion pieces, stuff that we're getting wider silhouettes for women now and even men. That for us is an exciting journey to take because we're bringing in some great designers that are bringing these collections.
James Bartle:
We've just taken our spring '20 collection out to see what feedback we got, and it was amazing. We're getting orders from retailers we only ever dreamed of being in. To see our fall '19 collection with Isabel that's gone to market now backed up by this spring '20 collection is pretty epic just to see that if you focus on product, it's great to have a why in all of that. But the product also need to stand on its own.
Pru Chapman:
Absolutely.
James Bartle:
For us, that comes down to the choices of the raw materials, the fabrics, the construction, and the design element. In the early stages, it's hard to focus on that because it feels like a cost that you don't have to have, but man, you need to have that cost. It changes everything. Spring '20 is a game changer for us, and our fall '20 is going to be even better.
Pru Chapman:
Yes. Super exciting, super exciting. All right. To wrap us up, I've just got a few One Wild Ride questions that we as all of our guests, so giddy up, let's go. Tea or coffee for you?
James Bartle: Coffee.
Pru Chapman: Always. Fate or free will?
James Bartle: Free will.
Pru Chapman: Do you have any kick-ass daily habits in place?
James Bartle: Habits, they're not kick ass. They're bad, bad habits.
Pru Chapman: Not those.
James Bartle: Are we allowed to talk about our bad habits? Yeah, no. Actually, I need more habits. I need more good habits, but I would say the best habit I have would be just a moment to relax. My faith is really important to me, so for me it's really just coming back and trying to center myself on what kind of man do I want to be today and then trying to live that out. I fail more than I succeed at it, but it's important.
Pru Chapman: Yeah. Moment of clarity. Perfect.
James Bartle: Yeah.
Pru Chapman: If you could jump on a plane tomorrow and go anywhere in the world with anyone, where would go and who would you go with?
James Bartle: I wouldn't hop on a plane. I'd hop in my ute and I would drive west. I would just go out into the bush, and I'd go camping.
Pru Chapman: Perfect.
James Bartle: It's the only place I'd go.
Pru Chapman: Yeah, perfect.
James Bartle: I'd never leave Australia if it was up to me.
Pru Chapman: Really?
James Bartle: Yeah. I love this place, love it.
Pru Chapman: Incredible. I haven't spent much time in the desert, but I really would like to. I'm warming up to it.
James Bartle: Yeah. You need to.
Pru Chapman: I've been a beach goer for too long.
James Bartle: Yeah. You need to get out there. There's sand out there too, just a different color.
Pru Chapman: Yeah, totally. Who else would you like to see me interview on the podcast?
James Bartle: Wow. Chris Hemsworth.
Pru Chapman: Ooh.
James Bartle: Because I look at that guy, and I think, I mean there's lots of incredible celebrities around setting fantastic examples. But as I think I'm middle aged now, I'm told, but I still see myself as a young father. I look at the way he lives a busy life, and I only get to see the snippets on social media, of course. But I just think he's such a great example of what a man should be. He's a loving, committed husband, loving, committed father, and taking six months off work to spend time with his family. I just go, man, I think we need more Chris Hemsworths out there. If you could get him on the podcast, I'd love to give you some Gs to get over here as well. Make sure you photograph him.
Pru Chapman: I will. Chris, if you're listening, and we are neighbors, so might give him a holler over the balcony.
James Bartle: You need to. You need to.
Pru Chapman: Yeah. Get on here, Chris. I also love that he took that big leap out of Hollywood as well, like not the work Hollywood but to live a more barefoot lifestyle to connect with his family.
James Bartle: Really cool, yeah.
Pru Chapman: Yeah, really cool.
James Bartle: And that you'll see him down the street. Well, I haven't, but you know.
Pru Chapman: I saw him the other day down the street, like last week. Yeah, out with the kids.
James Bartle: He's just a down to earth guy, and I just think, from what I can see, he hasn't let fame get to his head. He's still just a normal guy that loves life. Yeah. He's a good representation of someone we should look to.
Pru Chapman: Awesome, awesome. All right, last question. How can people best connect with you, channels, social channels, website?
James Bartle: Yeah. Website, social channels. We've got a very responsive team that manage the website and the social channels as well. We love hearing from people. I mean, I do read a lot of the comments that will get sent to us or emails that will get sent to us, and it's really encouraging. I mean they're not all positive. There's lots of negative ones as well about choices of models or lots of different things, and it raises really good conversation amongst our team. We see value in that as well. Then also it's always nice to get encouraging feedback, and so we encourage that as well.
Pru Chapman: Awesome.
James Bartle: Yeah.
Pru Chapman: James, thank you so much for joining me today.
James Bartle: No, thank you.
Pru Chapman:
To wrap up, I want to say a huge thank you to Costa Rae for the tunes, Animal Ventura for recording and production, to the people of the Bundjalung Nation from the country where this podcast is produced, and to you, our incredible listeners. As always, the conversation continues over on Instagram, so be sure to follow along over @pruchapman. That's P-R-U-Chapman. Meet over there now, and I'll see you right back here next week.