A multitude of drops

Due to the fast fashion industry the prices of our clothes are forced lower and lower. This way we get more choice, more clothes, and lower prices. This is a good thing...right?

From our perspective it is. That is, until you look a little deeper. 

Consider this; of the ten richest people on the planet, two of these are CEOs of fast fashion businesses. With prices like $5 for a T shirt, how is it possible to make enough profit to accrue such large amounts of wealth?

If we, the consumers, are winning with increasingly cheaper goods, and fast fashion companies are raking in higher and higher profits, who is losing? Who is bearing the cost?

What is the true cost of fashion?

Unfortunately, it's much larger than many of us can imagine and spans from the mass pollution of important sources of drinking water to the deaths of thousands of garment workers due to unsafe labour conditions. But instead of telling you about it, why not take a look for yourself.

The documentary 'The True Cost' aims not only to tell you what the impacts are, but show you. In addition to exposing the conditions that many workers in the garment industry operate under it discusses the long term health effects of pesticide use in the growing of cotton crops and the economic effects of unchecked consumerism. 

The True Cost is available on Netflix. If you have a spare hour, please take the time to find out where the clothes you wear come from and the impacts that they have on our world.

As some of you may know, I take dance lessons and have been doing so for 1-2 years. In this time I have been social dancing, competed and performed. 

My friends who are much more experienced than I am pushed me into participating. At first I was terrified. Were they crazy? I was only a beginner, I wasn't good enough. I needed to get much better before I even thought about performing in front of people.

But they managed to convince me. They explained how they knew people who said that they would wait until they were good enough and kept putting off participating. Eventually when they felt that they were finally good enough, the thought of performing was still so scary that they were unable to do their best. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. 

This is something that I've experienced myself. One thing that I've never been able to do is invite friends to my netball games. While this seems like something so insignificant, the extra pressure of an audience always throws me off my game. But now that I've started dancing in front of friends in earlier, I've managed to break this mental block before it got too strong. 

There will always be ways that you can improve. You can always be better. There will always be a reason to say "I'll wait until I can do X before I do Y". But why should that stop you? If you keep waiting for an arbitrary point in time when you're 'better', you may never end up participating. 

This can translate to many different scenarios other than dance or performing; giving a speech, applying for that job, signing up for that marathon. Sure you may not be at your best yet, but it's better to have a go and smash down those walls that could hold you back as early as you can.

Is there anything holding you back?

1. Educate yourself

What is ethical fashion? Why is it important? These are questions you might be asking right now. Over the next few weeks hopefully I’ll answer some of these questions through my blog posts.
In the meantime you can check out the Ethical Fashion Forum to find out a bit more.

2. Shop ethical

In recent times, more and more ethical fashion businesses are starting up, offering ethical alternatives to the clothes that you normally buy. Some of these include Reformation, Etiko and People Tree. In addition to this, Australian website goodonyou.org.au rates common brands on their impacts on the environment, animals and people. Take a look at the ratings before you go shopping to find out which stores to avoid and which are doing a good job. You might be surprised at what you find.

3. Go thrift shopping

If you can't afford to pay for clothes that are more ethically produced, head down to your local salvos or op-shop a little more often to see what you can find. You never know what fantastic items you might be able to pick up for a fraction of the cost. Not only are you being kind to your wallet, but to the environment by recycling and minimising waste.

4. Borrow clothes

Over the course of our lives we’ll be going to hundreds of social events. Weddings, birthday parties, university balls, the list is endless, and if you’re a girl theres a socially constructed taboo that you simply can’t wear the same dress twice. But lets face it, we’re not made of money and its not practical or sustainable to buy a new dress for every event that we go to. Instead, try swapping clothes with your friends, or hiring something from a website like this one: http://somethingborrowed.net.au/melbourne/for-hire/ or even on gumtree. Infinite choices for a fraction of the environmental cost! 

5. Invest in timeless pieces

It’s a time old adage, ‘quality over quantity’. Unfortunately somewhere along the way, the fashion industry seems to have forgotten this, churning out new low cost, poor quality pieces every week. Break the cycle by investing your money in good quality pieces that you’ll wear over and over again like a good coat, comfortable boots or versatile black jeans instead of buying dozens of cheap items that will disintegrate or go out of style in a couple of months. You won’t regret it, I promise.

6. Subscribe to The Conscious Wardrobe

The Conscious Wardrobe is a website that I am starting up with two other talented and passionate young women to make ethical fashion more accessible to you. We aim to help you learn more, shop more ethically and give you tips to help you build a more conscious wardrobe so that we all can make the world a better place. Follow us on twitter to find out more: https://twitter.com/ConsciousAus

Over the past few years, crowd funding has revolutionised the entrepreneurship scene. By allowing people to raise large amounts of capital from the wider community, websites such as Kickstarter, Pozible and and Indiegogo are making entrepreneurship more accessible to people from all walks of life.

Crowdfunding encourages people to get more involved in start ups and helps new businesses get off the ground. It allows many more ideas to get funded and the wider public to become investors in ideas and projects that they care about and are interested in. For this reason, entrepreneurs are able to see what the perceived value of their product is before going to production. Will people buy this? Is it worth pursuing? Is there even a demand for it? All these questions are answered before any large amounts of money are invested into the start up. This gives the entrepreneurs a better idea of whether they’re heading in the right direction, or if they’ll need to pivot and try a new approach.

However, while crowdfunding has many positive effects associated with it, there are several negatives that are often overlooked. Firstly, crowdfunding means that a lot of the seed capital used to start up an enterprise comes from the public, not through individual investors. While this does mean that most of the power remains with the entrepreneurs, it can mean that by not receiving as much pointed feedback from potential investors, their business models aren’t as well thought through.

In addition to this, many crowd funders promise ‘rewards’ to their investors, whether it be an advanced sample of their new product or a personalised thank you from the company. Once their project is funded, there is a lot of pressure put on the entrepreneurs to execute their vision quickly, while maintaining a high standard, and distribute it to their investors. Many crowd funded products were delivered later than the promised date to their investors such as the ‘Pebble watch’ and ‘Galileo’, which cast a negative image on these enterprises.

However, this is just a snapshot of the pros and cons associated with crowdfunding. For this reason, it’s important to weigh up these points and to carefully consider your options before taking to the internet to fund your next enterprise.

In the past 100 years or so, the world has come a long way in terms of gender equality. Women now have the right to vote, to work, to own property and to get equal pay, however not everything is perfect. Underlying bias exists in many facets of our society, business and entrepreneurship being one of them.

Women make up only a third of entrepreneurs around the world. While that number is growing, many women are put off by the perceived extra challenges associated with women and the business world. The first and perhaps the most obvious challenge is that of children. Many women have it imposed upon them that they either have to choose their career or their family, they can’t have both. Even if they attempt to ‘have it all’, there becomes issue with maternity leave and the amount of time a woman has to be away from work to recover. In fact, when I was speaking to a senior member of SBS Australia about this issue she said that often when women took maternity leave, due to the cut throat nature of the journalism industry, they would not have a job to return to.

In addition to this, there is a lack of female role models in the entrepreneurship scene.  When you think of an entrepreneur, the names that instantly jump into your head are rarely female. 

While there are female entrepreneurs around the world, they don’t tend to be as publicised or as numerous as their male counterparts.

Despite the fact that challenges do exist, it does not mean that women shouldn’t try to become entrepreneurs. In fact it means just the opposite. We may not have as many role models or mentors to look to for guidance, but we just need to work harder to become those role models for future generations of female entrepreneurs. Equality has been achieved in many other areas of society, there’s no reason we can’t achieve it here too.

Over the past couple of weeks I have witnessed a new addition to the range of products at Bunnings Warehouse - the Cricket Cooler. Every time I walk in to work, the first thing that I see is an enormous display of these eskys.

Some of you may remember the cricket cooler from the first episode of Australian Shark Tank. During the episode the founders successfully pitched their product, earning support from the shark Naomi Simson.

It’s been just over six months since that episode aired and for the business to have grown to be stocked - nay, featured - in the biggest hardware store chain in Australia is no small feat. It really shows how fast the world of entrepreneurship can move. It only takes one small action to explode your business, but it might just take you a while to figure out what that action is.