Crowdfunding, cupcakes and NEW PANTS!

Hello there pants fans!

We hope you’re well and enjoying what you can of this changeable weather. We had lollies at lunchtime for two days last week and enjoyed sitting near the river that runs past the back of our tiny factory.

It’s Ramadan now and that means that our team are off – we made a joint decision that fasting + hot weather + machines with knives, blades and needles probably = A Bad Idea. The factory is not silent though. Our brilliant designer Emma and our superviser Nisha have been sewing away, perfecting the design and method for our very next style – we’re launching it THIS WEEK so depending on when you get this it might already be on sale on the wesbite. It’s a really comfortable jersey short, edged with staggeringly good English lace, all stuff that would have been wasted had we not swooped. There is more precision involved in the making of this than our current shorts – it takes around 3 times as long to make – and we’re using it to teach attention to detail, focus and concentration.

We’re also excited to be launching a crowdfunding project this week and if you like the way we empower women through work, we’d love your support, if you can help us.

We’re raising money to buy a new sewing machine and training materials – we are way away from making profit, have less than zero spare cash, and it’s the only way we can move ahead. We develop skills by developing new products, and we need a new machine to teach a new skill. Fundamentally though what we are teaching is versatility, precision and attention to detail – core employability skills. We’re just doing it, as we do with everything, through the power of pants.

We need to raise just £6000 and we know that this can be done by just 105 people.

The campaign is live here http://buzzbnk.org/wmyp Pledges start from £0 to be a cheerleader to £15 for which the kind person gets a thank you card and discount code with various intermediate levels all the way up to £300 for which the kind person gets hand delivery of pants to London, tea at the Royal Society for the Arts, a limited edition shirt, new pants, current pants, a thank you card…

I’m dreadful at asking for money but that’s basically what I’m doing and I hope you don’t mind. We love what we do, hope you do too, and hope you’ll forgive us the ask.

Hope you’ve managed to see some sunshine and that you love your new pants!

Becky and the Who Made Your Pants? Team

News in brief…
Becky had a great time at our stall at Winchester Science Festival and was entertained by how many people bought pants, and then came and showed her them, Della has bought a ukelele and got very excited about the Tiger Feet dance in the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Amy has landed herself a part time job with our bookkeeper so we’re learning how to share her, Nisha won a competition to to name a cupcake and won 48 mini ones, and Jackie has been swimming in the sea and sunning herself at Lee on Solent

Filed under: Uncategorized, buzzbnk, crowdfunding, cupcakes, design, employability, Ramadan, RSA

In the summertime….

Hello there pants fans!

It’s been another wet and windy week here in Southampton… we’re cheering ourselves up by planning exciting things but we need all the help we can get, eh – summer, where ARE you?

This week, commencing the 16th, is going to be our last week of production for a few weeks. It’s Ramadan, and this means our team will be fasting. As we use machinery and knives, and it’s warm, we’ve agreed that the production area will shut down briefly. They’ve told us about how it is in different countries -in Dubai, everywhere is air conditioned, and in many countries, people sleep in the afternoon and then break their fast with dates, and work in the evenings, after dark. For us, the management in the office, the time our team take off at Ramadan gives us a time to plan and review. The work we do around employability is not done quickly and so we’re always looking for ways to add more and teach better.

One exciting thing that we are setting up is a crowd funding project around buying machinery and training for our upcoming new style. As some of you may have read before, we work with women who were not lingerie makers when they came to us and so we develop skills gently and carefully. Our next style will introduce new skills and techniques. We’ll be crowdfunding with Buzzbnk (pronounced Buzzbank) http://www.buzzbnk.org. The corwd funding model is really interesting – if you’ve not heard of it it’s basically us saying what we want to do, how much it will cost, and then people who want to see that happen, people commuting funds to it in exchange for the promise of something. So, we’ll say, for example, if you commit £15, you get one of the first pairs of pants that rolls off the line. It’s an investment in developing an idea you like. We like it!

This coming weekend – the 20th – 22nd, we will have a stall at the first every Winchester Science Festival. We’re very excited to be part of this – we are official supporters – as it has a stated commitment to supporting and promoting women in science. The 21st July is the anniversary of the last ever shuttle landing back on Earth, in 2011 – we think that every little girl should be able to dream of being an astronaut, with as much chance as her brother of that becoming real. If you’re local, see you there?

Until next time – thanks as ever for supporting us

Big love,

Becky and the Who Made Your Pants? Team

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2012, crowdfunding, new styles, Ramadan, science, space

We’re all going on a summer holiday…

Howdy pants fans!

We don’t know about you, but we’re getting a bit tired of summer. Bring back spring, when we had sunshine and outdoors sitting and fun! Hope you are all safe and dry, wherever you are.

Last week was our first week in ages without our Head of Operations, Della. She’s on a very overdue holiday and it’s a good test for us to see how we get on without the person that makes everything inside the factory and offices work. So far so good – the value of having proper procedures, even in a tiny organisation like ours, is clear. It helped that we welcomed back Nisha, our wonderful sewing supervisor. Nisha has been away working on an exciting contract, but we’re pleased as punch that she’s back. And not just because she bought bakewell tarts!

In very exciting news, we have a brand new printer! Our current ones are wombled/upcycled and are as reliable as that implies. A brand new one is a treat beyond imagination! And in exciting product news, we have found some more of a lace we used a while back, a gorgeous bright vibrant purple. Limited numbers back on sale in two weeks. We’re having some new photography done, too, of that purple and our new white lace pants and some new gift sets. Adding white to our range means we’re able to make some gorgeous new colour combinations – look out for Eton Mess, Mint Choc Chip and Oceans 3, among others, coming soon.

We’ve been getting some lovely feedback and reviews from people who have bought from us recently – we’re always pleased that people like our pants. And as I’ve been asked to put myself forward for an award (more if it comes off!) we’ve been talking to some of our more well known supporters about what they think of us and what they’ll say publicly about us – we’re proud to be supported by scientist and TV presenter Dr Alice Roberts, stand up comedian and activist Mark Thomas and the BBC’s Cherry Healey.

Professor Alice Roberts, Anatomist, author & broadcaster

“Who made your pants? I discovered this company a few years ago: a small co-operative, working to support women from a range of backgrounds, using offcuts from the lingerie industry to create beautiful and comfortable underwear. It’s the antithesis of a sweatshop, and proves that the clothing industry, rather than perpetuating exploitation, can be a force for good.

Cherry Healey, Broadcaster

I adore my WMYP pants. My bottom has never felt so happy and the rest of me loves that they’re made ethically. That is having your cake and eating it. But for pants.

Mark Thomas, Activist and Stand Up comedian
Becky’s ethical business is practical, local, helps those most vulnerable and makes lovely pants at nice price. What’s not to like! She simply gets on with the job of helping the people at the bottom of the ladder without asking for medals. All she wants is orders.

Thanks to all of them!

And thanks to you, too, for supporting us and the work we do. Every single purchase goes towards us doing what we do – providing training, a safe place, creating and sustaining jobs. We couldn’t do it without you. To, er, borrow a misused phrase, we are in this together – and we love that you believe in what we do.

Big love,

Becky and the Who Made Your Pants? Team

News in brief…

Becky’s been up at the Royal Society for the Arts in London, where she is a featured ‘social entrepreneur’ in one of their programmes; Della is, we hope, having a LOT of fun on holiday; Amy K is back in (hooray!) after her operation; Nisha is happy to be back and impressed with the team’s progress, Samia has been teaching us how to greet friends in her language, Farsi, Sacdiyo has been teasing (veggie) Becky about some of the meaty things she likes to eat, Hawa has had her pre holiday inoculations, Yasmein is waiting for some exam results, Batol made delicious falafel, and Zuhra some gorgeous vegetarian rice and chickpeas for lunch, and Jackie, our resident purple wearing person, is helping pack our orders.

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2012, Cherry Healey, Dr Alice Roberts, gift sets, holidays, IT, Mark Thomas, reviews

Nice weather for ducks. And Holidays.

Hello there pants fans!

Hope you’re keeping dry and cheery in this lovely *cough* summer weather?

Things are going well for us here at Pants Central. The impact of our mention in the Guardian Weekend magazine in continuing, happily. So much so that we’ve had a phone call from the Royal Mail….They rang up saying, er, you’ve been filling up all our post boxes…

During the week after our mention in the Guardian Weekend magazine we took an unprecedented amount of orders – we liked it, please feel free to continue! – but we’ve been growing slowly so we didn’t have a system on place to cope with posting so many. So, you’ve got to love this, our smashing volunteer Amy (who recently got a first in her maths degree!) was loading up our Giant Blue Wheely Suitcase with orders and trekking out each day to do a little walking tour of the area, taking in all the local post boxes… The fact that, as you have seen, our boxes have our name on meant we were easy to track down! It’s been a good thing – the nice man from Royal Mail is going to come to see us and we’re hoping to get something a little bit more formal set up!

We’re also delighted that we’ve been able to put more pins into our ‘pants map’ including one in the island of Tiree. Our team love knowing where their hard work gets sent to.

With summer in full swing, and with Ramadan, an important time for our team approaching, it’s holiday season. Della, our Head of Operations (a grand title meaning ‘the person that makes it all work) is off on a long awaited holiday for the next two weeks. Hawa is looking forward to her trip back to Somalia, and her children to their trip to Sweden where they have family. Samia has visitors from Afghanistan and there are excited conversations about it all. We don’t ask too many questions of our team about ‘before UK’ as we don’t want to stir up difficult memories – the reality is, people don’t leave their home country and flee if they’re safe and well there. So to hear our team being excited about seeing their families again is a real pleasure.

That’s about it for this week. Hope you have a good week and thanks so much for ordering these smashing pants – we hope you love them as much as we do.

Big love,

Becky and the team

Filed under: Uncategorized, 2012, Amy K, Blue Suitcase of Doom, Guardian Weekend Magazine, holidays, pantsmap, rain, Ramadan, summer