Brands that invest in socially and environmentally guilty chains threaten their reputation and generate the goodwill of the customer, any of which drives business growth.
SanMar is a perfect example of a sustainable clothing logo at the forefront of the industry due to its durability. Although you may not know your name, you have a SanMar product in your closet. SanMar, one of the largest B2B apparel corporations in the United States, sells T-shirts, hats and other blank garments to corporations, corporations and sports logos such as the Seattle Seahawks.
I had the ability to reach Jeremey Lott, CEO of SanMar, why sustainability is so fundamental to the good fortune of his business and how they reorganized to combat Covid-19.
Simon Mainwaring: As a multigenerational circle of family businesses, what data has been transmitted to it?
Jeremey Lott: My father started the company in 1971. Very early, he brought my grandfather and they worked together for 20 years. I have served in the company since I was born, but full-time since 2002. I became president in 2013.
When I grew up, SanMar was a small business and the kids were there to help me. At the table, we don’t communicate about games or politics. We communicate about the company.
In the late 1980s, I went fishing with my father and his suppliers. I’m a young teenager. These guys taught me how to make Bloody Marys for them in the morning. What you are informed of through those conversations is incredibly valuable over time.
One of the most productive recommendations my father gave me was: “Work harder.” There is no replacement for hard work. He started the business because he saw it as an opportunity to treat other people well. He says, “Tell him and be nice.” If you can do that, you can succeed in a domain where it didn’t exist before. Values have been a vital component of the business since day one.
Mainwaring: Did you start with sustainability in the brain or has it evolved more recently?
Lott: My father a distribution company. We bought T-shirts and hoodies through trucks and sold them to pieces. We made a margin by doing that.
We’re in Seattle. Our consumers like Seattle Seahawks, Starbucks and resellers need our products to be manufactured responsibly. This is helping our consumers sell to their consumers. They need stories about sustainability. They are proud that the Honduran plant supports the Touching Hands project.
Everything we sell bears someone else’s logo, whether it’s a school business, a church or a team. Once that happens, it’s no longer a SanMar T-shirt.
When the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed, it was a real wake-up call for me. I said, “Are we part of this global challenge of unfair and potentially harmful labor practices?” I spent a lot of time traveling and in factories. I’ve noticed bad factories. If I’m honest, we had production in bad factories. I’ve also noticed a lot of smart factories.
We have made a conscious substitution at this point of paintings with other people who are doing smart things. We begin to be more determined with our source chain in mind.
This led to our first CSR report. We have more transparency. We have begun to report on how we work with internal and external stakeholders. They hold us accountable for the criteria we set.
Mainwaring: How and why did the Bangladesh tragedy wake up the garment industry?
Lott: In Dhaka, Bangladesh, there are many multi-story buildings with multi-story factories. In 2013, one of those buildings collapsed. He’s killed over a thousand people.
As an industry, we don’t prioritize physical security. It’s a mass wake-up call for everyone. In Bangladesh, they have building codes, but these constructions are not built according to the codes. There’s a lot of corruption.
As brands, we have a selection of where we need to manufacture. We can influence the implementation of change. It replaced the number of brands we ourselves were looking to produce. He replaced who we were looking to produce. We have begun to reconsider how we can use our purchasing force in a positive way.
Mainwaring: How did you justify the monetary charge of this replacement within the company?
Lott: It wasn’t complicated in SanMar. All I had to do was convince my father. If I sold it to a CFO, I would say, “You can charge 25 cents more for the blouse at Factory A than at Factory B. What does CBS News charge me if CBS News goes to Factory B and shows child labour? Or Unsafe operating conditions? What would the sales look like? “There is a massive public relations threat.
We found that plants charge a little more, but they offer quality and consistency. We minimize unrest and make more money operating with larger factories.
Selling it internally is simple because I can turn it into a war cry for our organization. People were excited to be part of social change. This has helped recruit and retain talent. This galvanized the organization. Doing smart things has been a great fortune for us financially.
Mainwaring: How do you measure the effect on your workers and their culture?
We started telling those stories internally and other people were excited about it. It’s a perfect war cry and a recruiting tool.
Mainwaring: And how do you justify your commitments to sustainable development?
Lott: There is an ethical imperative and an economic imperative. Here’s an example. One of our clients had been promoting about $100,000 of loot at a convention for several years.
The organizers called one day and said, “We’re not going to give loot. Instead, we’re going to give carbon offsets.”
This visitor has lost a giant component of his business. For me, it’s an economic awakening. If we cannot manufacture products sustainably, brands will not buy our product.
I also have six children. I want my grandchildren to have the same quality of life as me.
Mainwaring: How do you know that your employees, stores, and consumers know that these commitments are real?
Lott: SanMar has a full-time representative at each and every plant we operate on. Most paint abuses do not occur in factories where you think your product is manufactured. They happen in factories where you didn’t know how to make your product. This plant can also seamlessly outsource production to another plant. We made the decision to leave the plants we weren’t comfortable with.
Mainwaring: And all this is motivated by your statement, “Canvas For Good”?
Lott: Our leaders have been thinking about how to invest in the communities that make our business, both at home and abroad. That’s where “Canvas For Good” comes from.
So are our customers. Some of our T-shirts move on to activities like raising cancer studies. It gives you a sense of pride and community.
With all the divisions in society, anything we can do to create a sense of network is an advantage. I’m not naive enough to think T-shirts solve everything. I think when we feel a connection with other people, it’s.
Mainwaring: What are you doing to engage workers and generate that this has an effect altogether?
Lott: We the other organizations in the communities we live in every year. Employees are excited about the way we raise money. It can be a golf tournament or a cake sale. People feel part of anything good, even if the company provides the most money. It also deepens ties with the communities in which we live.
Mainwaring: How did you get to Covid-19?
Scary. We didn’t know what the bottom was like. We had to send everyone home. We had to figure out how we can keep our distribution centers open safely. We had to cut spending. We’ve reduced workers’ wages. I reduced my salary to a dollar.
Then I won an email from one of our employees. His son EMT in Bellingham, Washington. He said they didn’t have masks. They told him to put on a handkerchief. I think it’s silly that by 2020 in the United States, our first responders don’t have fundamental protective equipment. For me it crystallized that there is this need.
I wasn’t sure we could do that. Our largest yarn supplier said: “We are building a coalition of U.S. textile corporations to make protective masks. We need you to be a component.” I agreed.
Mainwaring: What have you learned from this procedure that will continue?
Lott: The most important lesson I’ve learned is that when you’re in crisis, it’s time to take credit for the associations you built in smart times. In smart times, I think corporations can see the global as transactional. They’ll go from one supplier to another because it’s five cents cheaper. It’s like biting you in difficult times. When you treat other people well, you create a social capital that allows you to attract others when you want it to the fullest and when they respond.
We asked, “How can we do this in a short period of time?” Response collaboration. Our chain of sources around the world understood urgency and presented itself in record time.
I emailed the UPS sales manager, whom I had already met once. I asked if UPS would be willing to help. 30 seconds later, he said, “UPS is there to help.”
I needed a plane the next day to ship fabrics from the Dominican Republic to our sewers in Tennessee. No one uses this path, however, it has helped us to do so.
Mainwaring: Did the remodeling of the company bring some workers back to work?
Lott: When we started producing protective equipment, we were able to reopen plants in Tennessee, Honduras and Vietnam that would otherwise have been closed.
We have had to reduce hours and wages at our corporate and distribution offices in the United States. We didn’t shoot anybody. Since June 1, we’ve reduced everyone’s hours and salaries to their total amount. The mask is a vital component of that. Our normal activity is also back.
Mainwaring: How do you stay in touch with workers and consumers when everyone works remotely?
Lott: Our distributors make a stopover on our consumers in person. In those times they do so through Zoom calls. We have a giant intermediate call staff to answer incoming calls. We spoke outward through email.
We created SanMar U to inform consumers about aspects such as factory and product. We need to help space experts such as Jersey knit fabric or the durability media of a clothing product. This has also been a valuable article for us on Instagram and Facebook.
Mainwaring: What would you say to corporations that they wonder if they invest in targeted paints, sustainability or impact?
Lott: The global is accelerating. This replacement is happening. Like it or not, customers, painters and other stakeholders expect business leaders to be positive participants around the world. If we don’t do our part, other people will work with corporations that do.
Mainwaring: What is your hope for the long term of the business?
Lott: When you align the economy with positive change, it can make a big difference. Think about what the capitalist-minded industry has done. If we mix that with a goal, we can generate a lot of good. It gives me hope.
Simon Mainwaring is the founder and CEO of We First, a strategic consulting firm that accelerates expansion and has an effect on goal-oriented brands by putting “We” first. I
Simon Mainwaring is the founder and CEO of We First, a strategic consulting firm that accelerates expansion and has an effect on purpose-oriented brands by putting “We” first. I specialize in branding, culture creation and have an effect on storytelling for startups, high-expansion corporations, and Fortune 500 corporations. My national podcast is LeadWithWe.com on Spotify, Google and Apple. My book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World is a bestseller from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Amazon, and the strategy business named it Best Corporate Marketing Book of the Year. I give lectures, trainings and workshops that help brands define, integrate and implement their purpose of stimulating expansion and construction. Visit SimonMainwaring.com to contact and WeFirstBranding.com for consultation.