Slavery became illegal in most of the world by the end of the 19th century, but that does not mean that’s when it ended. What actually happened is slavery went underground to a black market and today there are an estimated 41 million people in slavery worldwide. To give you perspective, the transatlantic slave trade of the 15th-19th centuries saw 12-15 million people in slavery, which is just about 1/3 of the forced labor we see (or don't see) today.  Of the 41 million people in modern day slavery, fashion is estimated to have $127.7 billion of garments at risk of including  slavery, imported annually into G20 countries that account for 80% of world trade. With such catastrophic numbers, why isn't anyone doing something to stop slavery in fashion? Well the short answer is, it's complicated. To understand more, you must first understand how human trafficking gets into the fashion supply chain in the first place.

We are living in strange times as most of the world is on lockdown trying to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The fashion industry in particular is taking the hit hard as we begun feeling the effects of Coronavirus in our shut down supply chain in the winter in China. Now, as retail stores are all closed too, it is a very real worry what this global pandemic will do to our industry and our global economy. 

While we wait out the news each day, here's a list of grants and resources for small businesses to help you weather this unprecedented time. We hope this gives you a positive place to focus your energy, pay your employees, and stay in business so when this is all over you come out more nimble and ready to grow. 

The fight to make the industry more ethical and sustainable is nuanced and grey. How do you suss out greenwashing from genuine improvement? There's been a great push in the better half of the last decade to increase transparency in an effort to let the consumer be more informed and vote with their dollars. This campaign for a more transparent fashion industry has created  great demand for increased standards across the board, but is that all we need? At THR3EFOLD we believe transparency is just the beginning and by no means the solution, here's why.

Thirteen days left in this decade and a lot has happened in 2019. Here's a recap of the biggest news and advances in ethical fashion this year! Cheers to great things for the next decade.

Factories have building regulations and labor restrictions for one very important reason, lives are at stake. So when a fire sparked in a New Delhi on Sunday, December 8th killing 43 people, something was definitely wrong. Accidents happen, but many are avoidable when regulations are followed. Here's what went wrong in the New Delhi factory fire and how you can avoid it happening in your supply chain.

It's not uncommon to learn about the problems in the fashion industry and be compelled to make it better for people and planet. But starting a brand requires a lot of work, flexibility, patience, and most of all beautiful, quality product that people want to buy. Getting to this point is challenging and often unclear, so we try to feature brands who are doing regularly so you can get a peak behind the scenes of what it feels like and what challenges to expect. Here's a look into the Canadian based brand Poème Clothing and our interview with Founder, Connie Howes. 

The holiday shopping season is the most important time of year for building sales and brand awareness.  We are 2 weeks to Thanksgiving and 6 weeks to Christmas which means it's now go time for getting into gift guides and holiday press. Have you started pitching press yet? You better be. Here's how to secure press for holiday shopping. 

Finding the right factory can feel impossible and that's just the beginning. Once you actually find that factory, how do you know they are operating at the standards you need to ensure worker safety? Most professionals do not know the right standards to look for to properly vet a factory's social compliance. That's why at THR3EFOLD we only work with factories who have an ethical certification to ensure their standards are up to par and continually checked in by an outside auditing body. Each ethical certification can vary slightly in their minimum standards, but all revolve around the following set of principals.

Growing a brand takes a lot of work and you wear a million hats. With so many time sensitive deadlines, it can feel overwhelming to slow down and train new team members so you can delegate some things off your plate. However, by not training your team members properly you actually miss out on optimizing their role to its fullest potential, or worse, they could be doing tasks that are counter productive to your growth goals and actually set you back. Here's 5 Tips to train new team members.

A large contributor to fashion's waste problem is the pre-consumer textile waste also known as fabric liability or deadstock fabric. Tons and tons of deadstock fabric is collecting dust in factories and ateliers around the world and if we start sourcing it, it could begin to reduce the amount of raw materials in demand and therefore the strain we put on the planet. One of the easiest categories to implement this strategy is knits, since deadstock yarn is still unspun and much easier to mold into the designs you need. "We see leftover production materials happen in real time, to the tune of at least 15+ tons of yarn per year in Peru alone," says Ellen, who has spent many years working production in Peru. This experience prompted her to create a solution with her newly launched deadstock sweater brand The Endery co-founded with Kelly Phenicie.