Pachacuti - Panama Hats and Fair Trade Clothing

For any entrepreneurs out there wanting a ready-made business, the business I set up with my husband a few years ago, Clean Slate Fair Trade and Organic School Uniforms is available at minimal cost.  Clean Slate was the UK's first Fair Trade and Organic school uniform supplier and there was a huge demand for our products for children with eczema which was made worse by the chemicals used to make school uniforms 'Easy Care' and 'Non-iron'

As Pachacuti became increasingly successful, we couldn't run two businesses and took Clean Slate off line two years ago.  However, we have still been getting daily phone calls from parents wanting to our purchase Fair Trade and Organic school uniforms!  We have a room full of varied stock - school shirt, trousers, skirts etc  and would be happy to let the business go at a really minimal price (probably about £2 per garment) to try to cover cost price on saleable stock.  Happy to give away the business name, all website design, photoshoots of the uniforms etc.

It has the potential to be a business which is easy to run and profitable, but the supply chain for the school uniforms needs to be re-established with fairtrade, organic producers. I would love to get the warehouse clear of the many boxes of stock we still have as I am paying monthly storage for school uniform we will never get around to selling.  So if anyone out there is interested in a new business, please let me know! Please email: carry(at)panamas.co.uk

A short video showing the journey of our Panama Hats, from the sustainable, organic, community owned plantation which is encouraging biodiversity, through to our co-operatives of women weavers high in the Andes.

The song is by one of the pensioners we support from the co-operative, Zoila German.  We have bought her a pair of glasses, as you can see from the video, and we are currently trying to raise money to buy glasses for a further 65 weavers.

I had a really fascinating trip down to the coast of Ecuador this week to meet the community who supply the Carludovia Palmata fibre (also known as paja toquilla) for our Panama Hats.

Mark (our Marketing Manager & my husband) and Sara (our Quality Manager) drove to a small community of 3000 people about 3 hours south of Manta and then it was an hour off road up into the mountains to reach the plantations of the paja. The community has been working hard to protect their area of land and to increase sustainability and biodiversity in the area. They have protected an area of 5600 hectares and are now seeing a lot more birds and animals in the area such as toucans, armadillos and monkeys. The plants also help to improve the air quality and the producers were keen to emphasise that the work they are doing is providing oxygen for the world. They are hoping to make the area a Patrimonio Cultural in the future.

A new paja toquilla palm can't be harvested for 3 years as it needs to produce runners and baby plants before it can be harvested. After this period, the paja can be harvested every 30 days as it is a very fast growing plant and takes just a month to reach full height (around 12 feet) again. The paja is grown in 100% organic conditions and so we should look into the possibility of organic certification for the fibre in the future.

During our walk through the forest, we saw this huge tarantula and so we definitely stepped a lot more carefully after that!

It was so encouraging to meet the producers of paja for Pachacuti's Panama Hats and to be able to document the sustainability of the production process. Pachacuti has been certified by the WFTO against the Sustainable Fair Trade Management System and we really can say that Pachacuti's Panama Hats are not only sustainable but are actually bringing about positive environmental impact within the community.