BIOBUU

Slow and organic fashion for kids.

Sunday 2 June 2013, by Ircky

2 inspired

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

Why this company?

During the course, we have been thinking in different options to make our project. We knew that we wanted to choose a company that was providing value to the Catalan society in an ethical and inspiring way. The idea was to find a company that was creating value by taking advantage of an opportunity created by ethics.

Then on seminar 6, after working on the child labor case, we realized that was a very interesting topic and that the whole society were contributing to preserve this kind of activity. Was on this moment when we thought that was possible to act so much more properly on the textile industry sector.

We started to find an ethical clothing company that was able to inspire us by creating value on the textile sector in an ethical and ecological way and if it was possible in Catalonia. Here is where the company that we’ve chosen appears: BIOBUU.

a) The main facts about the activities of the company.

Biobuu is a recent initiative from a Catalan entrepreneur called David Buenavida who has created an on-line child clothing shop with the philosophy of being ethic, sustainable and organic. The main activity of the company is to sell ethical child clothing from o to 10 years old by an on-line platform.

All the clothing sold on the store comes from certificate suppliers that make 100% cotton clothing and made by people that are receiving a fair remuneration for their job. On the catalog of the store, we can find national firms like B by White or Antón Pirulero and international firms like Frugi, Serendipity Organics o Boys & Girls.

As we can see on the web site, clothing is addressed to a customer that finds quality instead of quantity that consumes on a responsible and conscientious way, that is looking for clothing with values and done on an ethical way, and granting that behind them there is no child exploitation and human rights are respected.

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

The company is addressing different ethical challenges. The first is the one related by PEOPLE. The store only with companies that manufactures clothing in totally fair conditions; this is compensating workers with fairly salaries.

The second ethical challenge that they are affording is in favor of the PLANET. Clothing sold on the store is in all the cases, ecologic; this is 100% organic cotton clothing that doesn’t harm the environment. These both challenges, as we have said before, are reached by working only with certificate suppliers.

And third challenge that they are addressing is the one of sustainable consumption. They promote a philosophy called SLOW FASHION. To define it we will use a fragment write on the web site: “in a society where the tendency is that everything is fleeting, immediate and quick, they propose a conscious purchase, slow, with clothes of higher quality and long-lived, that can pass from brother to brother and combine multiple times. They promote the fact of having less for having more”.

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

We believe BIOBUU is a really ethical company. After analyzing all its activity we believe BIOBUU is a great option to promote a business in the textile industry that is based not only on its profits but also tries to connect these profits with an ethical way of acting.

We all know that we can find lot of unethical actions in the textile sectors, but are we doing something to change this?
Some of the biggest companies in the textile industry use any action without considering if it’s ethical or not in order to reduce the costs and increase sells. We all know about exploitation in third world countries where multinationals uses their great power to build big factories and take advantage of the need of poor people paying them miserable wages. At the same time it is very usual to see how textile companies use for their production non renewable materials that can damage the environment.

We believe Biobuu is an ethical company because it is trying to contribute in the sustainability of the world. The company uses ethical and organic cotton; their products are made in workshops where people receive a fair wage for their job.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

BIOBUU has only 6 months of life so as a young company it has lots of challenges to face. The first challenge that we think the company must achieved is to survive in the competitive textile sector. After this they should try to appear as an ethical competitive option to the big multinationals that subcontracts on the underdeveloped countries.

Obviously their way of competing won’t by prices because they have nothing to do against multinational prices. Then we encourage them to compete by selling high quality clothing and appealing to the feelings of people and we think that they are in the right way. Although this isn’t easy to achieve, we think that BIOBUU is going to be able, because after studying the market we’ve realized that the sector of ethical textile business has grown in the past years, and we trust BIOBUU will succeed in the sector.

Our advice for improving would be to encourage them on using communication and transparency as best tools to attract potential costumer. We think that this is how an ethical company can create value and compete against big multinationals that have lower costs and are acting in a venal way.

Bibliography

http://biobuu.com/es/
http://www.econ.upf.edu/~lemenestrel/IMG/pdf/meyers_jsp_2004.pdf
http://www.econ.upf.edu/~lemenestrel/IMG/pdf/le_menestrel_be_2002.pdf
http://www.elmundoecologico.es/emprendedores/659-biobuu-ropa-infantil-organica-y-sostenible.html

Location: Barcelona (Spain)

Sector: Manufacturing, Other service activities

Official website: http://biobuu.com/es/

Key figures:

They have no key figures, company of recent creation.

Nbr. visits: 441

Nbr. inspires: 2