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How to thrive as a visionary realist

8/11/2017

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“Give credit to your dreams, make them count, do everything necessary to work towards them. But please, don’t even for a second confuse your vision with reality. Instead, get ready to master your senses, sharpen your mind, and absorb the whole variety of existence. If you have the courage to believe in the good, but also master to acknowledge the bad, your hope will set the world on fire.” – Robin Grey
Every social entrepreneur is probably familiar with the frustrations the status quo brings along. You have all those ambitious ideas and plans how to create a world where everyone and everything is treated fairly, but the currently reality simply doesn’t look like that. Instead of getting discouraged by the gap between vision and reality, we learnt how to draw energy from this tension and see it as our greatest gift for change. In this article, we would like to share our insights on the art of visionary realism.
 
Your ideals are your biggest strengths       
 
Humans don’t act according to their ideals. Human societal systems and behaviours are a reflection of the full spectre of negative and positive human characteristics. But this doesn’t mean humans can’t strive for an ideal.
 
If you are a social business your strength lies in the ability to believe enough in human ideals to actively work towards them.
 
You believe so much in it that you actively channel your energies and design services or a product that attempt to nurtures these human “good” characteristics instead of its less “ideal” counterparts. And however hard the day in and outs of striving for your ideals might be within the context of the existing full spectre of good and bad, it is this gap between your ideals and the current reality that makes you incredibly relevant.

In case your beliefs in a more equal, just and inclusive world are valid, you won’t suffer from competition as any other business does. You stay relevant until the world looks closer to this ideal version of equality and inclusivity. Whatever you plan to do, as long as you have this vision in mind, you stay flexible and adaptive to any circumstance.
 
Explore your possibilities
 
Although many humans don’t act according to their ideals, there are plenty who try very hard. Whatever it is that you are undertaking, if you look well enough, you will find someone or something that comes quite close to what you stand for. If you want to work with environmentally friendly products, look for someone who is doing the same. Read, research, and reach out to people that share your vision. If you know what you are looking for, you are likely to find a pool of accessible resources that you can dive into.
 
Accept your limits. Choose your current best.
 
Your work happens at the edge of what we know today and envision for tomorrow. Because you want to challenge the current way of doing things, you frequently will encounter the limits of current best practices. Whilst humans know quite a lot, there is a hell lot that we simply don’t know. Challenging the status quo and asking questions will lead you to many new answers, but also reveal many more questions. Don’t get frustrated by this. 

Pick the solution that comes closest to your ideals and let go of everything that you can’t control at the moment. Invest your resources into what you can control. Your solution won’t be your ideal, but it will be your current best.
 
Be humble and acknowledge small achievements
 
Striving for ideals can be extremely energy daunting at times. Because they are what their names incline, an ideal version of how something could look like in a utopic world, you most likely will never achieve this stage. But you will come closer to it. Be kind to yourself and enjoy the process of learning. If something doesn’t work this doesn’t mean that you wasted your energy, but you learnt how to do it differently for the next time. There are no mistakes, but only lessons learnt. Be humble and celebrate small achievements. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it starts like that.

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Recapturing dreams and actions of the past 10 weeks

12/18/2016

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​“Finding the balance between curiosity and courage, work and pleasure, risk and safety, creative and structured, was the ultimate challenge at this point of GreyC2’s development. Working with new friends, we had to be patient and open to different approaches to individual thinking.”
 
When the 5 of us started working together ten weeks ago some of us hardly knew each other. So while figuring out a whole lot of things related to our startup, we also had to learn about our ways of approaching things, how we function in a team and what’s important to each team member.
 
As a team we are clearly diverse in our personalities and ways of dealing with things. Some of us are very organised and know a lot about different implementation tools. Others are creative fashion lovers, and love to brainstorm and play with dreams and visions. Although this diversity of personalities has been quite a challenge in certain situations, we believe that magic happens when these things are mixed together – when the dreamer meets the implementer halfway, something in heads and on paper might actually become a real creation. To find the ideal balance in team dynamics has been a working debate and open discussion within GreyC2.
 
“At first it was daunting - sitting across the table from people I viewed as extremely organised and that knew what they were talking about. I found myself questioning whether I was cut out for what I was doing? But then I realised there may be moments where I would babble on and they would find themselves just as clueless. But that’s the thing about team dynamics - where you all come together with your inputs and areas of expertise to create something amazing.”
 
During the last ten weeks we not only faced challenges within the team, but also externally we had to deep dive into fields very new to all of us. We had to make tough decisions and let go of initial plans to eventually find a new path. Courageous actions where needed in small as well as bigger decisions. From reaching out to wool suppliers in the Western Cape to speaking up in a team meeting, each of us faced their own challenges, but slowly and steadily we learnt how shared passion and drive can be used to overcome barriers.
 
We are extremely curious to find out where the next year will take us, as a team, but also as individuals. 2017 will be a year full of challenges: There are missing pieces in the supply chain that have yet to be established, there is money involved, legal structures, and overall our fashion should contribute to uplift people and also foster sustainability. We know that our plans are big, but we also see these challenges as our fuel to keep us moving.
 
“Having the courage to fail and recover is maybe the biggest lesson I have learned. Not to give up, to keep on searching for more and stay in the challenging space, where growth happens.”
 
After all these learnings we are now happily off to our vacation. See you guys in mid January.
 
Merry Christmas,
GreyC2
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Today's and tomorrow's essence of work 

12/4/2016

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​This week we went to an institution where people do hand weaving. It sounded like this could be a potential future partner since they offer a safe working environment and pay a fair salary. But when we saw the people working there it didn’t feel right. We just couldn’t imagine that doing the same movements for hours and hours every day could be fulfilling. While talking about it afterwards we had to realise that we were judging these people by our own standards. Just because machines could theoretically do their job and we can’t see ourselves doing their work doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t enjoy it. Nevertheless it still didn’t feel right. We realised this was due to the fact that their view of work is not aligned with our values (curiosity, balance and courage), which shape how we do business both within the team and with our partners.
 
This visit triggered further discussions in our team about both the meaning and the future of work. In 1930 John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the 20th century in countries like the US or Great Britain people would be working about 15 hours a week due (or thanks?) to technology. Clearly, we haven’t reached that point. Elaborating on the reasons why in many jobs we’re still working our solid 40 hours a week despite technology’s huge progress would require quite some research (David Graeber for example has spent quite a bit of time on that). However, we decided that we wouldn’t want to uplift people by supporting out-dated skills as part of our supply chain.
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Instead we’ve tried to come up with our own definition of work: “Cover your own and somebody else’s needs at the same time, while not purposefully harming anybody or anything in the process.” The second part of the definition is definitely more of a vision when looking at the outrageous amount of goods that are being produced (and consumed) at other people’s expense. But the first part is already a reality today, right? We are all trying to cover needs with our work. But what kind of needs are we currently covering? And wouldn’t there be other needs that are currently being neglected?
 
This lead us to think that if we created a working environment that is not only aligned with our values, but also uses todays technology to gain time (for example by using an electronic weaving machine) we could take care of other needs. Which needs these will be and how we’ll be addressing them is yet to be defined, but we’ll definitely keep you i
n the loop. 
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WTF?! = Where’s The Food?!

11/27/2016

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How food found its way into our business model

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Food – why not?
It was an interesting meeting we had shortly after arriving in Cape Town, understanding that if we want to have environmental friendly fabric from South Africa we’d need to produce it ourselves. We decided on onboarding this journey and soon started dreaming about having sheep farms in the future and creating an ecosystem around such a farm for the people involved in the textile process of GreyC2.
In the process of talking about an ecosystem Rebecca asked if there was the possibility to do something about food in that ecosystem. The very encouraging answer was: “If you want to, why not!?”

From ‘Why not?!’ to ‘Why yes!’
Similar to the everyday decision of what clothes to put on, there is also the everyday decision of what to eat. And just as we want to raise more awareness about environmental friendly and sustainable fashion, we also started challenging the way we pick the food we eat. And to start off with this, it’s not our intention that you should ask yourself questions like “Burger or salad?”, instead it’s about getting a holistic view of the undeniable relevance of food in our lives and how it affects not only our body but also our mind.
You can start off with doing an exercise and answer the question of “Why do I need to eat?”.  Repeat this why-question four more times (-e.g., your answer could have been “to stay alive”, so follow up with “Why do I need to stay alive?” and so on…)
We saw the relevance to also look further into what role the processing of food could play in our ecosystem which started off as being solely around clothing. Working around food is a field we have a certain expertise in since we experience it on a daily bases in the form of eating (…), it’s on everybody’s lips (literally) and we have a person on the team passionate about cooking who lives much by the motto that ‘eating is a necessity, but cooking is art’. So we went for it.

Food is love. Food is life.
In the textile unit we are building, we want the people who produce our clothes to be engaged in the entire production process – from getting the raw material to manufacturing the final product. Similar to that, we want to build up a food unit. We would like the people who work in it to understand where the ingredients they process come from, know what a balanced diet means and how to prepare meals accordingly. Furthermore, we want the products we use to be locally sourced, seasonal and organic in order to reduce the negative impact on the environment (e.g. use of chemicals and CO2 emission) to a minimum. With people having this understanding, we believe food can become much more than a necessity, but a powerful tool to promote a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

Sharing what we do with others
Providing food for our ecosystem was a good start, the next challenge was about how we can engage the local environment. Since we want to use as few resources as possible (struggle of an entrepreneur) we are thinking about getting a food truck to sell food at events in the area (such as local markets) and doing catering as well as getting food bikes for food deliveries.
And here comes the best part: Calculating a budget for all the things regarding food we were surprised that the food unit could be considered a separate business. We would of course keep it as part of GreyC2 but it should be considered as a self-sustaining unit, especially budget wise.


To wrap it up with a thought from Rebecca: “It’s amazing how things develop! I joined GreyC2 not knowing what it would lead to as I never saw myself engaging in the field of fashion on the long run. And here I am, developing part of the business with something my heart beats for since I’m a child: Cooking! To me, cooking is one of the most creative ways to express myself and the best reason to gather people at a table - good food equals good mood. Picking ingredients, cooking, eating – just food in general - is something beautiful and having people share this passion became one of my life missions.  

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What are essential human needs?

11/20/2016

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A month in review and thinking about the future

We moved to Cape Town more than five weeks ago and this week we spent two days on a team review. What has actually happened since we are here – this is why we did a review. And coming from that we had a preview about our remaining time in Cape Town and how we plan to continue the further development of the start up in the next year(s).
Among others questions, we also answered the following ones: “What do we have clarity on?”, “What is our personal commitment” (- it’s fascinating how this changes over time -), “Which are the fields we can potentially invest in as s start up and – to keep focus - which ones do we prioritize?”, “What is the worst thing that could happen and what would happen afterwards?”.
Eventually we did an exercise to answer the question “What are essential human needs?”. We realised that this is the key to staying relevant with our work. Therefore, this is also the question we would like to elaborate on in this blog post through showing our answer to what essential human needs are, providing some examples we encountered in Cape Town so far around that topic and lastly, ending up with a personal insight from Sarah, Angela and Rebecca.

Mapping out human needs - an exercise
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Eventually, our aim of trying to uplift people through product creation left us with a fundamental question: What are the needs of the people that we are trying to uplift? Before even looking at the concrete needs of those people through field research and inquiry, we tried to categorise human needs from our perspective.​

We came up with two main categories. The first category is around physical well being. We all need food and water to survive. Further we need some sort of physical activity to stay fit. Other categories such as shelter and clothing to stay warm also contribute to our physical well being. The second category includes all that we long for that isn’t directly linked to our survival needs such as trying to make sense of our reality through understanding, or looking for meaning in our life. We think that the two categories are also interconnected in various ways. We collaborate to cover our physical needs, and in this process we connect on different levels. For example we design shelters that are not “just keeping ourselves safe” from the cold or wild animals, but are also a sort of self-expression and art.
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Two insights from South Africa

This week we had the chance to talk to the manager of a Salad Bar in Cape Town. His employees work in a secure environment with the certainty of being paid 3’000 Rands a month for working about 10 hours a day. He found himself in utter astonishment when one of his employees left his workplace and instead went collecting litter on the streets where he earned 1’500 Rands a month. This is a vivid example of how the assumption that more money and job security would be worth more than free time and the possibility to decide on the working hours.

Karin, who we met through Tim this week, has vast experience in skill development in the region of Paarl. She told us that when she started the first skill program with 191 participants she had a dropout of 80 people in the first month. Karin managed to place 80 people in the newly vacant spots of the program, but was faced with another 40 people dropping out after the second month. Once again Karin didn’t bury her head in the sand and went on to replace these 40 spots. In the end 171 people completed the program. Karin named the fact that the program was free of charge as one of the reasons for the high dropout rate in the beginning.

Personal insights - what is it that we need?

As a task before writing this blog post we individually asked ourselves: What do you consider one essential need in your own life?

Rebecca: I have faith in understanding. It’s a unique skill to master; to understand what growth truly means and by this grow more than one could ever expect. It’s about understanding the environment of the world and how history got us where we are now. Understanding also ourselves and other beings living on this earth: The human race has a high capacity to think and to imagine things, shape certain beliefs, and - for the better or worse - it carries the power to influence how the world develops in the future. Getting new perspectives to me is a thing I love chasing after, it’s thrilling! And disagreement with certain perspectives which other people have is not what understanding is about, it’s solely about getting a bigger picture about a thing I care about and - getting back to the beginning - to develop faith - faith in the power of understanding.

Sarah: What is really essential to me is human connection. During the last month the power of connecting around a shared purpose unleashed a massive amount of positive energy. When people come together because they believe in the same vision and share your values, suddenly everything seems possible. Another way of connecting happens through care and conversation. It gives me an immense amount of pleasure to exchange ideas and try to understand others’ realities. Also, I often find myself rapt in thoughts, and whenever a friend pulls me out of this and challenges my perspective, this not only contributes to my personal development but also gives me a sense of belonging. And I can endlessly go on thinking about connections, how and why they happen - in the end they just happen.

Angela: If I had to choose the need that is most important to me it would be human connection. I feel most connected with other people when they share something personal, something that doesn’t just scratch the surface. I guess it’s about realizing that at the end of the day we all have the same needs and we tend to struggle with similar things. I often wonder what the world would be like if we had more conversations about things we deeply care about, if we stopped pretending and started being entirely ourselves, vulnerability included. What if we all showed ourselves the way we are?

And what about you?
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After sharing our insights we want to ask you: What do you believe are your needs? And already challenging this answer, what do you really need? The gap between what we believe we need and what we actually do need can be bigger than expected. When it comes to challenging others and challenging yourself, a fascinating thing to do is challenging somebody's beliefs, as beliefs are something that deeply shapes the identity of a human being. So we’d like you to challenge yourself and others by doing this exercise too, map out what’s on your mind and share with us if you feel like it. We’re more than happy to have a conversation about your perspective.
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Balance between humans and other species

11/13/2016

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GreyC2 wants to produce clothing, and to be able to do so we need to source raw material. Where does this material come from? In the following article we are elaborating on the questions and opportunities we came across while exploring the two potential raw materials “wool” and “wood”.

Meet the sheep – commodity or collaboration

We had the great chance to get invited to visit a farm (20’000 acres) close to Laingsburg in the Karoo. This exposure allowed us to see first hand where wool and mohair comes from.

On our day of arrival we got to meet the angora goats straightaway. The farmers shearing the goats seemed to be very skilled in their used technics: a man grabbed a goat’s horns, placed the goat on its back with just one simple move, and then retained it between his legs. While the goat still tried to resist when packed on its horns, the actual shearing passed without any noticeable opposition. After the quick shearing, the goat got released and returned to its herd. Overall, the goats seemed not to be too frightened by the process, and curiously observed their human hairdresser.

​On our second day we got to experience the
garnering of 30 sheep for slaughter. The sheep on the farm were divided into two different categories: the first one is called the meat masters; as the name implies they are being used for meat purposes. The second category is composed of wool sheep. Surprisingly, the farmers collected not only meat masters but also some of the wool sheep for slaughter. They explained to us that when they bought a batch of 1’200 wool sheep, they already speculated that some of the wool sheep wouldn’t meet the required quality standards, and therefore the farmers planned to use them for meat purposes instead; overall it was still a good business deal as they told us.

Before collecting the sheep, the farmers tested their readiness for the slaughterhouse. If the sheep was fat enough, it got marked with a blue dot on its front head. After the tagging process, the sheep got chased through a gate. There were two directions: one led back to freedom, the other one to the bakkie (pick-up truck) headed to the slaughterhouse. The sheep’s behaviour towards humans differed from the goats. They were more frightened. If we walked one step towards them, they would run away, there was little to no curiosity.

These two experiences left us with various thoughts and questions. It is nothing new that humans systematically capitalise on goats and sheep for their own benefit. Be it for clothes or food purposes, humans use these animals to create goods. But to what extent is it right to control another species for your own benefit? Is it possible to get to know a sheep or goat’s interest? How can we use their wool without causing any suffering? Can we collaborate, rather than exploit?

From T-Shirt to Tree-Shirt?

We came across the opportunity of considering wood as a raw material for fabric production because of Tim. Tim is running a company called Uxhumekile Consulting, which is determined to help social businesses succeed. Within a month the relationship with Tim turned into a fruitful exchange of ideas and “hands on” actions. On Tuesday he approached us with a challenge: He works on a project about logging of alien trees for industry. This is great because alien trees use too much water. But on a large scale, trees are really important to suck up carbon and give back oxygen. He then told us about a company called Tentree who plants ten trees for every clothing item sold and gave us the challenge to come up with a similar model to plant local trees that might replace the cleared trees. We already knew about Tentree, and instead of thinking of a business model in terms of simply planting trees, we thought about the potential of using waste wood of alien trees as raw material to create fabric. We knew the process already exists. The fabric is called Tencel, produced by a company based in Austria. Tencel is an amazing fabric in terms of style and comfort.

At the moment we are facing two major challenges: First, how can we come up with a process that involves chemicals that are not harming the environment in any way? The second challenge involves the criteria of sustainability: How can wood become a sustainable raw material? This challenge looks at trees from the perspective of the life cycle. How can trees be planted and cleared in a way that it is in balance with the large-scale life cycle?

Balanced relationships

To sum up, collaboration between humans is already a real challenge. To expand the term “collaboration” and add other species such as sheep and trees to the equation is a whole different story. Although difficult, we believe that relationships don’t just happen between humans. We are eager to learn more about how to explore the potential of working with sheep and trees - in a way that is good for us and them alike.

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Being informed creates empathy

11/6/2016

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“I don’t want to wait, I want to do something!”

​This week we visited a farm in the Overberg District Municipality, which is a two-hour drive away from Cape Town. It was the first time since getting to South Africa that we had the chance to see how the wool on an animal turns into spun wool. Stephanie and Hendrik have 14 Alpacas and two sheep (additionally: 3 dogs, a cat, a bird, a tiny monkey and probably more animals that we haven’t seen yet – a lot of them were actually neglected and got adopted by the family, who is now lovingly taking care of them).

A visit that was so much more than what we expected it to be

The reason why we came to the farm was mainly to understand the process of processing raw material (in this case alpaca wool) and to get a better picture of what products we might be able to produce with it. What we got out of it was so much more than that…
The first thing we did was going into a small room on the farm where two people were spinning alpaca wool (see the picture of the blog post) and our first reaction was: Is this it? A feeling of sadness overcame us when seeing them in this small room, having the assumption that they are spinning on this machine day in and day out. However – and this is where the magic of this visit started – they don’t. This farm is something so much bigger than it appears in the first moment.
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The modules which represent the process that people engage in on this farm is the following:
1.)  Knowledge development centre: Participants take a 5-month course where they learn about entrepreneurship and get educated in the different aspects of developing a sustainable business. Through this course, the people can choose a sector they want to engage in (which doesn’t have to be textile) and set up a business plan, learn how to do budgets, understand what customer relations mean and gain knowledge on other aspects of becoming an entrepreneur.

2.)  Skills development center: Additionally to the theoretical knowledge that the people gain, they can also get the chance to be employed at the farm to develop practical skills, hence to learn how to spin the wool, and as soon as they have enough fiber, to choose what kind of product they want to produce (our two people made different scarves with different patterns already).

The methods of developing the people are constantly being balanced out; depending on the current need of the participants, different things are being offered: Theoretical skills or practical knowledge.

​3.)  Financial support: Once a person has clarity regarding the business idea, the next step is getting financial support to start the business which is one of the big challenges the farm is currently facing. Therefore Hendrik and Stephanie applied for government funds to help the people get their business running. Currently, they are in the last phase of getting these funds to be able to expand the business on their farm and support people in starting their business.

4.)  Mentoring: We were told that former participants still call them every now and then to get advice regarding different challenges. The couple sees it as another part of their role to provide these people with advice and therefore with the needed guidance to help them continue effectively.

You might get an idea of how overwhelmed we were to get the bigger picture of what their farm is meant to be. It’s not just a farm with a bunch of people and a few animals, it is a development centre for entrepreneurs. This farm is indeed not a farm that has as its purpose the employment of people – this is actually just part of the program they are doing – much rather Stephanie and Hendrik want to give people a holistic picture of society, the economy and their overall environment and make them want to become entrepreneurs and do their part in contributing to a more sustainable country through creating social impact.

The decision to be the change

Getting to know this couple and what they aspire to do has been a source of inspiration that is difficult to put into words.

Hendrik said one thing that stuck with us: “I don’t want to wait, I want to do something” – and this is exactly what we see them doing: Despite several obstacles they have to overcome and challenges they are facing they carry on with their amazing mission of lifting people up.

​First of all there is the question of commitment - before training the two people who are currently working for them they had already started training two people, who both dropped out for personal reasons. Nevertheless, they went and recruited new people, strongly believing that they will find people who commit and follow the program through. Then there is the question of the money. As already mentioned, so far they have been paying the salaries out of their own pockets, without any financial benefits. A question that they also struggle with when it comes to money is how the salaries they are paying are spent. Unfortunately the money often ends up getting spent on alcohol or drugs, which is why they are taking into consideration to pay a part of the salaries in food stamps in the future.

We are so incredibly grateful that we got to meet this couple and can’t wait to see how our collaboration will evolve.







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How to connect with the right people

10/30/2016

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Ever since starting this adventure we were aware that we needed additional skills that are missing in our team, namely knowledge about design, the production process and the industry in general. Also, we figured that having somebody who understands the local reality and knows how things work in South Africa is indispensable. And believe it or not, in our very first week here in Cape Town we found ourselves with two amazing individuals with the perfect fit regarding skills and personality who now have joined our team. Enjoy reading about how we met our wonderful new team members and how we on boarded them to our team.

Finding new team members

Before even arriving to Cape Town we had the great chance to get introduced to Rina by Stephan, who is currently doing a masters in Inclusive Innovation at UCT. Sarah got in touch with Stephan because she wanted to get further insights about his master program experience. When the two chatted about Sarah’s ambition with GreyC2, Stephan quickly connected the dots and thought of his friend Rina, who currently works in the fashion industry, and is extremely passionate about sustainable and ethical fashion. Right after arriving to Cape Town we had our first real encounter with Rina at Truth Coffee. Within minutes we were amazed by the extent of alignment between Rina’s personal vision and the vision of GreyC2. There was no doubt: In one-way or another, we had to work together. After a few enthusiastic chats we realised that a closer and more structured collaboration would make sense. With great excitement Rina happily agreed to join our team.

We met our second new team member through a completely different approach. While still in Switzerland we tried to find ways how to best reach out to designers and people with experience in manufacturing around Cape Town. We decided to create a section on our website where interested people could sign up. To promote the website we contacted various fashion design schools in Cape Town and asked them, if they can promote the opportunity to their students. Although we didn’t post any concrete job opportunity on our site, a few people signed up. Eva was one of them. In her email Eva talked about her thesis on sustainable fashion, and shared her big interest to produce ethically and sustainably. When we finally met Eva in person we quickly identified our shared desire to find an ethical and organic fabric that is produced in South Africa. Eva already started to explore alternatives options, as she also stumbled upon the lack of organic cotton here. We fell in love with Eva’s designs before even meeting her, and when the option of joining GreyC2 was on the table, we were thrilled to join forces to work towards ethical and sustainable fabric.


​Onboarding new team members

After having successfully recruited new team members there is a new question to answer: How to on-board the new people in the team and equip them with the needed skills and knowledge? For this reason we prepared for a first team meeting to discuss about the responsibilities we have in the business, roles in the team and the development of its people.
After getting some inputs from a marketing event about the topic “strategy before tactics”, we mapped out all the areas of  GreyC2 to firstly be aware of all we have to cover before going into dividing these tasks. 

Afterwards it was about defining key responsibilities for the respective areas. We chose to make an exercise out of this task and answer two questions: “What are you skilled/ knowledgeable in?” and “What would you like to learn (hence, where are you willing to invest time in learning something new)?”
This not only gave us a good understanding of the areas that are easy to cover, but also which areas we lack knowledge in, and how we can bride these gaps. We ended the meeting with assigning a main responsible where we could, and leaving the areas where we needed more time for discussion – this was especially relevant for the whole textile production chain as we onboarded two members in this area who have skills and knowledge and where we yet need to define which areas exactly this covers.


​Proactivity as a key behaviour

The last thing that was important for us to get across was what kind of behavior we want to demonstrate within the team. During the preparation for the meeting things like team rules (be prepared for the meetings; finish tasks in time), effective communication (ask for information if it’s missing), and decision making (who takes the which decisions?) came up. In our view, the answer to all these things and many more is proactivity. Especially for a start up where many things are yet to be defined, where new people join the team, where the business plan keeps changing, it is relevant to have people that have a proactive approach towards work and take responsibility not only for their own tasks but for whatever needs to get done to evolve the business.

Finishing this first team meeting by opening a bottle of wine included many feelings: Excitement for the things yet to come, relief that there is more clarity in terms of structure and defining responsibilities, and overall a feeling of gratitude towards the people we got to know better and can do business with. Cheers to that!
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South Africa: Why we came and why we stay

10/23/2016

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After a year of developing the idea of GreyC2, we took the decision to run our first project in South Africa and came to Cape Town with a clear goal: In the spirit of “Think globally – produce locally”, we want to cover the whole supply chain of potential products in South Africa – from the beginning to the end, without importing goods or outsourcing work. It’s a vision, an idea … The following paragraphs are dedicated to show the daily challenges which implementation brings along.

We spent our first ten days in Cape Town looking at the different steps of the supply chain and checking how they could be covered within South Africa. This left us with quite a challenge: The initial idea of producing our garments with organic cotton is not feasible since all the cotton produced in South Africa is not organic. This lead us to look at various alternatives:


  1. To import goods from abroad sounded like the easiest solution. We knew that countries such as Tanzania offer a fair amount of organic cotton, and importing the raw material from there wouldn’t be that difficult. Although this option would allow us to proceed with our operations and go straight into manufacturing after the import, it would mean that we have to compromise on our values. We believe in a world where most of the steps can be covered in one place, and therefore importing from another country wouldn’t make us any different from all the other supply chains.
  2. As there is no organic cotton in South Africa, we could also reallocate ourselves to a country like Tanzania, and aspire to cover the whole supply chain there. But this would imply that we first have to get to know the reality of that place, and although step one “organic cotton” would be a given, we might face similar challenges with the manufacturing that comes after the fabric is provided.
  3. If we explore alternative products such as jewellery to avoid the fabric issue, this might give us quick insights as we imagine the production process less complex than actual textile manufacturing. But then we didn’t do much research on it, and the actual raw material of jewellery, be it metal or leather, would imply a whole new story, as this also has to be aligned with our value concepts.
  4. Last but not least, there is the option of sticking to South Africa as our production country. If we decide to go with that, we have to invest our time and resources into finding a sustainable and ethical raw material within South Africa. This might imply a lot of time spent on the first step of the supply chain, and a lot of energy would be spent on collaboration with suppliers to either help shift their practice or start something from scratch.

When reflecting on the above stated thought process, there is one thing that eventually kept us on track: The reason why we came here, to cover the whole supply chain in South Africa, and that this reason is something we still don’t plan to compromise on. We decided that covering the whole supply chain is more relevant than ever. The fact that it doesn’t exist yet is a challenge in every aspect. And even though it’s scary to envision going into a field we have much less experience and knowledge than expected beforehand, we are in love with the idea as well as the obstacles that lie ahead of us. Instead of compromising on the vision, we have much more faith into just taking more time to change our business model; we don’t change the why of our business, we just change how we reach our goals and what concrete action steps this requires. The gaps of expertise are to be closed by on-boarding people with expertise, meaning to expand the team by the amount of people needed.

To wrap it up: Obviously a fair trade supply chain with organic fabric is not in place yet. We discovered a market gap – a niche market - which we are eager to close. The relevance of doing so is high in the light of making not only this country but the world more sustainable. Playing a key factor in this fills us with excitement.
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Look good. Do good. Feel good. 

10/16/2016

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Picture
Looking for clarity
​
This Wednesday afternoon we finally arrived in Cape Town, the city where we want to test our ideas and prototype in. After the few first meetings we quickly realised that explaining to others what we want to do isn’t that clear yet, which probably means that it isn’t that clear to us either. Although the three of us were on the same page about why we believe in a market that offers only fairly produced products, we couldn’t yet agree on a more concrete and tangible vision. What value do we really want to create? and why?

The lack of clarity made it harder to identify which ideas we should further pursue. We understood that to do something a hundred percent, and not everything a little bit, we need a clearer vision statement that gives us direction and makes it easy to communicate our ideas to others. That’s why we came up with the following: Look good. Do good. Feel good.

Look good
Don’t we all think about how others perceive us?

​In most cases our appearance is the first thing that other people notice about us. But what exactly defines this appearance? Although we are all equipped with certain physical features, we believe that our look goes beyond the colour of eyes or hair. It depends on the way we interact with others, how well we know ourselves, and how comfortable we are with sharing our true self with others. We see clothes as a tool to shape our individuality, which includes both charisma and how we are physically composed. Fashion helps us to emphasise on certain elements that are important to us. If our beliefs are reflected in the actions that lead to clothing items, such products are not only shaped to comfort our natural body form, but also stand for our inner selves, and therefore help us to create a version of ourselves that is beautiful both, inside and outside.

Do good
When we talked about what "do good" means to us we realised that our initial definition "having a positive impact on someone's life" needs to be expanded. If for example a parent buys a whole lot of clothing for a teenager, then that can totally make this kid’s day. But what if these said clothes were made under terrible circumstances? What if somebody else was suffering while producing them? That’s why we expanded our definition with "while not causing any harm to someone else’s life".

As customers we actually have huge power over the production standards of the goods we buy. Drawing on Margaret Mead who said "Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed, that's all who ever have", we want to encourage everybody to put more thought into their consumer behaviour and thereby do good - not only for themselves but for others too.

Feel good
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
When it comes to the products we produce, we believe that people can feel the difference when wearing our clothes, whether it’s because of the fabric we use, for the fact that it’s custom made or for the direct positive impact people have on the textile industry and people’s lives. Receiving a good product and doing good at the same time is supposed to make people feel good about themselves and others.
Feeling good is the ultimate state of mind we want to reach in our work and which we would like people to have when engaging with us. Knowing that our actions lead to someone else’s positive feelings, positive feelings are likely to come back to us. We see people focusing on reaching their inner peace so they are ready to bring this peace to their environment, which eventually brings peace to the world we live in.

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