In short.

• Your yoga bags & straps will start arriving in the next 2 weeks!
• The culprit of the extra delay – pretty little red zippers.
• Moved recently? Let us know about it: connect@theiamidea.com
• Read below to hear about our manufacturing struggles.

Lessons from The I AM. Team

When we started this project over a year ago we never thought the difficult aspect would be manufacturing our products. Surely, it was as simple as getting a sample made, handing it to a manufacturing facility and hey-presto, you’re done!

Not quite. In fact, not quite at all….

“Minimums” is a word you begin to shudder at. Large-scale quality manufacturers will hardly take your call unless you can meet them. You begin to question the manufacturers that do – but you don’t have any other option. You put your trust and faith in them; give them the pattern for your product and cross your fingers waiting for their sample. We have learnt never to get our hopes up – it generally just leads to disappointment. Time and time again, we were disheartened with the quality of the finalized products we were seeing with the small-scale manufactures we engaged in Central America.

In the end we had no option but to bring manufacturing to the US. Although it is more expensive, quality to us is incredibly important and we were not going to deliver a product to our supporters that did not uphold our values and high standards: The Best. Period.

In the US we were no longer looking for full scale manufacturing facilities, we were looking for cut and sew houses and we found a great one! Cut & sew houses literally do just that – cut & sew. Meaning that we are responsible for sourcing all other inputs that go into our awesome bags. It is the only way to get around those pesky minimums.

This might sound like a simple enough task but do you know how many inputs go into our yoga bags and straps? Fifteen. Yep, that means 15 times we needed to source inputs, approve samples and have them shipped together at the appropriate time to coincide with the sewing timeframe of the overall product.

Simple right? Not quite. If one of them is out that holds up the entire process. For us, it was those red zippers! We were quoted 2-3 weeks production time to make those beautiful little things. Well, ordering them 4 weeks in advance would surely mean they would arrive in time…surely!? The dreaded email read “we’re waiting on the top stops to come out of the paint and slider plant, and apparently they didn’t pass inspection and were send back.” Oh no! You can not be serious! 24 back-and-forth emails and a couple of terse phone calls later – they arrived. But not before they held up production for another 3 full weeks…

This is a drawn out way of saying – WE'RE SORRY!

It has taken longer than expected but we have been able to refine our internal strategy and process to help eliminate these kinds of delays in the future - we're just sorry this learning curve has been at your expense.

But aren't they pretty??

We’re very excited to announce that all the textiles for your Kickstarter rewards have now been hand woven and have started their journey from Lake Atitlan to the U.S.

After a day at the markets, the recycled textiles that will line your bags & straps have been individually selected and are also traveling with their hand woven friends.

In other news: our rock-star designers have also been working overboard on:

• Your photo eBook (which you will all be receiving!) - a quick taste for you here.

• And the hand tag for our products.

We got some great press last month - check out some of the main features below:

Not long now... :)

The I AM. Team

The I AM. weaving model is finally in full swing. Even after 258 challenges it makes it all worthwhile to see the women empowered through their own work. We wouldn’t be here without your support, so for this update we wanted to pass on the smiles and share the love…

Check out the weaving model in action below!

Now that our production model is starting to take shape we’re working on our sales strategy. So if you know of any great yoga studios we should reach out to then drop us a line at connect@theiamidea.com and help us keep these amazing women weaving.

Thank you all again for your support and patients – we can guarantee you one thing. 

It will be worth the wait!

A message from I AM. co-founder, Will Baxter. 

It was nearly a year ago today when Nadja and I first came up with the idea for I AM. We were in Guatemala at the time, on a yoga teacher-training course and saw first hand the challenges the Maya women there faced. They had lived through genocide and with it endured pain & suffering unthinkable to most, but it had not defeated them. Their courage inspired us to try and do something to help. The concept was simple, increase the demand for the hand-woven textiles they all have the skills to produce. Thereby offering the women a higher and more sustainable income stream, and hopefully, a way out of poverty.

While developing the model, there was one decision we faced time and time again – do we use natural dyes? We knew that doing so would add additional complexities to an already challenging impact-focused model but we were dedicated to doing what we saw as right, not what was easy. It almost became a test of our resolve to do the “right thing” regardless of whether it made sense commercially, as this is the core of our social-enterprise model – we make decisions to maximize impact, not profit. 

So the decision was made…on one condition. That pursuing natural dying did not jeopardize the underlying goal of the model – to provide weaving work to the Maya women. Regrettably, it has now come to the point where it has.

The results from our new dyeing process did not meet our internal quality control standards in the way of; colorfastness against water, colorfastness against rubbing and uniform color. These standards were set to maximize the potential positive impact of the model. Without maintaining a high standard for the products we produce the model is not viable and all our efforts to date – and your support – would be for nothing.

As such we have made the tough decision to move to commercially produced dyes for the immediate future until we have refined our new natural dyeing technique to a point where it is ready to be re-introduce into the I AM. model.

Although we are confident that with additional testing and refinement these standards can be met, the complexities that go into the natural dyeing process means the timing is unknown. And with the women we work with left waiting, tough decisions have to be made.

But this does not mean the end for natural dyes.

We are not giving up. We are still committed to our initial decision and will continue to invest to make it happen. To this end, our main man Louis, will be spending 70% of his time refining and experimenting with the new natural dying process until it is ready to be re-introduced into our model. We will be sure to keep you updated with his progress.

We know that this may not be a popular decision, and we can assure you it was not an easy one to make, but for the sake of the women we are trying to help we hope it is the right one. 

If you would like to hold off on receiving your I AM. bag or strap until we have perfected the natural dyeing approach please email us at connect@theiamidea.com.

Yours sincerely,

Will

Who would have thought trying to create a large-scale natural dyeing capability from scratch - is really REALLY hard.

Today marked the close of what was an EPIC 6 days that made up our natural dyeing workshop. The goal of the workshop was three fold:

1. Train the women we work with in the new natural dyeing process.
2. Test the color fastening of our newly developed technique that uses boiled banana tree as a binding agent.
3. Put our newly constructed hand operated dyeing machine - know from here on forward as "Todo es posible" - to the test.

Check out our highlight reel below and learn a thing or two about the incredible process of natural dyeing.

And stay tuned for our next update when we will be able to reveal the dyeing results!