California Apparel News

Sourcing sustainable fabrics can be difficult, said Summer Rayne Oakes, co-founder of the Source4Style website (www.source4style.com). “It can be very challenging and time-consuming,” she said. Often, the difficulty and time commitment of sourcing such fabrics act as a barrier for many designers—large and small—who simply don’t want to or can’t dedicate the time and energy to the task. “We want to make sustainable design possible [for any designer],” Oakes said.

Source4Style, a business-to-business marketplace that launched on Oct. 5, features a selection of globally sourced fabrics that are made from environmentally preferred materials (organic rain-fed cotton instead of conventionally grown cotton, for example); fabrics that are made in facilities that conserve energy, water and other resources; fabrics made in factories that use fair-trade labor practices; and fabrics that support artisanal crafts.

The site—which allows shoppers to review technical and sustainability specs for fabrics; calculate lead and ship times; connect with suppliers; and source swatches, yardage and product online—takes much of the guesswork out of sourcing for designers. “We vet all of the suppliers that sell on the site,” Oakes said. Oakes and Benita Singh, her partner, require that all suppliers on the site provide extensive data on their factories, manufacturing practices and materials. Altogether, through interviews and a questionnaire aimed at establishing the environmental footprint of a fabric, Source4Style gathers approximately 245 points of data on its suppliers and their materials.

At launch time, Source4Style’s online marketplace included more than 1,300 fabrics (including silk, wool, tree-based fibers, manufactured fibers, leather and bast fibers) from approximately 30 suppliers. Oakes and Singh expect the marketplace to reach 65 suppliers by the end of 2010.

Eventually, Oakes and Singh hope to expand the reach of Source4Style to other services. “Fabric is just the start of the supply chain as we see it,” Singh said. “We want to move throughout the supply chain.” Partnerships with environmentally focused cut-and-sew facilities, sample-makers and factories capable of full-scale production are in the works.

Designers can sign up to use the site for free, but later this year Source4Style will introduce a tiered paid subscription that will allow for access to more features, such as a duty calculator, sustainability specs and materials testing results, group buying, and in-site supplier chat capabilities. Suppliers to the site pay a monthly fee and a commission to Source4Style to list their products on the site. To keep costs down and to be able to provide a wide range of fabric options, Source4Style stocks swatches but not inventory. A back-end function allows suppliers to maintain up-to-date information about the availability of their offerings and add new fabrics at will.

So far, Oakes said, the site has garnered interest from a range of companies, including Ralph Lauren, Helmut Lang, Barneys New York private label and Adidas.—Erin Barajas