November 30 2007

Sustainability - Dressed

A design philosophy that is built on balancing three criteria: beauty, performance, and sustainability. Sounds like any number of design firms' mantra these days, but in this case it belongs to Nau, a new and quite possibly revolutionary outdoor clothing company. They've been getting a lot of press lately, and for good reason - the product lines have been designed from the ground up including the 28 of the 30 eco-friendly textiles in the line; the innovative retail concept, called a webfront, seeks to fuse web based retailing with the traditional boutique by encouraging consumers to use stores to get to know the material, fit and finish of the products but have the products shipped to their homes directly thereby reducing the size of the store and inventory. Nau offers free shipping to the home, and a 10% discount for using the self service kiosks. A smaller store means they store inventory in warehouses, which use 1/16th the amount of energy than a retail boutique, and a smaller inventory means simply a smaller physical and environmental footprint. And just to give you an added reason to consider the products, Nau donates a remarkable 5% of each sale to one of their environmental, social, or humanitarian partner groups - and the consumer gets to choose which one. Check it out!

You can learn more about this innovative start-up here and a link to their great website here. Be sure to check out the grey matters section for information on carbon offsets, clothes made from corn (who knew?!) and more...

November 30th, 2007 at 8:34 PM. Posted in Architecture. Share this post.