Simplicity and fair trade down to a T

ROSS GIBLIN/Dominion Post

COURTING KARMA: Gosia Piatek, founder of cotton clothing company Kowtow, believes good things happen to good people.

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Gosia Piatek is convinced good things happen to good people, and when she started a clothing company with little knowhow, she focused on the karma to see her through.

Two years later, she is pleased her organic cottonwear label Kowtow has not become a "start-up statistic", and a note pinned to complimentary concert tickets under the office door confirms her conviction.

"Good things happen to good people," it reads, no signature.

Simplicity is the key to Kowtow's offering. The clothes are fundamentals T-shirts, scarves, hoodies and the material is Indian-grown organic fair trade cotton, without the additives that make the global cotton industry responsible for 16 per cent of the world's pesticides, including chemicals classified by the World Health Organisation as "extremely hazardous".

With little idea of what made fashion tick, Ms Piatek researched organic cotton, found a fair trade supplier, a manufacturer and a customer, and persuaded Work and Income to give her a $5000 grant to start a company.

"They were very sceptical to start with, they didn't want to fund another T-shirt company," she says, but her business plan did the trick.

With New Zealand's rapidly intensifying fair trade scene dominated by coffee and food products, Ms Piatek says the timing for jumping on that bandwagon is perfect.

"Every time I buy a coffee they're selling fair trade certified, so why wouldn't they put the staff in fair trade T-shirts? Everyone wears clothes, it's a basic commodity."

Kowtow gives 2 per cent of its profits to the Fairtrade group for use of its logo, and the rest goes straight back into the company.

Angling for a bank loan to keep expanding, Ms Piatek says the future is in volume, with prices fixed at "accessible" levels $79 for a T-shirt, $49 for a scarf. That means online sales and overseas sales, both part of the plan.

A new distributor in Japan is testing the market there and the website will take a chunk of the new funding to double its capacity.

Kowtow has bumped other labels off the shelves at sustainability-focused Wellington designer store Starfish, and has stockists in most main centres, as well as the online store.

A 75 per cent owner with her graphic designer partner making up the rest, Ms Piatek thinks the grunt work is almost over. An investor will be next, she says.

She is neighbour to workers' unions, environmental organisations, and the Peace Foundation in her Wellington workshop, surrounded by socially minded, good people.

After all, that is the key to good things happening.

- © Fairfax NZ News