Mannerly

First of all, thank you for being here. This company means quite a lot to me and anyone making their way to this particular snippet of the internet warms my cold heart immensely.

Ok, on to The Plan!

Right now we are in phase one: establishing interest and getting the company off the ground. That means we are producing quite limited stock to establish that folks want these glorious items, saving, and planning for phase two (The Actual Plan).

Phase two is my personal favorite, and I am very much looking forward to it. Phase two is loosely based on the poverty reduction strategy of unconditional cash transfers, and how these usually very small amounts of money, often transferred on a monthly basis to poor families, have been shown to meaningfully alleviate intergenerational poverty. Fantastic, right? We take that notion and expand a bit: more money over less time.

We aim to hire folks who are having a hard time wherever they are, at this time we are focusing on women, refugees, and LGBTQ+ folks in a very conservative country (I’m going to try not to name the country for the safety of my workers). It can, of course, be hard to find consistent and safe employment in a place that largely denies who you are. We aim to provide an avenue for a financial boost. We train folks how to embroider fairly simple designs, provide materials, and offer a substantial paycheck for the duration of their employment. Since we're not hoping to make anyone terribly rich (me included, hello, Company Founder here), we only employ people until they hit a certain financial threshold, then we hire another person in a similar situation. We do not tell people what to do with their money, nor do we pretend we are saving them: this is a company, everyone benefits. We just hope that our employees can use the money they earn with us to improve their lives long-term (we shall try to check in to see how this goes, not to micromanage folks, but to improve the company).

We do not believe that we need to change the whole world in order to achieve meaningful change. Each person matters. You buy a shirt, you start a powerful reaction which centers the individual in their own path to success. Instead of concentrating wealth at the top of the company, we focus on supporting everyone throughout the entire production process.

TL;DR

So, a less wordy summary is this: your shirt will be embroidered by a person who is in a tough financial situation in a country that generally does not accept them. A country in which they are often unsafe and/or a refugee. We hire people for a short amount of time, and provide a proportionately large paycheck for their work (which will be, of course, impeccable, we’ve still got a business to run here!). Long term we’re just hoping to upend the way society views poverty.