Burlington based Moral Fibers reaches out to the developing world

Founded in Burlington in November 2010, Moral Fibers prides itself as being a progressive brand for the modern consumer. The brand’s official motto is, ‘Wear Art. Change Lives,’ but internally, they live by another slogan as well. ‘We don’t give handouts; we give opportunities,’ says brand co-founder and recent UVM graduate Jake Bobrow, staying true to the brand’s openly aggressive stance against the current paradigm of charitable aid. ‘It’s the old ‘give a man a fish’ analogy,’ says Matt Brightman, CEO and co-founder. ‘When charities and first world nations dump food and other donations into a developing country, they build a sense of dependency. Obviously some of that is necessary, but we think aid should be focused more towards building opportunities and individuals.’
Moral Fibers is not a non-profit, but they state on their website that an intrinsic part of their company philosophy is that the difference between being a non-profit and a for-profit doesn’t effect the amount of good a company can do. Indeed, Moral Fibers seems to have successfully set up a model where the historical bottom line of profit is transcended for something more multi-faceted. ‘It’s all about the artists. They are the most important members of our team, and the whole goal is to give them the opportunity to pull themselves and their communities out of poverty,’ says Martin Weiss, COO.
Bobrow, Brightman, Weiss and their team make sure to stay true to that sentiment. Moral Fibers sends a team to whatever location they’re working in, and the team members live with the artists for a week or longer. Then, in addition to paying the artists a licensing fee to use their art, Moral Fibers remits 15% of the revenues generated from each sale directly to the artist who designed the piece. 10% of profits also go to a human capital building aid project in the artists’ hometown. Moral Fibers keeps its stock limited ‘ never printing more than 250 pieces of clothing from the same piece of art - but if an artist sells out just one line of clothing, they make 3.5 times the national average salary of their home country.
Even though Moral Fibers is a relatively new brand, they currently employ 15 artists and one local ‘Bossman’ from Haiti, and they plan to employ 40 artists from five countries by the end of their first year. However, the brand’s model is already getting results. One of their original artists, Guerrier Pouchon, was living in a tent on a rocky hillside in the Carrefour district of Port-au-Prince with his six sisters, his grandmother, and his six-month-old malnourished daughter, Nandy. With his new Moral Fibers job, Pouchon was able to move his whole family into a new apartment in the city within a month. And according to the Moral Fibers website, ‘that’s significant.’
Source: 7-21-2011