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A Commercial Support meeting was held 15 May 2008 in partnership with Welsh clothing company, howies and one of our partner companies, Orangebox. It involved a presentation from David Hieatt on howies and their ethical brand, a design update on Orangebox’s latest task chair and a full site tour of Orangebox facilities.
David Hieatt, Co-founder and Director of howies talked about his extremely successful ethical brand and their different approaches to marketing and external communication. He described howies’ purpose as wanting to make people think as well as to buy ethical streetwear. The company have successfully used 'infotainment' as a way to raise awareness and encourage conversation. Hieatt stated that howies is about creating “point of sale with a point of view.”
Orangebox have worked consistently to introduce environmental improvements into their business over the last ten years. The company used this meeting to present to the attendees their current work on Cradle to Cradle thinking and how this has been incorporated into their latest task chair.
Through being awarded the ESP the company have commissioned EPEA to review their materials utilising the Cradle to Cradle methodology. The Cradle to Cradle certification will provide Orangebox with a means to tangibly measure environmentally-intelligent design.
At this meeting design consultancies, who have been working with partner companies, were also invited to attend. This was a trial in order to explore if this would help designers keep up to speed with their assigned projects and activities with the four partner companies.
After the presentations and discussions the group had the opportunity to take a full tour of Orangebox’s manufacturing site to see how the company have incorporated environmental improvements from their supplies through to final packaging.
To learn more about howies please visit our howies case study page and visit their website www.howies.co.uk
To learn more about Orangebox visit our partner company profile and visit their website www.orangebox.com
15 May 2008
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