Looptworks Puts the Focus On Upcycling

Portland, Oregon-based start-up apparel brand Looptworks is still in its infancy stage as a company, but its innovative upcycling business model already has it playing with the big boys. After being in business for only nine weeks, Scott Hamlin, the founder of Looptworks was invited to appear with Nobel Peace Prize winner and former VP Al Gore and Oregon gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury at an event entitled “Ahead of the Curve: A Conversation with Sustainable Industry Pioneers.”

The invitation to that appearance in November came as a result of the creative sustainability that is the hallmark of Looptworks. Launched in August 2009, Looptworks was founded by Hamlin and Gary Peck. The team has prior experience at Nike, adidas and Royal Robbins.

Looptworks’ goal is to turn the way traditional apparel companies manufacture clothing inside out. Instead of designing collections more than a year in advance, Looptworks shortens the development cycle to weeks, and uses top-quality, excess materials and components that already exist. Rather than producing large seasonal collections, Looptworks collections consist of limited-edition eco-friendly clothing.

“We have a unique process to create unique products,” says Peck. “From concept to your closet, we can assure you that no new materials were used to create our clothing and that each item is as individual as the person who wears it.”

For example, to create one of its button-down shirt styles, the Jalan, Looptworks used no new materials to create it, using only excess available through mills and factories as “leftovers” and the process of creating the shirt took nine weeks. In a traditional clothing manufacturing timeline, including evaluating the market and competitors, designing silhouettes, creating fabrics, developing sample garments, reviewing styles/collection, deciding on final styles, producing these pieces, and shipping, the process would take closer to 54 weeks, according to Peck. It would also have required resources--for example, at least 400 gallons of water are used to manufacture one shirt. The fabric that is not used in production is left over excess and often discarded, adding to the 60,000 pounds of pre-consumer waste produced by one vertical textile factory every week.

“This is not only a new way of making clothing and accessories, it is a totally new way of thinking,” says Peck. “We hope people start to think about what they buy, where it came from, and what natural resources it required to produce it.”

Despite its fast production cycle and use of second-hand materials, Looptworks apparel has high quality standards. Each material is tested for shrinkage and durability before being incorporated into designs. Products are double-needle stitched on all seams and triple-needle stitched on critical seams. Looptworks also adheres to a strict 1.5 AQL rating for all of its quality assurance inspections, believing that part of being sustainable is building products that don’t fall apart after six months of use. The inaugural line includes jackets, hoodies, skirts, shirts and graphic T-shirts for both men and women.

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