LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Introducing The Joinery, creating solutions to environmental and community issues through design
The global problem of how to deal with the mountain of plastic waste which is created every day is one that requires increasingly innovative and sustainable solutions. In South Africa, two pioneering sisters, Natalie and Kim Ellis, founders of The Joinery, are part of a vanguard of innovating entrepreneurs who are focused on building sustainable and ethical businesses that turn plastic waste into products not problems.
Lionesses of Africa met with Natalie and Kim Ellis, the inspirational founders of this remarkable business recently to talk about their vision for The Joinery, their entrepreneurial journey so far, and their aspirations for the future.
What does your company do?
The Joinery is a sustainable and ethical product design brand. Founded by two sustainable designers and sisters in business together, Natalie and Kim Ellis. The Joinery’s focus is on finding solutions to environmental and community issues through design.
We create sustainable products and conceptualize responsible fabrics, such as fabric made from recycled plastic bottles, as a way to positively contribute to furthering innovation in the textile economy, turning potential waste into something positive.
All the products are made by local artisans and sewing co-operatives as well as local South African producers based in and around informal settlements in Cape Town – and as such its initiatives contribute directly to job creation. The Joinery uses a mix of traditional techniques and high-quality contemporary design.
We design our sustainable products to be luxurious, designing for corporates and the luxury travel industry, retail and international clients. All our products are produced by hand as much as possible so as to minimize our carbon footprint.
Our partnerships create opportunities, contribute to economic independence & raise awareness of the importance of supporting local businesses that can sustain communities.
Our name, The Joinery, is based on our founding principles to collaborate with artisans, designers and businesses to create designs that promote sustainability.
We create and design our own product ranges, from high end travel accessories, made from recycled plastic bottles such as weekender bags, passport covers, cosmetic bags, a range of travel bags and totes. We also design luxury stationary lines, laptop bags and lifestyle and homeware ranges such as storage solutions, laundry baskets and placemats. We thrive on conceptualizing bespoke products for our clients with one of our major avenues being the luxury travel industry.
What inspired you to start your company?
Finding solutions to the downturn of the manufacturing industry and employment for women due to this. A deep need to be change makers and actually Do Something.... to clean up our planet through sustainable business and leave a legacy and a cleaner planet for our children.
Our father, Barry Ellis, used to be an entrepreneur and worked in clothing manufacturing for South African in the 1980's. Kim and I spent lots of time in the factory as children, witnessing the extraordinary production process in action, from design to the physical making of the clothes, in those days being manufactured here on South African shores. This lead us to designing our own handbags when we were younger girls with these talented women and seamstresses as inspirational figures. Making was in our blood.
Our love for creating was inspired naturally alongside our exposure to sustainable living, with our parents growing community vegetable gardens with our neighbours and living off the grid for a few years, and experimenting with making organic beauty products from our fathers fruits trees, bramble bushes and creating homemade ceramics from clay from the river and baked in the fire place. Always immersing ourselves in local culture and African traditional Zulu skills and crafting in the local community.
Love for product design and witnessing first-hand from our Father how manufacturing in South Africa creates employment and sustains families made Kim and I dream of one day also starting our own brand. This dream got more elaborate after we left school and were exposed to the international sustainable design movement alongside the circles of power women such as Safia Minney and Orsola de Castro, while working in London for a few years. It was no longer enough to merely want to start our own business, we wanted to establish a brand that would uplift local communities and women and that was made from environmentally friendly material, such as organic hemp, cotton and Tencel, which is a fabric generated from wood cellulose.
The Joinery was launched with this ideal in 2012, we started off creating ethical and sustainable fashion ranges, bags and accessories with a product range branching out to recycled plastic products, such as luxury slippers, hats and laptop bags. Our intense concern for the issues of plastic waste and single use plastic landing up in our oceans and landfills made us turn to finding solutions for re-using waste and cleaning up waste streams. We conceptualised our own fabric made from recycle plastic bottles. The more products we create the more plastic we keep from polluting our planet. Our product lines grew and to date we are on our way to saving 500 000 plastic bottles from ending up in landfill and are proudly gearing up to exceed this number. We are activists who are creating a movement and want to get the message across that we are pioneering this industry and are reaching out to like-minded companies, to join us, to stand together in creating change and finding innovative ways to work together to keep plastic from polluting.
The business in effect over time turned into a sustainable product design house. With everything always made by hand and by local sewing co-operatives and sustainable producers.
Why should anyone use your service or product?
We offer sustainable products and gifting, a niche in a market flooded with cheap unsustainable imports. Our clients and consumers make positive change for the planet and its people by supporting us. We are pioneers and offer originality. We have a clean line aesthetic that oozes high end design with an activist message. We are pioneers of responsible fabrics, namely the conceptualization of our fabric that is made from recycled plastic bottles and are forging ahead in the sustainable arena.
Tell us a little about your team
Our team is determined. We are predominantly a team of empowered women who work together to create employment. Create products and create a movement. Our ladies sewing co-operatives work with heart and soul to produce our high-end sustainable products using traditional skills and inject a contemporary international aesthetic.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
We produce our products and accessory lines with sewing cooperatives located in various townships around Cape Town. The beauty is that the seamstresses can work from within their own environment, close to home, but also means they are there for their children when needed. These ladies have nurtured safe environments from where they can work. We feel proud that we can make a difference in other people’s lives.
We also work with our sustainable producers, the best part is buildings are run off solar power, grey water systems and access to lunches from vegetables grown in the gardens. The incorporation of responsible fabrics into our product range has turned this passion into a serious lucrative business. When we started out, we created our products and fashion lines from one sewing cooperative in the Cape consisting of seven ladies. The number of people we employ depends on the number of jobs we have, but we now generally employ about forty people at any given time, including seamstresses and leather artisans. And yes, we are changing mind sets about recycling and plastic waste internally too.
The greatest challenges we had was sourcing organic fibres, as neither cotton nor hemp is produced in South Africa, never mind organic cotton or hemp. Importing also does not feel right. This challenge, however, had positive spin-offs. It led to our search for alternative fibres and was the main reason why we started conceptualizing our own recycled plastic fabrics in our lines.
Working with women who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are single mothers and support entire families is why we do what we do. The more products we get to make the more we can expand and create jobs and support these talented ladies.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
Personally, we want to grow our product range and client base through continuous innovation and the development of new recycled fibres. It should not be too difficult to achieve this goal as we have developed a good sense of new market trends and aesthetics that work.
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Through our activist approach to business we have taken our passion for plastic waste and found a way to make a change to clean up this issue through business practices. We are inspired to know we are cleaning up our planet and have set our goals at saving 1 million plastic bottles from landfill and the ocean in the near future. Alongside this we continue to scale up our ethical production, empowering and employing more women to help us create change.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Let passion drive you, determination is literally your biggest asset. Chin up when times are low. Be the change!
To find out more about The Joinery, contact Natalie and Kim Ellis via email: hello@thejoinery.co.za
Visit The Joinery website and social media platforms for more information.
