My guests today are Klaus Wallner and Thammarath “Touch” Jamikorn, cofounders of Rawganique. When I first wrote about Rawganique many years ago, I called it “organic fiber paradise,” and it still is. Since 1999, the co-founders, with the help of a team of artisans, manufacture unique sweatshop-free organic clothing, footwear, bed, bath, and home products from start to finish. All done in-house with 50 artisans with many lifetimes of experience and passion. State of the art modern equipment. Ancient traditional practices. Grow – weave – knit – sew, they do it all. Small scale but full scale comprehensive. If it can be made with organic fibers, they can make it. Designed for and by chemically-sensitive and -averse folks. www.rawganique.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
They Grow, Weave, Knit and Sew Pure Clothes (and More)
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Klaus Wallner and Thammarath “Touch” Jamikorn
Date of Broadcast: September 18, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.
It’s a beautiful day today here in Clearwater, Cali – I used to live in California until twelve years ago. We’re in Clearwater, Florida. It’s Thursday, September 18th 2014. And today, we’re going to have a very special show. Well, I like to say that, but then I always say, “But all the shows are special” because all the shows are special in their own way.
This is a unique show. It’s even more unique than most of our unique things because we’re going to be talking about clothing and other household goods, but it’s all made in a very special way. There is choices, they grow, weaving it and so the purest clothing and household goods that I’ve ever seen.
It’s all done by a group of artisans and it is just a whole different way of producing goods. We’re going to hear all about that today and I’m just so interested to hear all about how they do this.
My guests are Klauss Wallner and – I’m not quite sure how to pronounce Tham Jamikorn. Is that how you say your name?
THAM JAMIKORN: Tham Jamikorn is good.
DEBRA: Tham Jamikorn.
THAM JAMIKORN: You can just say Tham.
DEBRA: Okay, great. I’ll do that. So we have Klauss and Tham.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Yes, hi!
DEBRA: Hi! They have a business called Rawganique like ‘raw’ and ‘organic’ put together and –que on the end like a boutique.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Or unique, yeah.
DEBRA: Or unique. Raw, organic, unique, if you put all those together, you have Rawganique. And if you can’t figure out how to spell this so that you can go to their website, just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, you’ll see the description of today’s how and you can just click on the link and go straight to Rawganique.
So tell us just to start with what happened in your life that led you from being in the standard industrial mindset to even thinking of doing this and tell us what it is that you’re doing. How did you even get to think about it and actually make this happen over a period of years because you’ve been doing this since 1999? That’s amazing.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Yup!
DEBRA: So tell us your story.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, there were a few factors really. One of them was that my mother passed away from liver cancer and prior to that, since college, I’ve been very interested in organic clothing and there wasn’t a lot at that time, and organic foods. I longed to grow my own food because I was reading Scott Nearing’s book, Back to the Land and all that.
DEBRA: Yes, I do too.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, it was so inspirational. Klauss also happened to be going to some festivals, which was in its nascent stages, the Raw Food Festival and stuff like that. So all of that came together and we decided to leave the city and go back to the land, grow your own food year round and homestead off-the-grid on solar panels and all that. People really started writing about our lives and how we are trying to live without chemicals in our lives.
Lots of feedback came in. People stated asking, “Where can you get this? Where can you get that?” and I’ve been doing that for so many years, I knew all the things. So we started offering a few things here and there starting with organic towels, bed sheet, shoes, socks, t-shirts and all that. And then it just grew from there in response to people’s demand.
KLAUSS WALLNER: So basically, there was…
DEBRA: And then how did you – yeah, go ahead, Klauss. Tell us about how did you got interested in this.
KLAUSS WALLNER: I slowly grew into the lifestyle of using all-organic clothing. I read the books, became more aware of things that I wanted to exclude from my life. And then I started searching around. It turned out that a lot of the items just don’t really exist like clothing. In the eighties, you could find some t-shirts and socks if you’re lucky, organic cotton, but they weren’t of the greatest quality and things like for weddings or for office attire or proper shoes, proper wear or in casual, yoga, martial arts wear. That just didn’t exist.
So we made it our project to find out where the quality items were. And what didn’t exist, we just thought about how we can make them. And that’s how this whole project was started.
DEBRA: I’ve been recommending your website for I think at least ten years.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Thank you.
DEBRA: …when I first found out about it. And what I wrote on my website was that this was organic fiber paradise because you had so many things that I couldn’t find any place else. They’re just beautiful designed and they appear to be of excellent quality.
It’s just a place that I think people can go and breathe a sigh of relief, that all the things that they’ve been looking for that they can’t find any place are here like shoes made out of hemp with natural rubber soles. I mean, it’s just your whole viewpoint of how you put things together and your underlying assumptions about life are different from almost any place else you look.
THAM JAMIKORN: Well, thank you very much for saying that. We quite appreciate it. One of the reasons we started was us being chemically sensitive. And so we had to find alternatives for ourselves. A lot of the product was a response to customer feedback and request and needs because we’ve noticed a trend of chemically sensitive people. The number of chemically sensitive people are on the rise. And so all of that came together, which motivated us to even go more and more into production and chemical-free everything.
KLAUSS WALLNER: It’s important I think that our work, Rawganique isn’t a top-down project where we come up with ideas and then try to educate others to it. It’s really a groundswell where we’re constantly learning from the needs of others whose lives with chemical sensitivity or asthma and things like that are just so restricted and they talk to us what products they won’t be able to use and challenge us to make those. That’s a wonderful creative process that we’re involved in.
DEBRA: It is! It really is. I would like to say again – because I come from that same background, I became interested in toxic chemicals because I was chemically sensitive and I couldn’t tolerate anything and I had to find out where were the toxic chemicals and then what products could I use. When I started in 1980 – well, I actually started looking for things in 1978 (that’s how far backwhen I first understood that toxic chemicals were making me sick) – there were so few things especially with clothing. it was just like if I wanted to wear even cotton, I mean organic cotton didn’t even exist in 1978. If I wanted to wear cotton at all, all I can wear is a t-shirt and jeans. That’s all that existed.
And so what made such an impression on me is that coming from this background that you’ve described where you and others that you’re serving where the primary concern is, “How pure? Can I find something pure enough and without chemicals so that I can actually wear it?”, but you’re also going that next step and making it so beautiful.
And so I just look at things on your website and I go, “Yeah, I could fill my house with this. I could wear this clothes and that anybody else, even if you’re not chemically sensitive, any person on the planet would be happy to wear your things.”
THAM JAMIKORN: That’s so nice. Thank you again very much. It’s wonderful! It’s amazing that you started so long ago to think about these things. That wasn’t even the mainstream topic of the day.
DEBRA: No, it wasn’t.
THAM JAMIKORN: [Inaudible 00:09:57] was really inspired by Silent Spring. It reached me and made a huge impression on me. So we just started looking at ways of doing things like going back 200 years. Well, how did they make socks? How did they make shirts and skirts and pants without machines and chemicals and all that stuff? That’s what informs our whole perspective. We started collecting heritage things in Europe and all over the world and then examining, “Well, how did they do this? By hand.” So that’s a huge thing for us.
DEBRA: We need to go to break, but I’ll just say that was exactly the process I did is that I started looking into history. So this is very interesting that you did too. We’ll go to break and then we’ll come back and talk about this some more. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Klauss Wallner and Tham Jamikorn from Rawganique. You can go see their website at Rawganique.com or just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and you can click on the link because it’s easier than spelling it. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Klauss Wallner and Tham Jamikorn, co-founders of Rawganique. They’re at Rawganique.com. They grow, knit, weave and sew pure clothes all the way from the beginning to the end and household goods and things. They’ve been doing this since 1999.
So could you tell us before we go on in here more about how wonderful everything is that you do, could you tell us some about the toxic chemicals that would be found in clothing and household goods that you’re making that people will not find in your products?
KLAUSS WALLNER: We’ve done a lot of research on the toxicity that’s involved in growing the fibers, in processing, in softening, in the dyes of course and the wrinkle-proofing and all these things. They come packaged in materials and all that.
We really don’t want to stop at that point of feeling encaged in all these negativity that a lot of people are aware of in present times such as [inaudible 00:15:03] environment. But these times, they’re also very liberating because it’s amazing what we found out when we looked around for what you can do chemical-free. We connect it to artisans in Europe where the tradition of growing organic hemp and linen has never been broken. We’ve discovered amazing pure, handcraft artisan work that still continues.
DEBRA: But then let’s talk about that. Let’s just go ahead and talk about that and give us more details. Let’s start with the artisans that you’re working with and the traditions. Tell us more about that.
THAM JAMIKORN: Okay, like for example, you mentioned hemp shoes with natural rubber sole. Well, we have artisans [inaudible 00:15:49] who have been making shoes like cobblers for years and years going back generations. And so in the beginning, we approached them and said, “Well, is it possible to be able to do this with a fabric, you know a fiber in that leather with no chemicals?” and they were really open-minded in working with us. They said yeah, they know somebody in their village and stuff who hand-knitted hemp and hand-wove hemp and all that stuff.
So the dialog became about what we can do and what materials are available out there, so we started looking and found out that we can have access to 100% natural rubber that had been cut and mold to make soles and the [inaudible 00:16:31] is just all-organic hemp that we grow and weave because if you outsource a lot of these things, you’d come across situations where you’re not in control of what chemicals or processing go in because you ask us what’s not in our clothing and in shoes? Well, what’s not in anything that’s probably objectionable like formaldehyde, dioxins, wrinkle-proofing, chemical dyes. There’s none of that because we do everything from top to bottom. And so we’re able to not put anything of that in.
And I think our cause is more about what’s not in it than what’s in it, which is just organic cotton, organic linen and organic hemp.
DEBRA: I’m sitting here with a big smile in my face because I’ve been doing this so long and what I finally get down to after years and years and years is that it’s so difficult to find things for all the reasons that you just said that I’m always looking for, “Well, how can I make something myself? How can I start with the raw material and then make whatever it is I need with the most natural, least toxic materials?”
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, and that’s probably why we…
DEBRA: And you’re doing exactly the same approach.
THAM JAMIKORN: That’s probably why we sell tons of raw materials because people just got set up with like not knowing what’s in what. So it’s like, “Let me just get organic fabric or twine or rope or fiber and start weaving and start knitting.” I’m sure a lot of people out there will listen to you share your theme, do-it-yourself mentality, which is wonderful.
DEBRA: But what you’re doing is you’re taking that viewpoint that I have and you’re doing the work with the same care and concern that I would do it myself. And so it really is an artisan business and it’s not an industrial manufactured business, which has a whole different way of viewing things.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, exactly! Because out there there, it’s really small case. If we go to too big of a scale, then you can’t control a lot of the aspect, right? Every time I go and visit our tailor in Europe, there’s just warm and friendly and just so proud in what they do. They’ve been making products for us for so many years. They’re like friends and family.
And the reason we’ve got to be even more strict with ourselves and our standards is our customers are extremely vocal. They ask all the most detailed questions you can possibly think of, “Is this in there? Is that in there? How do you make this? How do you make that?” So it started our own dialog in ourselves to say, “Well, how can we make it even purer?”
So we’re always coming up with new things like 100% hemp sock, 100% organic cotton sock, 100% organic linen socks, things that people didn’t think of possible. You can go to 99%, but now it’s like, “Why not a hundred?” and things like that.
DEBRA: I love it! I love it, I love it because you’re just like going through the same process I go through. I have to say that probably some of those people who are asking you all these questions were asking them because they were reading my books.
THAM JAMIKORN: Ah, I agree. I can totally see that. They ask, “Why do you have to make elastic? Why do you have to put elastic in underwear? Well, how did people live 500 years ago, 200 years ago before elastic?”
DEBRA: Wait! Tell us. Answer that question. How do you make underwear without elastic?
THAM JAMIKORN: We just use 100% organic cotton, 100% organic hemp or 100% organic linen. You can do it. And actually, they’re comfortable. They’re actually functional.
KLAUSS WALLNER: And strings…
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, we draw strings.
DEBRA: Oh, strings. Yeah.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, exactly, we draw strings without the elastic in it. And so the whole thing is 100% organic. And of course, it’s possible, it can be done. People love it. We make the strings. We weave or we came up with this weave, this trim that’s really thin and light and so you don’t really feel when you tie the strings under your jeans or under your pants.
It’s comfortable because you can have it through any tightness you want without confining you or compressing against your waist or your skin.
DEBRA: Wow! Wow! This is so wonderful. This is so wonderful. We need to go to break again.
THAM JAMIKORN: The result of this years of endeavors and journey is actually a very simple product.
DEBRA: Yeah, that’s what it comes down to, yeah. Yeah, I need to go to break. But when we come back, then I want to hear more about all your products. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. We’re having a wonderful conversation with Klauss Wallner and Tham Jamikorn about the clothing that they make at Rawganique. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Klauss Wallner and Tham Jamikorn, co-founders of Rawganique.
I just was looking at your site again. I keep looking at your site. During the break, I was just looking around. I just want to say, one of the most difficult things to find is organic wedding dresses and even more difficult is any kind of formal or business clothing for men. To find just a jacket that you could wear to work or wear to get married in is just almost impossible to the standards that you make them.
I was looking at how beautiful these pieces of clothing are. And the wedding dresses, these are made of organic hemp. They’re absolutely gorgeous, classic, couture kind of designs and they’re $299. You can’t buy the worst fabric, the most toxic wedding dress for $299.
THAM JAMIKORN: That’s wonderful. Thank you very much. Well, we started with – yeah, we don’t mark things up the same way that fashion houses do and that’s the main reason why. What the price reflect is the hand-made labor, the amount of time it takes our artisans to make this and the raw materials itself, the fiber and all that.
So we don’t think of fashion in terms of a business, but rather if people want to exchange their vows in organic clothing. That’s what we want to offer. For the bride and the groom, we have the whole thing.
It’s kind of funny because we have sort of been known as the hemp wedding central for many years because when the bride and groom get married, they want the whole party to be organic in a way.
DEBRA: Yes!
THAM JAMIKORN: From underwear to stock tissues to ties to vest to jackets to dresses. We kept coming up with new things that we can offer to make it a whole, complete experience. And that’s just what it is. We try to make it as pure as possible. It takes a long time to make each garment. I’m there all the time at the workshop where we make these things and it’s amazing, the amount of work that’s done when you do things the natural way. Everything is by done by hand.
DEBRA: Okay! So tell us how step-by-step all this handwork that’s being done.
THAM JAMIKORN: Okay. Well, first, the hemp is grown for this particular thing. It’s grown organically without any chemicals or pesticide or even water because the beautiful thing is in this part of Europe where we grow the hemp, it rains in the summer. So that’s where the hemp is actively growing. And by the time September comes, it’s harvested, October. And then the rain stops and so the hemp dries in the field naturally without chemicals or toxic [inaudible 00:29:41] that are often used.
DEBRA: Wow!
THAM JAMIKORN: So we ret it naturally. We dew-retting, river or stream retting to break down the fiber. And then we comb it mechanically without breaking it down with acids. So it’s mechanically combed to get these beautiful, long fibers, long staples.
And then we go into the weaving process. For wedding dresses, it has to be [inaudible 00:30:05]. And so we go with the finest hemp we can possibly do, which is about 18 meters per square yard. And then comes the cutting, the designing, the cutting and the sewing. And so it’s passed on from station to station.
We have a few sewers, maybe 14 or so. They specialize in different things. One person specializes in the color, one for the sleeves. And so the garment gets passed on from artisan to artisan and then it gets finished without chemical, detergents or anything. And then steamed iron, packaged and then there’s your wedding dress.
And so that’s what it means to us to be sweatshop-free because that’s one of our big concerns when we started. It’s about the whole sweatshop experience. So we want to make sure it’s all hand-made, handcrafted and no sweatshop involved.
DEBRA: So first of all, there’s no big machines that these are being made on. But when they’re doing the sewing, when you say by hand, do you mean it’s an individual person using a sewing machine or are they sewing/stitching by hand?
THAM JAMIKORN: Oh, no! Well, some parts of it, I hand-knit it. The lacy part of the wedding dress, for example, but yeah, what I meant by hand is that we still use sewing machines of course. But normally, I think in commercial production, you cut fabric, for example, 20 or 30 or 40 in a pile with a commercial cutter. Well, for us, we do the paper pattern and then we cut with scissors by hand just to make sure that it’s precise and all of that. So that’s what I mean by making things by hand. You feel and look at each garment, each process. But of course, we use the sewing machines too, yeah.
KLAUSS WALLNER: For me…
DEBRA: So individual human beings are making these. They’re making them in an artisan way like you would sew a dress at home as opposed to technicians?
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, we have really great working conditions, natural lights, not crowded and all of that. So individual artisans meaning yeah, exactly, they’re not a sweatshop part of a big factory or anything.
DEBRA: Right. And I think that that’s – I mean, even in the pictures, I’ve actually never seen any of your actual garments, but even looking at them in the picture, they have a quality of qualitiness, of excellence and artistry that you don’t often see.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, and we actually – because so many people are curious about our process, we make videos, mini-videos explaining and showing in audio-visual stuff how it’s made like how it’s grown, how it’s sown, how it’s knitted and all of that.
And we kept pushing the boundaries because a hundred percent hemp [inaudible 00:33:12] didn’t exist years ago when we started and now we’re making 100% hemp knit in tissue weight – really white, really soft almost like a heritage linen. We make a 100% organic linen knit, which is really are, 100% everything.
There’s just this challenge from customers, “Why can’t you? Why can’t you?” and we say, “Well, let’s see if we can” and it goes back and forth like that.
DEBRA: I just love this. I love this so much. I love the creative process. I love starting with a natural material and say, “What can it do?”, which is kind of the reverse of what I think in industrial products are designed more by there’s an industrial designer and they say, “Well, what are we going to do to fit this design?”
And so even though I don’t sell clothing, but with food, for example, it’s kind of the same process where I’ll look at some new ingredient that don’t understand like coconut flour, for example, which is so much better for you than wheat flour. I’ll say, “Okay, what will this coconut flour do? How can I create a really delicious [inaudible 00:34:19] or whatever out of this coconut flour?”
You’re doing the same thing. You’re taking these materials that are raw and pure and are as pure as possible and you’re saying, “Now, how are we going to turn this into clothing? What are the historical ways that people used these materials?”
I am just in heaven talking to you and looking at your website because that’s just so how I think.
We need to go to break. We’ll be right back. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Klauss Wallner and Tham Jamikorn from Rawganique. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on the Rawganique link so that you can be sure to get there. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Tham Jakiron and Klauss Wallner from Rawganique. And I forgot to come in and announce the show over the music because I was looking at the site at these beautiful dresses.
I have a hard time finding dresses. Well, first of all, there are no dresses in stores like this in terms of quality of fabric. But finding any dresses that are even – forget about organic cotton, even cotton that don’t have all the finishes on them and everything and now here are all these pretty dresses.
Here’s something that everybody needs to know about this clothing. It comes in size extra small to XXX large. So no matter what your size is, you can find something to wear on this website.
Talk to us for a minute about the dyes that you use because I see that you have all kinds of beautiful colors here.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Yeah, the sizing. We want to be as inclusive as possible. The dyes are actually fibro-reactive or natural. So we use natural dyes meaning vegetables, really vegetable-derived dyes where we can for things like socks and knit tops. There’s quite a choice.
The other items are fiber-reactive, which means it doesn’t use petrochemical [inaudible 00:40:16] and that’s the critical thing we believe in keeping it [inaudible 00:40:22]. And yet they are very stable. There’s no limit really to the dyes you can create there.
DEBRA: I think natural dyes just look so beautiful. They just have a softness to them that you don’t get with the chemical dyes.
And the other thing I want to say about the sizes is on the page where they’re showing the individual pieces of clothing, it has themeasurements – a whole list of like a dozen measurements for the different sizes. And so you can measure your body. It shows us a little diagram that shows us exactly where to measure and so that you can take your own measurements and order something that will actually fit! There’s no guess work about it. It’s just so thoughtful in every way.
KLAUSS WALLNER: What we do every day is when people ask us about sizing, when they’re not sure, we just ask them to send their body sizes and we, with our experience here at the warehouse measuring clothes, we find items that are most likely to work for them. It’s not all a blind guess in what you’ll get in the package, will it fit or not. We can measure it for them. We do that all the time.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, and the other thing about sizing that you started to mention is we really do want to be inclusive because over the years, people ask, “Well, what about my size? What about my size?” Well, we want everybody to be able to wear organic and that’s why we kept, again, pushing in both directions just to make sure that we have clothes for everybody.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. I so appreciate that because I often can’t find things in my size and to have all these beautiful clothes in my size is really, really something.
So just tell us about more of the different kinds of products because we haven’t talked about all the products and we’re getting to the end of our time here, so I want to make sure that you mention all the different kinds of things that people can buy from you.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, we have over a thousand products as you may know. And so we encompass the whole range. I mean, one of the big things, of course, is organic shoes, organic hemp shoes with natural rubber soles and with glue-free sole and then elastic-free underwear, all-organic, 100% hemp socks, organic hemp socks, organic linen socks, bed sheets, organic bed sheets, organic linen sheets, hemp sheets, organic cotton sheets and towels like hemp towels, organic linen towels, shower curtains, hemp shower curtains, organic shower curtains, the list goes on and on.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Yoga mats.
THAM JAMIKORN: We have yoga mats, hemp yoga mats…
DEBRA: I want to say as I’m sitting here – hold on sec. Wait, wait, wait. Wait just a second. Hold on. As I’m sitting here, you’ve got this little slide show of different things on the page. What just went by quickly was a picture of the hemp shower curtain. You weren’t hanging it with metal hangers, you’ve got – I’m assuming hemp little braided hemp holders with little wood knobs on them. This is so great! It’s so great.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, I know. We tried to do everything with a natural materials. All the buttons either with coconut buttons or tagua nut buttons that helps out the Brazilian rainforest.
Also, one of the big things is shampoo. We have 100% organic top-of-the-line and there’s no chemical in it, just one to three ingrediens. That’s our body care line. Facial wash is 100% organic mungbean powder, organic jasmine rice powder. These are really simple that have worked for hundreds of years in different parts of the world. That’s the specialty that we do.
DEBRA: I can really see that you’re taking this viewpoint of using renewable resources as opposed to industrial materials, so that you’ll use wood or a shell or something instead of using something like metal, which has to be industrialized. I mean, certainly there was a metal age where people were pounding on metal and stuff like that. But in today’s world, if you’re using zippers and hooks and all those things, that’s all industrially processed where you’re looking in saying, “How can we take these materials that exist in nature in their natural state and when you’re done with it, will go back into the ecosystem and just biodegrade?” I mean, you just can’t get a higher standard than that.
THAM JAMIKORN: Well, that’s exactly what we think. We’re definitely on the same page with your book and your life philosophy. Our thing is to re-imagine everything that everybody uses and how to make it as natural as possible. We keep looking for new ways to do that without chemicals and synthetics.
KLAUSS WALLNER: We always draw inspiration from looking at the past because a lot of needs has been beautifully solved hundred years ago before the age of a lot of chemicals and plastics and it worked just fine.
THAM JAMIKORN: It’s amazing what you can do with this organic hemp, organic linen or organic cotton, almost everything.
DEBRA: Yes, I think you can. One of the things that I like to do is I like to go to places where they’ve re-created how life was in earlier times. I just go and I look and I see – what comes to mind first is a dress that I saw in a place like that where I knew that that dress was created by a woman sitting in that house hand-stitching every little stitch. What kind of design comes out of that when that’s the way it’s produced as opposed to how is it going to be produced on a machine?
I’m sure that a lot of the design issues in today’s clothing comes out of, “How can it be made on a machine?” as opposed to, “How would it be made whatever is the natural design?” And in the same way, food is designed for how it can be processed and put on a shelf instead of how does it taste good. You’re getting back to those basic life processes, those basic life design that you’re integrating what you do into the flow of life rather than in this separate industrial way of thinking.
I just can’t admire you enough for that because it’s just that’s the way we should be living. That is just the way we should be living. And when you’re talking before about scale, I was thinking that you can only grow your business to a certain size because of you can’t go beyond certain scale. But what you can do is you could replicate your business and have another small scale business. Not only you, but anybody could look at your business model and say, “Let’s think like this and let’s make a whole different kind of product.”
I mean, there’s millions of people in the world who need these products like this. This is the business model, this is the manufacturing mode, this is the production model, to be in alignment with nature like this. You’re doing it and you have it. You’re such a role model.
THAM JAMIKORN: Yeah, thank you very much. And we can’t agree more with your philosophy. We love your historical re-enactment. It’s interesting you mentioned that because we supply a lot of hemp rope, hemp twine, hemp fabric, linen fabric because people who do historical re-enactments wants to be authentic and they actually want to work with the actual material that were available 200 years ago. It’s just amazing. You go into the room and you actually feel time drop and you’re like, “Wow! I’m in a different planet. It’s amazing!”
KLAUSS WALLNER: Our goal isn’t so much to grow to a particular size. We enjoy being a family scale operation. That’s wonderful. Our goal rather is not to let anyone’s needs go unmet. So over time, as awareness spreads and more people want to purge their lives of chemicals and be as natural as possible in their clothing and their daily product, then we may need to grow and then we’ll find ways of replicating that multiple small scales.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Wow! Well, we only have about 30 seconds left. So is there anything that you just want to say in closing really quickly?
KLAUSS WALLNER: Yeah. We’re at this point involved in bringing a lot of what we’re doing into the modern age, which is with the technologies of social media, of online things that have been developed the recent years. So we’re making a new platform called PureClothes, PureClothes.com where we have all these bells and whistles like customer reviews and…
DEBRA: I’m sorry, I have to cut you off because the closing music is going to come on any second. Thank you so much for being here and explaining all of these.
KLAUSS WALLNER: Thank you, Debra.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and click on the Rawganique link and go see their website. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
