The true cost of sustainability.
As part of our commitment as a company to being fully transparent, we wanted to break down the cost price of our garments. Each piece has its own set of costs, including fabric, production and transportation. When sustainability made it’s entree in the market, the costs were 60% more expensive to make sustainable garments then fast fashion garments. Today, the costs of a sustainable business differentiate still with 30%. When doing a sustainable business, we do it right and not halfway. So everything you touch from Borrenberghs is sustainable and has hours of research behind it.
Fabric: We buy high quality, sustainable and all-natural materials from deadstock and European suppliers. We choose to use suppliers within the EU because it enables us to ensure worker safety and environmental standards.
Labor: Our clothing is manufactured in Belgium in the Borrenberghs atelier. Because we almost can’t handle the amount of orders anymore, we are going to move our production to professional production halls. This is a step we are going to take in 2023. But we keep our standards that everyone needs to be paid fairly and work under good conditions for high quality garments. The price might increase when switching to production halls. Borrenberghs will always have an atelier for customized items.
Transportation: This includes all costs to transport the fabrics from the mill to the sewing facilities and then the finished garments to our fulfillment warehouse. It doesn’t include any shipping costs from the warehouse to you.
Packaging: sustainable packaging is still more expensive than regular packaging. Although this is changing. We are going the right direction. At Borrenberghs we are choosing the most sustainable option in packaging by using FSC papers and boxes.
CO2 neutral compensation and green energy. You can find more information on this topic on our sustainable formula page.
We calculate all this as the “true cost” of the garment, and we multiply the “true cost” by an average of three to cover the costs of running our business, such as salary, the atelier, and our research and development. Each style goes through multiple stages from sketching by hand, to prototypes and fittings until we finally decide for it to be ready to see the light of day. If we were not a direct-to-consumer company, and we relied on wholesaling our clothing to retailers, we would multiply our costs by three to get a wholesale price, and then by three again to get the retail price. By cutting out the retailers we are able to sell luxury clothing at a lower price than traditional designers.
Borrenberghs cares about everyone, from designer, to maker, to buyer who wears the final product.