Connecting Our World Through Clothing

Apparel Can Bring People Together

We live in highly polarized times. It’s hard to say whether it’s a truly extraordinary moment in our history or whether the division is simply more palpable at the moment. Regardless of your specific views, one thing is abundantly clear:

Our desire to position others as different than ourselves is one of the greatest threats our world faces today.

This isn’t about any specific topic of our day, it’s deeper than that. This is about identifying the shared experiences we have as humanity and recognizing that those similarities far outweigh the differences in who we are.

We have seen this firsthand when it comes to the global apparel industry. Over the last 10 years we have started our own clothing production facilities in Uganda and Peru in an effort to provide meaningful work and life-changing opportunities to women and families. Through this we began to see the stark contrast between how we saw our clothes being made, and how a shopper made their purchasing decisions. At large, the lack of transparency within the manufacturing process leaves shoppers behind a veil of ignorance and allows companies to abdicate responsibility for the treatment of the garment producers.

We started to ask the questions…

KNOWN SUPPLY exists to bolster human connections and to help people see each other. It starts with connecting you to the person who made your product in a revolutionary way. Every purchase through knownsupply.com is accompanied with a new email process that connects you directly to the profile of the person who made your garment. You then have the opportunity to learn more about this individual and even write a note to this specific person.

We are using the t-shirt as a tool to combat misunderstanding and to bring people together. For us, it starts with beginning to see the human story connected to the garments that you wear and our hope is that it continues into other areas of life and culture.

We have much to learn from one another.