#217 - How (& Why) to Build a Local Dirt-to-Shirt Supply Chain

The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast

In a post-pandemic world, what's the value of a dirt-to-shirt supply chain?

Today's guest is Eric Henry, President of TS Designs, and he believes that now, more than ever, businesses need to take an increasingly holistic view of their responsibility to the planet and society as a whole.

TS Designs is a business-to-business screen printing company, a certified B-corporation, and has its origins all the way back in the '70s. They manage a domestic and transparent supply chain to produce the highest quality, most sustainable t-shirts on the market and have recently expanded to start Solid State Clothing which now provides these straight to the customer.

Eric shares how the devastating effects of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) sparked the difficult genesis of his fight to build a completely transparent and sustainable company that simultaneously looks after the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits.

With more than 40 years in the apparel industry, he works hard to keep farmers in the conversation, and this episode spans the gambit around supply chains, with a focus on the massive value and resilience in hyper-local supply chains.

We also do a deep dive into the challenges and difficulties in the opaque global supply chain of the fashion industry that's typically the norm, and talk through the wake-up call that COVID provided on the weakness of that chain.

Finally, we discuss the importance and difficulty of buying locally, both from a business's perspective as well as a consumer's perspective. All of these things have a serious implication on the strength and bond of a community, as well as the resilience of a local economy.

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