Impact
New Year's Resolutions
I cannot believe that 2022 is coming to a close. We started this year still struggling with supply chain but hopeful for a year of stabilization and growth for the business and for our team. And despite all the challenges in Haiti and in the US economy, we saw incredible growth in 2022! We are SO grateful to our community for your ongoing support! Below are some thoughts as we reflect on 2022 and look to 2023. As we started the year, we had four resolutions we shared with you: Keep the shelves full! Thankfully, as we moved into 2nd quarter, supply chain loosened and we started building inventory. We can share that we’re closing out 2022 with 100,000 more garments on the shelves than when we started! This means we’re in a better spot than ever to service our clients with excellence! Build deeper connections between clients & makers. We hope you enjoyed the Instagram lives we hosted throughout the year, the stories from our team on Mother’s & Father’s Days and the updates Ariane provided regarding the political & social instability in Haiti and what that means for the team. To all of you who sent words of encouragement, donated to provide additional food for the holidays or placed an extra order to keep everyone working, THANK YOU! If you don’t feel connected to our mission, I’d love to hear from you! Please share your ideas on how we can better engage you and others in our community! Get local! We love designing to support local retailers! In 2022, we doubled the number of boutiques around the country carrying GOEX graphic tees. Check out this map that shows you where to find our product near you: https://goexapparel.com/apps/store-locator Build a Best in Class Team.We believe in ongoing investment in our team so they can serve you with excellence! Both in Haiti and the US, we invest in both training and fun so our employees can do their jobs with excellence and enjoy one another in the process. We hope you see the fruits of those efforts in every garment and print we send you. And when we don’t live up to your expectations, please let us know so we can both make it right and learn from the mistakes. So what do we have planned for 2023? Grow!With the shelves full and our capacity expanded, we are ready to service rapid growth in 2023. The more shirts we sell, the more jobs we sustain. But we need your help! Please consider referring new customers to us! We provide garments to any type of organization – from manufacturers to banks, family reunions to schools, local boutiques to national non-profits – the list of potential clients is endless. If you know someone who purchases custom apparel, we would like the opportunity to earn their business. And coming this spring, we’re going to reward you for those referrals – stay tuned! Support and Promote Fair TradeWe know we cannot fix the apparel industry on our own! This work requires an army of educators, consumers, businesses, manufacturers and more. What we can do is our part! We can link arms with those in our community and help grow the movement. Watch for even more collaborations, giveaways and co-branded goods in 2023 as we work to be a tailwind to others! One of our favorite things is customer spotlights – if you purchase from us, please send in pics of your tees so we can share the and celebrate that you’re part of our Fair Trade family! ListenWe want to hear from you! What do you want to know? What do you think about our brand, our product, our partners? How can we better support you? What products or services could we provide that would make your life easier or meet your needs? Send us an email. Leave a product review. Give us a call. Stop by and visit. Ping us on social media. We love hearing from you and we want to hear more! Stay CreativeWatch for new collections from our creative team! We love creating designs your customers will love. Many of you get inspiration from our graphics collections and trend reports – watch for more of all of that in 2023. In addition, we’re pushing our fabric supplier and ink suppliers to stay on top of innovation and sustainable options and we look forward to sharing those things as they become available! Again, thank you for support and let us know what you think about our goals for 2023! Cheers to an incredible 2023 for you and yours!
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Your Impact in Haiti
As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we cannot help but give thanks for all of the partners who continue to support us and our employees. Our mission is to connect you, the customer, with our makers, in order to sustain fair wage jobs and empower families through the dignity of work. This year to date, with your support, we've produced more than 250,000 garments and generated 20,622 days, or more than 175,000 hours, of employment in Haiti. For our employees, this work means everything. The team has shown up through unimaginable challenges this fall as Ariane shared with us several weeks ago. We are so grateful for all of you who have linked arms with us to provide for the team when so many companies are leaving Haiti. In addition to supporting our teams in Haiti and Kansas City, we were able to award our first ever GOEX Grant in the US to support an organization investing in job training for transition age youth. We awarded that grant to Look Ma No Hands in September and are excited to see how they use the funds to grow their program and impact even more students. So, as we celebrate this season, from our family to yours, thank you for caring. Thank you for trusting us with your business and for making it possible for all of the members of our team to celebrate with their families as well. We are both humbled and empowered by your support.
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The Dominican Republic & Haiti: An Update From Jessica Ray
Hi GOEX family – I’m on my way back from visiting the factory we’re working with in the Dominican Republic and wanted to take a few minutes to update you on the trip! Before I dive into info on the factory, I want to share super fun news – the port in Haiti opened this week while I was on the other side of the island! The container of fabric we’ve had sitting at the port since August was delivered to Life around noon today, just hours after the container we sent to the Dominican Republic was delivered there! While we have no idea what will happen from here in Haiti but we are hopeful for a season of stability and this was a major step in that direction. We can now keep our team in Haiti working even while we do some catch up sewing in the DR. And with the fabric arriving at Life, we’ll be able to deliver the end of our new 2022 styles – remember Funfetti? We promise, it’s coming and it’s going to be FUN! So now to more information about the DR. The factory we’re working with is managed and partially owned by a couple with decades of experience in the industry. Their investment partner is a sportswear company in the USA. The atmosphere in the factory was very positive and upbeat. The employees enjoy one another, celebrate birthdays with singing and dancing and are decorating in preparation for the annual visit from Santa! We saw the evidence that there was no work for line 5, which will be sewing our garments! The work we’re providing will keep their income flowing and we feel great about that! While we did not do a payroll audit, we did talk with the owner about employee wages. The minimum wage in apparel in the DR is 3200 pesos per week but he said employees earn more, many of them up to twice that along with transportation allowances. Some light reading on livable wages in the DR says that employees need 4600-4900 pesos per week. This means a large group of the factory is earning a local livable wage. If we pursue additional work with this factory, we will dig in deeper. We had free range of the sewing floor, cutting tables and product development departments – we observed happy employees, about a 50/50 mix of men and women and no children. We were, overall, super happy and pleased with this visit! As I said in my earlier update, we are committed to our families in Haiti and will support them through all of the political challenges. We are grateful for a solution that can bridge the gaps and take some pressure off of them. And we’re SO grateful for a container delivered today that equals work continuing to flow through Life. Most of all, thank you to our community for supporting us and our teams. We appreciate you more than you know! Happy Holidays,Jessica
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Haiti Update 10/27/2022
To our whole GOEX Community – Thank you for the outpouring of kind words you’ve sent for our team following the open letter from Ariane a couple of weeks ago. Thank you for buying Haiti tees and sending prayers. Our employees in Haiti continue to come to work despite the many challenges there and we continue to receive garments in Kansas City every week. While our team keeps working, that’s not the case in other parts of Port-au-Prince, primarily at the ports. As news outlets have reported, armed gangs are blocking all access in and out of the port – this has been going on for weeks. Haiti customs is closed and the ports are completely full of containers waiting to be moved to their final destinations. In that pile of containers is a load of GOEX fabric that we shipped down in August. Unless the port opens soon, our team will run out of fabric to sew into garments and we have no way of getting more fabric to them. As a result, we’re pulling contingency plans from the shelves. These plans are not meant to be long term solutions but to bridge the gap so our clients can continue purchasing from GOEX and we can, in turn, keep supporting our team in Haiti through this difficult season. The first of those contingency plans is to sew some garments in the Dominican Republic. Last year we sampled with a factory there so we would be able to ship fabric and start sewing if necessary. We now find ourselves in the place that we feel it’s necessary. While this factory does not have the same social purpose as ours, we are confident that their labor practices are on the up and up and employees are being provided for appropriately and treated well at work. In addition, factories around the world have faced cancelled orders and layoffs as economies have slowed due to inflation. This factory is facing lay-offs for the next couple of months which makes us feel even better about sending work to them. Their team members will have work and be able to provide for their families going into the holidays. And, I will personally visit the factory and speak with employees there. We will completely guarantee that garments sewn in the DR will be up to our high standards of quality, will utilize our same USA fabric and will do good for the makers producing them. Thank you for your continued support of GOEX and of our team in Haiti. We will continue to share updates as the situation changes. JESSICA RAYExecutive Director, GOEX
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Update on Haiti
Haiti has been in and out of the news over the past weeks. Many of you have seen reports of riots or gang violence. But coming from a country that has long struggled with protests and general unrest, it’s easy to glaze over. Please don’t glaze over this letter from Ariane, our General Manager at Life SA, our garment factory in Port au Prince. She and her team want us to know what their jobs mean to them. They need us to lean in, to pray, to encourage. If you want to, drop us an email and we’ll send your words on to Haiti. As always, thank you to our community - we can’t do anything without you. It has been 24 days. 24 days since Haiti has been completely paralyzed. Out of those 24 days, we have tried to open our doors at Life for a total of 6 days with minimal efficiency. We are operating on a day to day basis which rely upon these 3 key factors: Is it safe for us to leave our homes? Do we have a means of transportation? Do we have fuel to run the generator? Without these guarantees, we are struggling to keep our heads above water. The challenges we are facing as a team are different yet the same. There has been ongoing insecurities and gang violence long before September 12th that we are all facing. We're scared to leave our homes whether it's by armored cars, taptaps, motos or even by foot. Our day to days are so unpredictable, which is the scariest part because every day is a risk leaving your home. This is a risk that our employees are willing to take at any cost, because "Le travail c'est la liberté." This is a saying in French that means, "work is freedom." One of the most important things we provide at Life, aside from fair pay, is a paid lunch every day. This is an added bonus for them because it is one less meal to have to pay for, especially during these times. Haiti as an island is extremely dependent on the importation of goods. We import about 90% of what we consume. Between the insecurity on the streets, particularly around the ports, and the lack of fuel, we are now dealing with a shortage of basic necessities. It's been extremely hard for us, and everyone, to maintain the determination to keep going because it feels like the Haiti that we all love so much is giving up on us. It's easy to give up and turn our backs on this place, but we are resilient fighters. It has always been in our nature to fight, and we will continue to do so as long as we are able. We are beyond grateful for the continued support of our consumers that are fighting this fight with us. We know we are not alone, so a huge thank you from myself and the team at Life. - ARIANE MANUEL
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Made in Haiti
The story of GOEX Apparel began in 2010 in Gulu, Uganda with a woman named Lucy. Lucy had a sewing center, but no work. Our parent organization, The Global Orphan Project, sought to help by partnering with her on sewing school uniforms for children in her community. This work gave Lucy dignity, provided income for her family, and changed their stories from charity to empowerment. This event signaled an epiphany - that having a stable, fair-wage job helps keep families together and empowers them to succeed. Thus GOEX Apparel was formed. Two years later, the incredible impact in Uganda caught the attention of GO Project’s partners in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. While Haiti’s “mountains beyond mountains” and rugged island beauty are breathtaking, poverty is a tangible force in the daily lives of most Haitians. Historical colonial exploitation, decades of ineffective government, and natural disasters are just a few contributing challenges in Haiti. Despite these struggles, the people of Haiti continue to show exemplary hope and a sense of community. The need was clear and we now had the partnership to begin to help lay the groundwork for a better way of LIFE. Made With LIFE Managed by Ariane Manuel, LIFE S. A. is a 24,000 square foot boutique apparel factory located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A life-giving alternative within the apparel industry, LIFE treats their skilled employees with respect and pays a fair wage that reinstates pride, dignity, and stability within their families. Daily wages at Life S.A. are 65% higher than the sector minimum. "We're basically breaking all of the rules in [the fashion] industry,” says Ariane. “Not only do we take pride in the garments that we produce, but we invest in the wellbeing of our employees. We are a family here. Everything we do, we do with pride and with a lot of talent. Our slogan 'Feel good. Do good.' really means something important. I think anybody would feel good to make a difference and to be a part of what we're trying to do." Less than a 2-hour flight from Florida, Haiti is located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. This means that we are able to build sustainable, fair-wage jobs without severe consequences to the planet. Mega-factory shirts will typically travel 16,000 miles in their production journey — leaving toxic oil residue in the ocean. Our fabrics are sourced right here in the U.S., shipped to Haiti to be sewn into shirts, and shipped back to the U.S. for sale, leaving a total travel time of 3,200 miles and a much smaller carbon footprint. The Road So Far In 2012, we piloted the GOEX sustainability concept with a single product made in Haiti: GO Jammies. Over a sixty-day period, we sold nearly 5,000 units that supported 28 workers. Since then, we've expanded our garment line, made significant improvements to our shop and warehouses, and welcomed new team members. In 2021, GOEX achieved over $2 million in garment sales and supported 89 workers in Haiti and 21 in Kansas City. When people have dignified work and fair-wage income, the world wins. You can send all of the funds and resources you want, but the sustainable solution is providing opportunity for those in need to care for themselves and for communities to have a strong foundation of support. GOEX exists to contribute to that solution. A better shirt for a better world. Follow the story We strive to bring you the latest in Fair Trade style and responsible fashion trends. If you like what we stand for, we want to share more! Stay in the loop by signing up to receive our newsletters and following us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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A Dignified Labor Day
There is no such thing as a cheap product. Someone, somewhere ALWAYS pays the price. The shirt you’re wearing right now went through many hands before it’s unboxed at a store. Garments are made through an assembly line process where one person is responsible for one process. For example, you have people designated for cutting fabric, people who sew sleeves, people who apply tags, and so on. Typically, garment workers are paid 2-6 cents per piece. This means that workers are not guaranteed a steady income, they also aren’t being compensated fairly for the work that they do. According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, an estimated 93% of brands do not pay their workers a living wage. In addition to unethical manufacturing, cheap tees are designed to only last ten wears. Not ten years. Ten WEARS. That shirt then goes to landfill where it will stay for at least 200 years before finally decomposing. After considering this, are you truly saving money? By shifting our perspective in regard to our consumer habits we actually see that a $5 t-shirt is indeed a steal - the stealing of fair wages, dignity, safety, and the health of our planet. A Fair Price One of the biggest myths about ethically made products is that they’re expensive for the consumer. In reality, most fair trade products are competitively priced in relation to their conventional counterparts. Fair Trade Federation members (like us) work directly with producers, cutting out middlemen, so they can keep products affordable for consumers and return a greater percentage of the price to the producers. Our team has spent countless hours researching and participating in competitive shopping to make sure that our tees are fair to you AND our makers. This Labor Day, remember that you have power in your purchase decisions. Behind every item you purchase there are living, breathing human beings. Just like you they wake up in the morning and go to work. They dream of providing for their families and yearn to be empowered in their communities. Just like the consumer, the maker has the right to a healthy work environment, a fair wage, and dignified work. Follow the story We strive to bring you the latest in Fair Trade style and responsible fashion trends. If you like what we stand for, we want to share more! Stay in the loop by signing up to receive our newsletters and following us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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Beyond The Tee
Turning eighteen should be an exciting time in a young person’s life. But for youth involved in the U.S. child welfare system, it can mean aging out of care without a family, home, or the skills and support needed to prepare them for adulthood. At GOEX, we firmly believe that family is critical to ensuring that children and youth have the best chance for a healthy, happy future. Through the jobs created by our Fair Trade apparel and artisan enterprise, parents gain sustainable, dignified, and fair-wage employment that empowers them to care for their family. Beyond The Tee As many of you know, we exist to bridge the gap between community and commerce. Through job creation, we can strengthen families and empower communities. GOEX is an integrated apparel and artisan enterprise designed to (a) create fair wage jobs to break the orphan cycle, and (b) generate profits to care for children. We allocate our profits into other family-strengthening initiatives of our parent company, The Global Orphan Project. One initiative that GOEX supports in particular is the Transition Academy. This two-year life skills and vocational-technical program equips teenagers who are aging out of care with the skills they need to become independent, thriving adults. We are just one of many wonderful organizations that are dedicated to making a positive impact in the lives of transition-age youth. As a way to encourage and celebrate the excellent work that others are doing to support, empower, and advocate for these young people, GOEX is proudly offering a grant of up to $10,000 in the form of funding and/or credit towards GOEX products and services. Grant Information Important Dates: Application available: July 15, 2022 Application deadline: August 31, 2022 Recipient announced: September 30, 2022 Grant Amount: Up to $10,000 awarded to one recipient per grant cycle Recipient may collect grant in the form of funding and/or credit towards GOEX Apparel products and screen-printing services up to a combined total of $10,000. For more information or to apply visit goproject.org/goex-grant. Feel Good. Do Good. GOEX Apparel encourages the excellent work of organizations who support, empower, and advocate for young people as they make the transition into adulthood. If your organization engages in creating positive outcomes for youth, either through vocational and job training, financial literacy education, skill building, coaching and mentorship, or other related services, we invite you to apply for a grant from GOEX. Follow The Story We strive to bring you the latest in Fair Trade style and responsible fashion trends. If you like what we stand for, we want to share more! Stay in the loop by signing up to receive our newsletters and following us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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Four Back To School Looks Ensure The Rights of Children
Are you ready for the fresh smell of new crayons, making new friends on the bus, and fun at recess? At GOEX, we are fully stocked for a new school year. Here’s a few of our favorite “Feel Good. Do Good.” back to school looks that will make your child smile AND create a huge impact for a bright new year. Made For Play Our best selling eco-triblend tee isn’t just for grown ups! Let the world hear your roar in Amber styled with an animal print headband and thrifted denim jacket. No Space For Waste Science rules. Designed for STEAM trailblazers our No Space For Waste tee has limitless possibilities. Experiment with colors and layers all year long as this tee boldly goes where no tee has gone before. Keep It Simple Make a simple statement this year in our Feel Good. Do Good. crop tee. Our cropped tees are cut a little longer and look great on everyone. Your teen can cultivate a world of good with a simple, Fair Trade tee. Classic Swagger There’s a reason why the plain white tee paired with a class denim never goes out of style. It’s a classic look that has rocked the hallways for nearly a century. Whether you opt for eco-triblend or cotton, this tee is perfect for the fashion forward kid. New Year. New Purpose. When you send your child to school in Fair Trade, you are contributing to the empowerment of families. You’re cultivating a world where children have the right to security, education, and play. As members of the Fair Trade Federation, we are dedicated to the elimination of child labor. As your child gets dressed for a bright new school year, know that somewhere in the world another is doing the same because of your purchase. Shopping Fair Trade strengthens families, ensures the safety of children, and sets the groundwork for a better tomorrow. Follow The Story We strive to bring you the latest in Fair Trade style and responsible fashion trends. If you like what we stand for, we want to share more! Stay in the loop by signing up to receive our newsletters and following us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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