Last year, when we launched our e-commerce site, people thought we were crazy to create any kind of friction with a membership program. A membership-based brand? Get outta here! It’s crazy! It’s confusing! It will precipitously narrow your funnel!

Yeah, whatever, nerd! 

Fortunately, something else happened instead. People began to understand how their membership enabled us to make less, and they started spreading the word.

We believed in the power of what we could do together, and it’s working. So far, half of our revenue has come from membership. We’ve also seen buyers willing to approach sustainability by investing in quality craftsmanship, spending more and buying less. Yet, the prices of our garments remain at odds with our desire to democratize the brand and to build a thriving business based on principles of shared ownership and mutual aid. So we’re making a change. 

Like the rest of our garments it’s manufactured using recycled high-quality materials, in small batches at Petratex, our solar-powered factory in Portugal, an industry leader in sustainable technical manufacturing and a generally wonderful place to work. The remaining costs will be covered by your membership and the new member price, of $399. 

Businesses like ours rely on seed capital to get started, and once you’ve created a great product that people want, it’s natural to need more to keep growing. However, if you’ve followed the business press lately, you know the capital once available to start-ups like ours has become scarce. The Silicon Valley Bank failure impacted us directly— by temporarily making our existing operating capital unavailable. But it also impacted us more broadly and indirectly, by making an already difficult fundraising environment downright inaccessible.

The cheapest form of capital will always be revenue; and necessity mothers invention. We’re thankful that this crisis brings us one step closer to our vision of a member-supported brand, and we’re even more thankful for your support. 

What does any of this have to do with luxury communism? We’re sharing as we learn, but we already feel like making extraordinarily well-crafted, sustainably manufactured, luxury product available at an accessible price point is a step in the right direction.

Not a member yet? No time like the present. When you join Early Majority, you support our mission to transform the environmentally toxic apparel industry and you join a community leaning out — living lives fuelled by art, adventure and activism. In exchange, you receive awesome perks and discounts.