In June 2013, almost 7 years ago, we moved both the businesses and ourselves from Bournemouth to Kent, to Tonge Mill. We have always felt lucky to be here, even when we had leaking roofs, rotten windows, and limited heat and power. During the lockdown we have felt this luck even more keenly. We have lots of space, lots of work to do, and the Mill pond is filled with ducklings!
Last year we had an amazing pair of visitors, Ali Heath spent the day interviewing us about our work and Alun Callender took some incredible photos. The result was a feature in Country Homes and Interiors, see below, which just came out. We thought we would share this piece now, and also give you an update on life at the workshop.
All online orders are still going out, Elvis and I live on site so the two of us have always been able to continue work. We have continually adjusted the space, during lockdown, to work out the best way to manufacture while ensuring social distancing. Then slowly, one-by-one, we started bringing the team back in. Although some of our team members have been able to work from home throughout, this was not possible for everyone as several of our machines weigh more than a tonne and certainly are not portable.
It feels incredible to be making, almost at full speed. We just can't wait until we can have everyone here and open the doors for workshops again to let you all back in too!
As many of you know we donate 50% of our profits to charity. In the case of our rescued leather, our partner is Barefoot College. Learn everything about our partnership and our first donations here.
Last year our donation was able to cover three scholarships. Three amazing women from Guatemala became fully fledged solar engineers and are now back home building and managing solar infrastructure for their communities.
This year we were all set to offer 6 scholarships. Thanks to your support, and increased demand for our rescued leather goods, we have been able to double our donation.
And then Corona virus changed a lot of things. Barefoot College serves and uplifts some of the most vulnerable people in the world. And now it may need to support them in new ways. We have made absolutely no restrictions on our donation, the charity is absolutely free to use these funds to best protect those in training, the Solar Engineers, and their communities and the wider Barefoot team and mission.
This is not the time for 'Business As Usual', but it is indeed the time for unusual businesses, like ours, to demonstrate what resilience looks like. There is no resilience without community. There is no resilience without an embedded respect for the environment and its people. We don't want everything to return to normal after this, we want it to evolve into something much more resilient!
We hope to update you on everything that we are doing with Barefoot College throughout the year, what is most important right now is that despite the pandemic our partnership is stronger than ever.
"Elvis & Kresse's latest donations helped us offer a further three women from Barefoot College's second Coffee Livelihood Curriculum scholarships for training to become Barefoot Solar Mamas at Barefoot College’s training campus in Tilonia, India.
From left to right in below photo.
The three of them are the first to acquire official Guatemalan passports in their family's history and Elvis & Kresse's donation has created this opportunity for them. By training as Barefoot Solar Engineers these three women will be able to return to their villages and implement clean, renewable solar lighting systems for their communities allowing them to reduce carbon emissions and improve social and economic outcomes.
During their time with Barefoot College they will also be trained in the Enriche Curriculum which provides digital training, education about their health and their human rights and trains them in skills which can be used to create livelihood opportunities when they return home. All Solar Mamas are trained first as students but then as trainers themselves, enabling them to train more solar engineers when they return to their villages and creating long term change for the most marginalised people around the world." - Barefoot College, 23/04/2020
One of the best days of the year for Elvis & Kresse is the day we complete our accounts. On this day we know how much we will be able to donate to our charity partners.
Since 2005 we have been donating 50% of our profits from our Fire-hose Collection to the Fire Fighters Charity and in 2018-2019 we had our best year ever. We finished that year in September 2019 and our accounts several months later. We just made our donation to the Fire Fighters Charity and their reaction was pretty overwhelming, particularly given the health crisis that we are all currently facing.
The Fire Fighters Charity runs several services all designed to improve the lives of active and retired Fire Service Personnel and their families. They provide all kinds of therapy, both for physical and mental health, they also provide food vouchers if firefighters have fallen on hard times.
This means our donation, just for last year, could be covering 2000 exercise therapy sessions, 500 hydrotherapy sessions, 400 physio sessions, 400 psychological support sessions, 100 days of the Services Access Line AND 118 food vouchers.
When we set out to rescue the fire-hoses we had no idea that we would be able to have this impact. Just think, these hoses could have just gone to landfill, and instead they get a beautiful hand-crafted second life and a glorious chance to give back.
In these extremely difficult times, where there are significant uncertainties, the one thing that we can all do is think about acting in the best interests of everyone.
Elvis & Kresse is a business, yes, but we also see ourselves as a citizen. We were established for one key reason, to rescue London’s fire-hoses. In the process of doing that we decided that it wasn’t enough to just solve that problem. We have always donated 50% of our profits to charity. Having just completed the accounts for last year we are proud to announce that for 2018-19 we have donated over £70,000.00. We will tell you a lot more about the impact of these donations, which we can only make with your support, in the coming months.
But rescuing materials and making donations is not enough. We have to run on renewable energy, we have to be a living wage employer, we have to ensure that there is no exploitation or environmental degradation caused by any of our activities.
This month is also B-Corp month. In 2015 we became one of the first businesses in the UK to certify as a B-Corp. Why did we do this? Because B-Corps all understand that we have to act in the best interests of everyone. We all have to sign the B-Corp Declaration of Interdependence:
We are responsible for each other and future generations. For us, right now, that means ensuring that our team stays safe and healthy, it means social distancing and following all of the Government and National Health Service advice, it means seeking out people within the community that need help and doing what we can to help, and it also means we are unfortunately unable to welcome anyone to our otherwise entirely open and transparent workshop, Tonge Mill. Our very popular workshop events may have to go ‘virtual’ for a while but we already have some lovely customers who are willing to give this a go, let us know if this is something you would like to try too. Right now our workshop is running as usual and all of your orders are being fulfilled, we will let you know if this changes.
This is a time for Social Enterprises and B Corps to shine. We are asking ourselves, every day, ‘Is this the best you can do?’. We don’t know what the future may bring but Elvis and I, and indeed everyone at Elvis & Kresse understand that we are dependent upon each other and are responsible for each other. We will act accordingly because we understand what interdependence means and as a proud member of the B-Corp community we gladly signed the Declaration.
- Elvis & Kresse
If you are reading this than you are definitely aware of our mission to Rescue and Transform materials that would otherwise go to landfill. Many of you will also know that our home and workshop, Tonge Mill, was also something of a rescue.
We moved here in 2013 and most of the building had no heat or power. One of the central segments had a simple tin roof that was constantly misting condensed water back into the rooms below. Two of the loos were worse than the one in Trainspotting... yes, worse.
Today's Metro Newspaper has done a 3-page spread on how we brought this historic building back to life and converted part of the Mill into our home. There are lots of tips and tricks in there; if you are renovating on a budget, want to work with reclaimed materials, and are keen to get your hands dirty then look no further!
And for those that didn't get a physical copy, Metro also published the piece online - you can read that here.
We are going to try to disrupt the failed, disengaged, industrial recycling system and donate a technology to the world that will be able to rescue the billions of aluminium cans that are NOT being recycled. And if we succeed we just may be able to help with the renewable heating revolution too.
And now for the long answer…
Problem
Each year in the UK tens of millions of aluminium cans are littered in our public spaces and over 2 billion aluminium cans don’t get recycled because they are put into the wrong bin. Why? There are a lot of contributing reasons: we are not engaged or in love with recycling, we don’t have the right incentives, like a deposit system, and we don’t foster a deep love for the materials we rely on for our home, our environment, this amazing planet that supports all known life. The problem gets worse, and we can't thank Keep Britain Tidy enough for highlighting it... if you include glass and plastic drinks containers too then this litter is responsible for the death of 3 million small mammals each year!
Solution
This is a complicated problem, so the solution we propose is also complex. Equally, given the scale of our environmental crisis, we must always strive for multiple positive objectives:
Getting Involved
This open sourced project officially launches this month, in February 2020, and we would love for you to follow along and contribute. We are specifically looking for individuals who are keen to contribute:
A few months ago we were asked to describe our vision of the business landscape for 2020... It is now hot off the press and in the current issue of WIRED magazine!
If you have no time, the premise is this - businesses have a choice, they have total freedom to be AWESOME, regenerative, and good! But for those models based on exploiting people, planet, or both...? Time is up.
Here it is, in full:
If you want to check out the original WIRED article, you can find the link here.
This is the 2020 Elvis & Kresse are working on. We hope you have a very happy holiday season and we hope you join us.
Photo by Alun Callender
The holiday season is a busy time of the year for Elvis & Kresse and we know that it will get busier every day until the 23rd of December.
We have been working hard, doing our best to squirrel away as many pieces as we can carefully make, but we already know that certain favourites will sell out before December.
2019, The Team at our previous workshop in Tonge Mill before it got too cold
Why?
We only ever made three Fire & Hide Post Bags in Gingersnap!
Each year as our team grows we will be able to rescue more material, but we will never be able to guarantee that everything will always be in stock. Interestingly this also reflects the reality of our finite planet, and creates a natural rhythm for our happy team. When we post 'Rescued, Transformed, Sold Out' next to an item on our site it is a celebration, it is a success; it means material has been saved and donations for our charitable partners are growing. It means that we are solving the problems we decided to tackle back when we started in 2005.
How can we help you?
If you find that the gift you were really hoping to give, or receive, is currently not available we can help in two key ways:
Thank you for keeping us busy. Thank you for helping us give back. Thank you for supporting the rescue of all these incredible materials and giving them an amazing second life.
- Elvis & Kresse
Last night we had a very brief cameo on The One Show - what an adventure!
As the main guests, Cara Delevingne and Orlando Bloom, are both very interested in sustainable and ethical fashion the team decided to feature brands, like us, who are on a mission to rescue materials. It was great to finally meet Georgia, the founder of Wyatt & Jack, who has been rescuing beach chairs, bouncy castles and inflatables for ten years.
First, the guests were challenged to examine our Overnight Bag and guess what it used to be... I can't tell you how much we loved the fact that they couldn't do it! Our aim is to truly transform a material and this was definitely a 'job done' moment.
Then we gave host, Matt Baker, a brief history of Elvis & Kresse:
And when we got to the end of the story and our work with The Fire Fighters Charity (50% of the profits from our Fire-hose Collection is donated to them), this was Cara's reaction! Mind blown.
The evening ended with two belts leaving with their proud new owners - Cara has a red fire-hose West End Belt and Orlando literally left with the belt I was wearing, which meant my jeans were a little loose on the way home. Orlando's belt is now officially on its third adventure; a fire-hose, Elvis' belt of the last 5 years (yes, I occasionally borrow Elvis' belts), and now it's off to Hollywood.
If anyone wants a full debrief, just let us know! Or download the episode on iPlayer, it was the August 29th, 2019 edition of The One Show.
"Everything about this Elvis & Kresse purse is thoughtfully designed, from the hand-woven leather made from offcuts that would otherwise be discarded, to the decommissioned fire hose trim and reclaimed parachute silk lining. There are a mammoth 12 card slots, a zipped coin pocket and additional slots roomy enough to hold an iPhone. Plus 50 per cent of the brand’s profits go to charity."
A few weeks ago we received a fascinating image of one of our wallets on Henderson Island. Its owner (James Beard), an Elvis & Kresse fan, was letting us know that he had taken our wallet on an incredible journey to clean Henderson's beaches. We asked James to share his story. All I can say is wow and try not to cry... we all need to do so much better to protect and care for our home.
"Although I’ve always been interested in the environment, my interest in sustainability issues has grown as I have got older. In part this has been fostered by my role at Valpak where I work on environmental issues every day, and it was through my colleague, Emily, that I first heard about Elvis & Kresse (Emily is the proud owner of an E&K Rucksack). Through my work in waste management and environmental consulting I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to take part in a very special project this summer.
Despite being uninhabited and located thousands of miles from the nearest continental landmass, research conducted in 2015 found Henderson Island in the South Pacific to be the most densely polluted beach on the planet. 99.8% of that pollution is plastic. We arrived there on the 8th of June 2019 – World Ocean Day. Our expedition team was a mix of scientists, artists, journalists and “beach cleaners” which is where I came into it. Our aim was to clear the Island’s East Beach of all plastic greater than the size of a bottle top, analyse each item to work out what type of plastic it was and to deduce the possible origin, and then to set up cameras which would remain on the island long after our departure to monitor the inevitable return of more plastic to replace what we had cleared. It is anticipated that all of what we cleared would be replaced within 5 or 6 years.
After a week’s travelling from the UK I finally arrived at Henderson Island. The plan was to land on East Beach via a rigid-hulled inflatable boat each day to do the clean-up. However, due to prevailing winds and large swell it became impossible for us to safely land on East Beach itself. Instead we had to arrive at the more accessible North Beach and then hike across from there. There was no path on the uninhabited atoll, so the team had to create one by cutting back the dense vegetation. The journey from North to East was roughly a 90-minute hike each way and involved wading around headlands, climbing cliffs and trekking across razor sharp corals. This added a huge amount of extra physical exertion onto an already grueling day of picking and documenting the waste.
Whilst the science team conducted their research, the visible impacts of the plastic on the local nature became clear. Prior to the expedition I had seen photos of turtle tracks crossing the plastic to reach the nesting grounds and whilst there we saw first-hand the impact plastic can have; we found a baby turtle which had become trapped in a plastic container which unfortunately didn’t survive. We saw birds pick up plastic as if to see if it was food, and we saw nets and ropes snagged on the reef and cliffs. Henderson Island contains a huge volume of things that simply don’t belong there, it was incredibly sad to see.
One of the more unusual items we came across during the clean-up was a glass fishing float which was most likely made in Japan in the 1940s. Fishing equipment was a sizeable proportion of what we found and included buoys, nets, ropes, crates and lures. This is particularly concerning as Henderson Island is in the middle of one of the wold’s largest Marine Protected Areas, where commercial fishing is prohibited. Prior to the expedition I had never come across the term Fishing Aggregation Device (FAD), but I am now acutely aware of the damage they cause. Up to 121,000 of these large devices are launched each year with a view to attracting large fish thus making the catch easier. Unfortunately, they can easily drift ashore where they can get caught on reefs. Pitcairn is now looking at whether it is possible to track the source of these FADs and prosecute the owners.
After 11 days, 351 man-hours and a total of 151 hours spent hiking across the island the team had collected 6,000kg of waste from the 2.25k long East Beach and a further 250kg from two other beaches and the reef around Henderson Island. And yet despite our efforts, all of that waste is still on the island. Due to the large swells and rough seas, it wasn’t possible to remove much plastic and
as such it will have to wait until a later date to be retrieved. For me this is the most damning fact about marine pollution; Despite a dedicated team comprised of international experts, it simply isn’t possible to clean up many of these remote places. Clean ups paired with research can help raise awareness and educate, but our attention must turn to preventing waste from entering the oceans, and this is where the work conducted by the likes of Elvis & Kresse is so important.
By making informed choices regarding what we buy and choosing items that have been given a second life we can all do our bit. Every member of the team contributed significant resource to help plan, coordinate and deliver the
expedition. It is also recognised that specific individuals and institutions made financial donations to the expedition, without which it could not have taken place These include: Valpak, Toughsheet Environmental, the Pew Trusts, CEFAS, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Blue Belt Team and Pitcairn Island Office), Architectural and Community Planning Inc, the Zoological Society of London, Howell Conservation Fund and Schwab International. A special thanks to the Pitcairn community and its Mayor Shawn Christian, without their support and ambition the expedition would not have been possible."
Note: Valpak is the UK’s leading provider of environmental compliance, helping businesses meet their legal obligations in fields of packaging, electronics, batteries and waste management.
You can see James' journey through videos and images taken throughout the beach clean via the Instagram Account @henderson_beach_clean
We were asked to contribute to the Summer 2019 edition of INFO magazine, here is your sneak peak!
Solve an actual, crisis level problem. Most entrepreneurs consider themselves to be problem solvers. They roll-out ideas that make life easier, more entertaining, healthier, or safer. But this is 2019, you can’t avoid the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, or global social inequalities… If you are building a sustainable brand you absolutely must be engaged with the big problems and if you need inspiration, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a good place to start. We didn’t set Elvis & Kresse up to create a luxury goods brand, our sole reason for starting the business was to rescue London’s damaged, decommissioned fire-hoses and keep them from languishing in landfill. For reference, by mounting this rescue and working in an ethical and sustainable manner we are tackling the following SDGs: 8, 9 and 12.
Focus on Multiple Positive Objectives. You also have to remember that you can’t solve a big problem sustainably if your solution causes other problems. It isn’t enough to just rescue and reuse the fire-hoses, we also:
Love your Problem. Be an expert at your problem and be totally committed to it. Remember that the solution might change over time. By remaining wedded to fire-hose we never fail to have impact. By being experts in our waste materials we can adapt our business over time while continuing to solve our chosen problems and deliver real change.
Be genuine. Remember that a brand is meant to stand for something, so stand for something and then deliver. A brand isn’t a stunning logo or a catchy strapline. It is the recognisable manifestation of a team, their activities and the goods or services they provide. There are a lot of companies whose brand or identity is more sustainable than their actual work. This kind of disconnect is essentially a lie. Don’t do that. We rescue materials, transform them into beautiful products and donate 50% of our profits to charity. The authenticity of our brand is that we deliver, every day, on these promises. We don’t need a marketing strategy, the truth is interesting enough. 50% of the profits from our leather rescue project are donated to Barefoot College. Last year our donations created three scholarships for female solar engineers.
Through the design, manufacture and sale of accessories, we transformed around 3000kg of leather that would otherwise go to landfill into 3 scholarships. I think when the choice is between creating 3 tonnes of waste or 3 scholarships we all know which is the right choice.
