women's wear daily
The Recipe For Building a Good Society
By Brindey Weber
AIDEN DINH WANTS TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
His environmentally friendly jeans line, Good Society Denim, is launching in the fall with lofty goals. Everything from its hangtags to dyes are eco-friendly and made based on fair labor practices. Dinh allocates 10 percent of profits for charities: helping orphans in India, former child sex slaves in Cambodia and providing clean water facilities for underprivileged communities around the world.
Good Society is Dinh's second venture in the fashion business. His first denim line, Sling and Stones, launched last year. Dinh donated 10 percent of profits from 4,000 pairs of Sling and Stones jeans to stop the use of pesticides, but he wanted to do more and reasoned he could give more money to charity with a lower-priced line that could generate higher volumes. Good Society was the result. The line retails for about 40 percent less than the $300 price tag for Sling and Stones.
Good Society will ship three styles to stores this fall. Made of 100 percent organic cotton from India, the jeans come in a low-rise of 7.5 inches in both slim and boot cut, as well as a mid-rise of 8.75 inches in a straight leg.
"It is a simple jeans [customers] can wear now and 10 years from now," Dinh said.
Stores that have ordered Good Society include Urban Outfitters, Fred Segal Flair in Santa Monica, Calif., Post in Los Angeles and Olio United in Portland, Ore.
This fall, Dinh will introduce a T-shirt line dubbed Deconstruction Reconstruction, as well as a drinking water line called Pathos. The T-shirts, which wholesale for $75, are reconstructed from Ts collected from Salvation Army stores in the Midwest that Dinh and his team will take apart and resew in more fitted style. Pathos water features natural artesian water in biodegradable soy plastic bottles. Dinh said all profits from Deconstruction Reconstruction and Pathos will go to charity.
Projecting first-year wholesale sales of $500,000 to $1 million for Good Society, Dinh said his strategy is to wholesale to a mix of socially conscious boutiques, while expanding into 10 of Urban Outfitter's biggest stores.
"The reason we do have a mix of speciality boutiques is because I think that cultural movements tend to start within a community of people who care about what they are selling and promoting in their stores," Dinh said.
