Promoting a Regenerative, Sustainable Textiles Industry; with Ellie Skeele
Creating a sustainable textiles industry starts with the raw materials. Ellie Skeele founded Himalayan Wild Fibers to help support families in Nepal, both through job creation and fair pricing for raw fiber, and also sustainable agriculture practices that ensure a positive impact on the environment.
In the interview below, Ellie shares her insight into finding your place in the value chain, and trusting your gut to make decisions.
Tell me about the work you do and your organization.
I founded Himalayan Wild Fibers in order to commercialize and sell into developed textile markets, Himalayan nettle fiber, which grows almost exclusively in the mountains of Nepal below the tree line. We buy the raw fiber and pay fairly for it, which is pretty unusual in the textiles industry. Then, we convert it to an export quality fiber that we sell predominantly to Europe, where it’s blended and spun and converted into yarns and fabrics.
The reason that I founded the company was to create fair payment for the purchase of the raw material. I adopted two children in Nepal. Both of them were given to me out of poverty, and that shouldn’t be the case. So when I saw this fiber, and began to realize that maybe it had more value than just being used in handicraft in the tourist district, I saw an opportunity to do some real good for the mountain families, predominantly women.
What was your background before that? How did you get into this?
I was in hi-tech, but I’ve had a lot of different kinds of careers. I’m not a straightforward, career path person. I’ve been self-employed more than I’ve been employed.
What has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?
A couple of things pop to mind. My gut talks to me, and I trust it. Before I had any data, before I had the right kind of evidence that this would work, I had some anecdotal experiences that validated. I knew in my gut that if I executed correctly, that it would work eventually. I think that’s an important thing to honor what your gut is telling you. If my gut was saying, it’s time to quit, it’s not going to fly, I would honor that as well.
The other big lesson is that it’s important to really understand your place in the value chain. Many spinning mills see us as just a farmer, they don’t see us as a collaborator, a partner. Being able to overcome that because we need to be more than that in order to enter the market effectively. So you have to understand your place in the supply chain.
In terms of funding, I would say the biggest lesson or the big observation is that everybody in the world has been talking about impact investment for quite a long time now, but most of the money that I have seen is still grounded in VC-like expectations or the five-year exit. And it’s hard to get something that’s regional, that’s economic development.
Our message is a little bit complicated only because it’s multi-pronged. We have a really fabulous story because we have multiple impacts that are positive. Not just neutral, but positive, and that actually complicates the finding of capital. Investors fund what they’re familiar with and almost 100% they are not familiar with raw materials and the manufacturing process. They understand software, they understand hardware, they understand apps, they understand retail products, but a lot of the hoops they want us to jump through are completely inappropriate for a raw material selling into an established industry. So our access to capital is pretty limited.
What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?
Don’t over complicate things. So many people think you need to immediately have a CFO, CMO, a CTO. You don’t need those things. Your potential investors, if they come from that world, are going to tell you, you need them. We’ve been challenged, “why don’t you have a CFO?” We don’t need a CFO; we don’t need a CMO. We don’t need any of these things. We have a Chief Impact Officer. That’s all. Don’t conform if it’s not relevant.
What’s your vision for the future, either for your business or for the world or for both?
The textile industry actually makes me feel positive because there’s so much conversation about not just being sustainable, but being regenerative. People are getting it. The regenerative agricultural movement that’s really taking off in food is even more easily taken up by the textiles industry. Food and agriculture, they’re dominated by very large profit making companies. Food companies are so huge. And if you try to change them, they will make less money. Whereas in textiles, the crops are not so consolidated in large corporate holdings. The brands are on the forefront of pushing the suppliers. You’ve got these leaders and brands that are bringing everybody else along with them, educating consumers on one end, educating the supply chain on the other end.
It feels hopeful. I will add a caveat that the market that’s being addressed with all of this is the developed world. If you look at the less developed world, they will buy whatever’s cheapest because that’s all they can afford and you can’t blame them for that. Having lived in Nepal for 20 years, I knew there wasn’t a market for our fiber. They just need the cheapest thing that they can get. So that part is a little disconcerting.
What action do you want readers to take?
To be more aware of what they buy. When you go to the supermarket, if you look at the labels, if you go to the organic section, or if you get EWGs dirty dozen and clean 15, and you comply with that, start doing that with the things that you put on your body. So that’s both cosmetics and your clothing. Some people will say that clothing affects you through your skin, but it’s more about the impact it has on the environment outside of you, which is why people pay less attention to it. They start first with the things they put inside. Then they’ll go to the things they put on their skin, and then they’ll go to things they wear on their bodies.
Look at the labels. Every garment you buy has a label in it. There’s a lot of greenwashing going on, but with a little bit of education, you could do a pretty good job of understanding.
Don’t buy bamboo. About 99% of the bamboo that’s labeled out there is really bamboo viscose, which means the bamboo has been cut down, pulped, and then extruded. That means it’s made from cellulose, and usually the bamboo is clear cut and the process of producing the fiber is not closed loop and very polluting. And a habitat is destroyed. A lot of really unethical people take advantage of the ignorance of the consumer.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Trust your gut. If you know it’s going to work, stick with it and find the right kind of funding. Everyone who has put money into this company is a private investor, an individual. You have to be really clear on what kind of investor works best for you.
It can get pretty intimidating to look at a tech pitch deck and how slick they are. I think most good investors, again, individuals, not investment funds, can see past that really quickly. I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to slick up my deck. It didn’t matter. It mattered that I had a different deck for a different kind of investor. If it was someone who was interested in economic development and poverty, that was one deck. If it’s the textiles industry, it’s another deck. If it’s just broad impact investing, it’s something else. That part is more important, to really define your audience, and the audience is your potential investor. That’s different from the audience for your marketing material. That feels really intuitively obvious, but I think for some people, it might not be. You need to hone your messaging depending on who’s listening to it. If that means having three or four different decks, you need to do it. Messaging is always more important than the design and slickness of it.
Find Ellie Online
Himalayan Wild Fibers: https://www.himalayanwildfibers.com
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