When I was involved with the Live Earth project, I sampled some of the sustainable clothing — the hemp, bamboo and hybrid shoes and garments from prospective promotional partners that periodically floated through the production office. Live Earth’s chief of staff, Tom Feegel, called this stuff “smokable clothing.” It was mostly a big what-ev. I wasn’t feeling it.
Flash forward to last week. Our friend Shannon Porter shows me around Nau, the sustainable clothing store (men’s and women’s) in Chicago where she is one of the managers. (Nau is based in Portland.) The store where Shannon works is at 2118 North Halsted Avenue, smack in the heart of a great part of a great city. Shannon has a Wharton School degree and impeccable taste in music and friends and just about everything else, and so I want to think Nau is going to be cool before I ever set foot in it. But there is a shadow of a doubt in my mind. I mean, I’d had the unsatisfactory experience with the smokable clothes, and she did say a lot of their stuff is made from recycled polyester and, well, you know, the original polyester ain’t so great to begin with, so how could recycled — ???
And then I crossed the Nau threshold, and within minutes, my experience with sustainable clothing had changed, just the way the brand intended.
The clothes are fantastic. The material, the design, the concept, the technology, the emotion. Everything works. The store experience guides you through the brand’s narrative with a constant sense of discovery and appreciation.
The bathroom has the mission statement posted. Given this environment, any scene set in here is almost guaranteed to explore a theme one could describe as ‘Reflecting on One’s Brand at a Time One Normally Would Not’. (A GameChanger changes the game whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.)
Nau stores are, in effect, showrooms. They carry minimal stock, reducing the needed retail space and the carbon emissions associated with shipping from warehouses to stores. Savings are passed along. Ordering directly from the warehouse saves you 10%.
To learn more about an item, you take a card from a holder where the item is hanging and scan it.
To order an item, you wave that same card at a different scanner.
5% of every purchase you make goes to a cause you choose at checkout.
From the conscious designs of buttons on the clothing to the quality of the video on the Nau web site, every choice made by the brand resonates with heart and reeks with aesthetic wonderfulness.
I bought lots of clothes for spring, donated 5% to Kiva in the process, and was kicking myself by the time I got back to L.A. that I did not buy more. Oh well. Nau’s L.A. store opens in April, and I’m sure that will be a good time, too.
Tags: Chicago, Clothing, design, Environment, Halsted, Live Earth, mission statement, Nau, polyester, Shannon Porter, sustainable, Theme, Themes, Wharton School
Nau CEO:
“Months before we ever sold a T-shirt, we introduced ourselves in the blogosphere. We didn’t talk about clothing. We created a dialogue around individual choice in living responsible lives. All of a sudden lots of people were coming to chat. The blog was just a manifestation of a bigger idea, the notion of a dialogue. The days of throwing one-way ads at customers to build brand relationships are over. That’s true even if you’re selling widgets or pipe fittings.”
[[[ via 9/07 Harvard Business Review @ http://tinyurl.com/2be27b ]]]
Your book is arriving at my doorstep tomorrow
a dozen years out of america, i return, and walk into my first whole foods store
violently assaulted by the lingering vibes of millions of marketing decisions, is how i felt in the first ten feet… painful
after a few visits, it settled down to a simple understanding that by shopping there i was buying an identity, as much as a decent product
i get the same feeling with nau, and that is not a compliment
[...] March of this year, I wrote a post extolling the virtues of the sustainable clothing company, Nau. Last week, unable to secure another [...]