Thoughts on launching a luxury brand in the same week as the biggest energy price hike in decades

This week I got over 60% funded on Kickstarter in just 48 hours for my brand of luxury sustainable bed linen. Also this week millions of people were priced out of access to heating and electricity.

Ahh money. We all love to talk about it don’t we? Don’t we? Oh…

One of the hardest and most ambiguous aspects of launching Leisurely has been pricing the sheets.

Our sheets are made from TENCEL™, Lenzing’s branded version of lyocell, which ensures the highest quality fibres and cleanest production processes. They are made in Portugal which has both world leading quality production, and excellent labour standards. There’s also of course all the taxes, shipping, storage and packaging costs to consider, as well as design and marketing costs, and my own salary to make it all viable.

The trouble is, pricing has long departed from actual cost. We can’t talk about sustainability without addressing the race to the bottom of pricing over the last couple of decades. Big brands have locked themselves into super low pricing that forces them into having to shift mountains of stock to meet their financial targets. Costs are driven down throughout the supply chain causing risk to human life as well as to the resources we all rely upon. And at the same time used clothing is piling up out of sight and out of mind across the world.

Pricing has long been central to the debate on sustainability. Is it right that sustainable brands should be more expensive? Should sustainable brands keep prices low to avoid being exclusive and undemocratic?

But perhaps being so focused on the allure of keeping prices low we’ve forgotten the other end of the stick.

According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, “growth in household incomes in the UK since 2008/09 has been historically low, the income-gap between rich and poor remains high by historical standards, and important dimensions of inequality – in particular between generations – have been widening further”.

Instead of focusing on keeping things cheap, what if we put our efforts into increasing wealth across the board?

Can we continue to stifle the income, environmental standards, and quality of life of those overseas for the sake of having the quantity of cheap goods that we’ve become accustomed to?

I’m mostly leaving unanswered questions here (sorry), but my goal at Leisurely is to raise these questions and explore them out in the open. We refuse to price ourselves so low that we can’t afford to pay the rest of our supply chain what they’re worth. We also refuse to encourage overconsumption, and to reduce the quality of our sheets to sell you more of them. We’d rather you have one perfect set of bedding that you adore and cherish for life, than five crumby sets that aren’t comfortable and have to be replaced after three washes.

I’m not sure what the answer is. But I’m here to have the conversation.

Let me know what you think, at hello@getleisurely.com