dna merch - made with dignity, worn with attitude

Music, t-shirts, transparency & concrete international solidarity! These are the 4 things we combine with dna merch. Together with you and us, bands and artists from various music styles take a stand to better the poor working conditions in South Asia’s garment industry.

How? With limited t-shirts exclusively designed for dna merch! Fair & Organic (www.fairandorganic.org) from India delivers 100 percent organic cotton fabric produced by small manufacturers to the northwest of Croatia. There, our friends from the self-organised worker cooperative Humana Nova (www.humananova.org/en) use this material to sew good looking t-shirts. Finally, the shirts get printed by Humana Nova’s partner company Printex (http://www.printex.hr).

The clou is, you define the exact number of limited t-shirts produced because our t-shirts are not simply produced but there are crowduced. This means, that only exactly as many band t-shirts will be produced as were ordered by you, the crowd during the campaign. Every shirt comes with a hand numbered greeting card from the Humana Nova sewers!

The more you participate the better because from each t-shirt one euro of the sales price will go to the global workers network ExChains (http://www.exchains.org). ExChains uses this money to support workers in India and other South Asian countries in their efforts to build and grow independent and strong grassroots unions.

What we want?
On the one hand, we want to know as precisely as possible, where and how our t-shirts are manufactured. This goal led us to setting up direct relations with the above mentioned partners. On the other hand, we want to use our support for the ExChains network to create awareness for the structural roots of the garment industry’s exploitative conditions.

Good working conditions do not come from nowhere, neither in Asia nor in Europe. In fact, in the current economic system they need to be fought for and defended constantly. To do that, you need strong and independent unions as a space for workers to come together and organise!

What we don’t want?
We do not want ‚business-as-usual’ with exploited anonymous workers at the beginning and passive consumers at the end of the so-called value chain.

If you think too that it is important and right to support workers in South Asia in their fights for higher wages and better working and living conditions, then you belong to our ‘target audience’. You also belong to our ‘target audience’ if you e.g. ...

• make music
• like a band which has already joined us or if you know a band which seems a good match
• work with an organisation that wants to print t-shirts
• look for alternatives to the conventional brands for your textile print shop
• work at a label which wants to push the sales of a new record with a special t-shirt bundle, or if you simply want to secure yourself a cool limited t-shirt before you cannot get it anymore!

Support our project, if …

• you like to support your favourite band in their commitment
• you don’t want to be a passive consumer (any longer) but rather like to crowduct and look for a plausible and easy possibility to do something against the poor working conditions in the global garment industry
• you want to have a limited and special t-shirt that on top of it all matches with your attitude and point of views.

The sales price of our t-shirt consists of six components:
1) Production costs
2) Distribution and administration costs
3) Shipping rate for delivery within Germany*)
4) WEP contribution**)
5) Share of the bands
6) Needed surplus for dna merch in order to keep the project running

Positions 1-4 are based on the actual costs that we calculated and add up to 17,65 per t-shirt. Positions 5-6 amount to 12 Euro of the sales price and are shared equally, i.e. 6 Euro each, between the bands and dna merch.

We will use our share primarily to refinance our first big fabric order from India. The more successful the campaign is, the more time we will have to invest in the further development of dna merch, because then we will be less dependent on other sources of income to assure our livelihoods. The focus will be on getting more popular bands on board and to develop business-to-business relations.

Business partners such as record labels, print shops or other organisations are of special importance to us because only together with them dna merch will last in the long-run.

Funding threshold (10,000 Euro)
If we reach the funding threshold together with you, this means that a minimal version of the project can be realised. The ordered t-shirts will be produced and delivered and we can at least cover a small part of the costs for our first bigger fabric order.

Funding goal (60,000 Euro)
If you and the crowd contribute in a way so that every shirt gets ordered on average a 100 times, we achieve our real goal! After deducting all costs and paying the bands we remain with an initial funding of approximately 10,000 Euro. This amount enables us to push the project forward and to build a global community of bands and artists that takes a stand to better the poor working conditions in the garment industry.

*) We ship worldwide! Please add the correct amount of "World Wide Shipping Options" from the top of the rewards list. For 1 up to 2 t-shirts book once, for 3 up to 10 t-shirts book twice!
**) Contribution to the Worker Empowerment Project (1 Euro for the ExChains network)