BOND-EYE: Design and sustainability

... Inspiring body defining cuts and luxe fabrications, without bypassing comfort and inclusivity. Alongside Artesands and Seal Level which were launched subsequently, the brand hones-in on beautiful swimwear for all, reminding us that we have a responsibility towards our planet. The Best of Intima spoke to founder Steve Philpott to better understand how the project started, what lies at its heart, and where it’s headed.

In the picture above: Artesands

Who are the key people within the company?
We are a dynamic company with a unique structure. Everyone is important, whether in design, operations, finance, sales or marketing and customer service, all play an intrinsic role in what makes our business work. We’ve experienced rapid and significant growth and are sitting at 32 staff plus contractors and presently hiring.

What characterizes your collections and which are the major sources of inspiration behind the designs?
Each brand has its own team and inspiration. Each brand is built on the foundation of beautiful fabrications and FIT. We are a swim specialist and our swimwear fits the body. It simply has to. Each brand has a soul with the brand DNA running through the team and its stakeholders. It’s that intangible magic that a brand must have to be successful. Money can’t buy soul, it exists when all of the right people, factors and values are in place. While we have an eye on trends, we follow our creative instincts and create our own trends. Inspiration is a marriage of where we’ve been as a brand, market feedback from retail partners, fabric innovations, color palette and fiber evolution, art, lifestyle and knowing who we are and where we are going as a brand. We are leading not following, it is a very important mindset.

What is the brand’s approach to textiles?
With Bond-eye which I have more to do with, it’s always been about working with beautiful tactile, innovative and now sustainable fabrications. We are presently working very closely with our fabric partners to work exclusively with recycled fibers and we are very close to the collection being completely made from recycled fabrications. We are also working very closely with the manufacturer of the famous tubular Crinkle fabric which was initially developed in the late 80’s, constantly innovating and developing amazing applications like waffle knit lurex, scuba and jacquards. We are able to really have some fun with what we are doing with our shapes and cuts, our colors and the exclusive hand tie dyeing techniques that has put the brand in a space that can’t be copied easily.

The Bond-eye fabric is quite distinctive. Can you tell us more on this well  guarded “secret?”
There have been countless brands imitating the unique textural look of the Bond-eye fabric with inferior and cheaper open width fabrications from the East. Our fabric is the original, authentic fabric, it’s tubular, it’s “unsized” TM and we encourage anyone to test the difference between a Bond-eye bound swimsuit and a copy. There is literally no comparison, a Bond-eye bound swimsuit will fit and it will last and we stand by that. It will stretch and retain its shape. We will continue to push the boundaries, innovate and stay ahead of the brands that follow.

In the picture above: Bond-Eye

Are your design and manufacturing processes all based in the same location?
Our Design HQ is in Sydney, Australia and the Australian lifestyle beach and city vibe is a natural part of what we do, it’s who we are and how we live. It’s definitely how I live- a morning swim or a surf is the best way to cleanse the mind and start the day, it’s magical and I feel very grateful to have this opportunity and have this beautiful clean ocean as my backyard.
Sea Level and Artesands are made through our factory partners in China using predominantly recycled fabric made from pre-consumer nylon waste. In my experience, China is still the most state of the art, high-quality and scalable production option despite the challenges of the last 18 months and there have been many.

What about Bond-eye?
Bond-eye is made in Sydney, our hand dying is in Sydney, and we are very proud of being able to manufacture in Australia. Local production has its challenges, but it allows us to work close to the season with local artisanal dyehouses and artists and create some very special unique collaborations that wouldn’t be possible if we were making in China. Some things we are doing are limited edition and not scalable in a volume production sense which keeps Bond-eye premium and not mass. With individual hand dying, each piece is unique and special. We are also controlling our distribution very tightly and keeping in check with the knitting and production capacity we are scaling.

Which are your key markets currently and which markets will you be targeting next?
Success in our home market of Australia and New Zealand is very important to us. Being such a competitive beach and surf lifestyle environment, it has helped create the brand flavor and strength that has translated into success for us in international markets. The USA is our biggest market, and we will continue to build business with key retailers on the existing momentum. Canada is also an important market for us and goes hand in hand with the US in many respects.

Are you present in Europe?
We are now starting to turn more focus to Europe with a strong and developing network of Distributors and Agents being built. We have a presence with some key premium retailers across Europe and momentum is building. We are controlling distribution tightly; it isn’t our goal to be everywhere and to sell to everyone. We are building a sustainable business in more ways than one and being the biggest swimwear company isn’t our mantra, being the best swimwear company is.

Could you give us some information about the kind of distribution you have?
We have Distributors in Russia, Greece, Canada and Italy and we have a network of agents and representation across the USA, France, Benelux, UK, Germany, and South Africa.

How important are inclusive marketing and diversity for you?
Inclusive marketing and diversity are very important to the company as a whole, starting with the very diverse cultural makeup of our team in Sydney. We realize that inclusivity and diversity in a marketing sense needs to be legitimate and not token.

How meaningful is sustainability for your brands and how does that translate concretely in your business choices?
Sustainability is a fundamental driver of our business philosophy. On our websites we are working with I = Change whereby a donation can be made at the shopping cart on purchase and any one of 3 charities can be selected to donate to and at least one of these charities is environmental. (The other two are women and children related).

In the picture above: Sea Level

How hard was the impact of the Covid pandemic on your business over the past year and a half? Did you find yourselves having to make important changes and adopting specific strategies?
It’s been quite a year and a half, a rollercoaster. It started with Covid related production problems in China and as Covid reached the rest of the world, we went from a record-breaking year of forward orders for Spring/Summer 2020 to mass cancellations in March 2020 as stores closed with most of the stock made, in work or in transit. We went from the joy of growth to anxiety and fear of the unknown and the contemplating of financial disaster. We all had our personal experiences too. There were some very dark days, staff were on reduced hours and working from home, the streets and workplaces were empty, and we were all filled with dread and uncertainty. There was no map for the future and no sense of understanding what would happen next and where we would end up. I thought we were going to lose everything we had built over the last decade.

What was the company’s response to these difficulties?
Covid has been a defining global event on so many levels and when we look back, we will recall it as turning points in our lives, families, businesses, and relationships. I tried to give my team hope, I tried to feel hope when I didn’t feel it and we all just kept going. Working from home, juggling kids, home schooling, zooming, we kept designing, we kept creating strong product. We kept communicating. We had an enormous upturn in our ecommerce business both with our own business and with our digital retail partners. We kept manufacturing and we kept shipping. We experienced triple digit digital growth across our brands. It was surprising, unexpected and it was phenomenal. We kept momentum and we didn’t give in, and I’m convinced this was such an important energy and headspace to be in that it propelled us forward.

Do you think we have learned something from the pandemic?
We kept our team thanks to Australian government initiatives to support continued employment and we even hired some more. Our factory and supply chain partnerships strengthened, and the importance of genuine relationships could never be clearer to me than it is now. We are a better business for what we have gone through and I’m happy to say, we have a much stronger company culture and better, stronger brands. Our Covid experience, which is still evolving, taught us humility and strength, it taught us what matters. That we shouldn’t take where we are and life as we know it for granted. To have a respect and a special sense of gratitude to be able to be in this privileged position. We want to make a difference to the world more now than ever. For me personally, I wasn’t travelling as I normally do and the family time that I have spent was an awakening and all of my relationships were nurtured and strengthened. Our children grow fast and for me being a Dad 24/7 consistently to my two boys has been my greatest blessing.
 
How do you see the future of your company?
A company has a soul just as a brand has a soul and the soul comes from the people within, it’s intangible, it can’t be bought or manufactured and it’s a special kind of magic. When I think about the future of this company of ours, I have a fundamental set of principles and values that cannot be compromised. The strength of a company lives within its people, our team is our most valuable resource and must be treated as such. Our customers and supply chain are our stakeholders and need to be held in high respect and treated at every touchpoint with great care. Integrity of genuine relationships is priceless, and everybody must win. There is no valid reason why this isn’t possible. Add strong, creative, innovative, and high-quality swimwear aligned to our customer and we have an unbeatable formula for continued growth.

All the requirement for growth seems to be in place.
We have an internal saying here related to our growth, “We want to be the Big Little Swimwear Company”. I’m happily embracing growth but it’s not about chasing growth for growth’s sake. I don’t believe biggest is best but I’m striving for our Company to be one of the best. To me, being the best is having a happy and empowered team, a sustainable platform woven through all aspects of the business, a strong financial position that allows us to give back and to make long term decisions in the interests of the brands and the team. To create and innovate and to have FUN doing it! All of our growth has been organic and where we take it from here is something I’m thinking a great deal about.

Bond-eye is keen to ensure sustainability is applied in as many areas of its production as possible. Here is how:


-   With the intention of reducing carbon footprint, all Bond-eye’s swing tag labels, main labels, and care tags are made from recycled polyester and recycled paper. Trim components are also recycled (excluding hygiene labels). Bond-eye uses compostable poly bags made from renewable resources and has started using smaller bags for Separates to minimize plastic usage.

-   Within the last year Bond-eye has partnered with UPPAREL, a company that redefines the life of unwanted textiles and turns them into useful products. Bond-eye donates and recycle all fabric offcuts, old garments, and samples to UPPAREL. To date, they have prevented 1,552kg of textile waste from entering landfill, which equates to the prevention of 6,209kg of greenhouse gases from entering our atmosphere. UPPAREL collects up on average 30 boxes (450kg!) of crinkle fabric waste every month that would otherwise go to landfill.

-    All Bond-eye swimwear is produced locally in Sydney, Australia. They work with a female owned factory, a female owned dye house and a female owned fabric mill. All garments are dyed using solar energy for heating which they co-invested in with the dyehouse.

-    The unsized nature of the swim allows Bond-eye to utilize considered production cuts, lean inventory holding, and cut down enormously on excessive amounts of stock. The high quality of the fabric means the swimsuit will last for many years.

-    From September 2021 onwards, the entire range will be crafted using regenerated nylon derived from pre-consumer waste.

-    The recycled nylon yarn used is sourced from a leading Italian sustainable knitting mill, manufactured exclusively from regenerated and pre-consumer raw materials that are melted down and restored into fiber without the use of chemicals. The environmentally friendly process reduces carbon dioxide emissions, consumes less water while using 100% renewable energy.  The yarn is Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certified, meeting high-standards of quality, traceability and sustainability.

-    Bond-eye’s goal is to give as much consideration to their packaging as to their swimwear. They utilize recyclable and reusable mailer bags that can be disposed of in recycling bins. Poly bags are made from plant-based materials including cornstarch and can be recycled in soft plastic recycling. Return slips and thankyou messages are also consciously digitally sent to reduce paper waste. All boxes used by the brand are reused wherever possible to further reduce unnecessary wastage and then recycled.

-     Since 2018, they have partnered with i=Change, where $1 from every sale is donated to one of three charities. Earth day and International Women’s day are celebrated by increasing donations to help bring awareness to social and environmental charities that are addressing these important environmental + social issues.

-    Sustainability doesn’t end with swimwear – the brand’s head office + team are just as committed to minimizing their impact on the environment. Everybody uses cups, recycles all paper and recyclables and riding to work is encouraged by providing bike racks.