Blog / Latest Blogs /

Search Rapanui :

Rapanui Blog

Rapanui is an Eco-Fashion company from the Isle of Wight, that makes Organic, Ethical clothing using Renewable Energy with award-winning traceability. Rapanui is about making eco-fashion cool.

MENS / WOMENS

Rapanui Blog Latest

Drying for Freedom

Category: Ambassadors

Rules state that 60 million Americans cannot hang dry their clothes at home and must instead use an electric tumble dryer.

That's the findings of a BBC article that summarises a serious problem with America's regulations that are at odds with the environment, the economy and, also it seems, common sense.

We previously reported how 80% of the environmental impact in a t-shirts life comes from washing and drying phase. That's no surprise considering that the tumble dryer is the most energy-intensive household appliance and they are used regularly.

Environmentalists are starting to realise that tumble drying clothing is one of the main sources of domestic emissions in develop countries - and homeowners are beginning to feel the pinch of exponentially rising electricity costs. Yet in the US at least 60 million Americans are banned from hanging their clothing dry due to rules that were put in place in the name of aesthetics.

With the environmental movement growing and electricity costs rising, the scene is set for a clothes line showdown across the pond.

Luckily we don't live in the US and don't need a protest movement to change these rules. We can save all this carbon, and all this money, whenever we want. All we have to do is decide we want to use a clothes horse or line and get to it.

There's a message stamped into the green circular button on every Rapanui product - Wash Cool, Hang Dry.

Next time you're doing a wash; please have a think about it.

Store 1 Officially Open

Category: Inside Rapanui

It's officially open, Number 1 High Street Sandown: The first Rapanui store.

This store has been a bit of an experiment - a concept store if you like. The plan was to take the ideas we have developed for Rapanui's online store and replicate them in the real world. Sustainability, good design, traceability and eco labelling - why should this be restricted to online shopping?

We also wanted to see if we could make it a cool place to hang out and then we thought about what we'd want to do there... and then we thought about sourcing some rad food... it all snowballed a bit until we had to rent out the place next door to make room for it all. Anyway, we're now officially open...

There are lots of great things about the Isle of Wight - not least the amazing number of local companies that create genuine locally sourced products. The diversity of the different projects on the Island is amazing - ranging from local cheese makers to garlic farmers through to artists making gifts from recycled deckchairs.

The aim was to create a place where people could come to try on and buy Rapanui products, but equally to see all of these other rad stuff like ours in one place. It's about finding and showcasing the best of the Island's Sustainable Lifestyle and local produce.

Highlights? There's a sciency flavour to some of our solar-powered gifts to get the kids fired up about renewables. We've worked with local craftspeople like 'our Steve' who's made some rad wind-turbine clocks and a few bits and bobs out of old deckchairs. Some homeware made from the wrecked beams from old Ryde pier and the full Rapanui collection :o)

On that subject of products, now might be a good time to mention a little side project we've been working on in the Skunkworks. We have talked about how the principles of Rapanui - sustainability, traceability and B2C communication - need work and shouldn't be exclusive to clothing. We think that if they were applied to every product or purchase, it would go a long way to improving our world. So we decided to see if we could put our money where our mouth is and roll out the same principles in a totally different market for a totally different product.

We chose coffee. The results are available to try in store right now: It's called Rapanui Roast, an Organic, Fairtrade Mocha blend of espresso beans. Fairtrade, Organic farming makes our coffee tastier, better for the planet and the people involved. Also if you scan the cup, you can find out exactly where it was grown, how it got here and how it was roasted, delivered and distributed by Island companies. It's also no more expensive than a standard mass-produced coffee in the supermarket.

You can taste it in our shop - or hang in there until it's more widely available later in the year - we'll keep you updated.

We've also worked with the Islands best growers and farmers of local foods to come up with an incredible menu for the coffee shop. All our ingredients are locally sourced fresh each day. From Rew Valley milk, to Isle of Wight Cheese co. Cheddar, Garlic Farm preserves and Tomato stall ketchup and fruit from Arreton, right through to our bread, which is freshly baked each day in Lake. This is the real, fresh taste of the Isle of Wight.

So it's a store where you can shop from our latest collections, plus a load of other cool local & sustainable Isle of Wight gifts, food and fresh Organic coffee. 

The best thing is that we found things like traceability really easy to integrate. In the Rapanui store for example, you don't just buy a packet of Isle of Wight biltong. You can find out exactly where it comes from, who made it and how - from the cow to the fridge and all the people in-between. We've also made sure the prices are super affordable too.

It's a different approach to retail perhaps, but it feels like a good way of doing things. The store covers a lot of ground and if you're ever in the area, we'd love to welcome you in for a look around. To celebrate our opening we'll be having a bit of a do soon, where we plan to invite some of our most hardcore customers over.

For now, we thought it would be fun to give away our first 1000 cups of tea for free, so if you needed an excuse to pop in...

Cheers!

Visit us at 1 High Street Sandown, PO36 8LX or keep up to date with shop news via twitter @rapanuistore1

Rapanui on BBC News

Category: Inside Rapanui

This morning our Rob was asked to go and hang out with the BBC and talk about youth unemployment.

The Isle of Wight has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country - it's exceptionally tough here for young people to find proper jobs. We know the feeling. Rob & Mart were in the same boat just as the Credit Crunch hit in 2008 and decided that as they couldnt find jobs, they'd make one up - they saved up £200 each and promptly wasted nearly all of it on headed paper and some dodgy business cards. Shortly after that, they spent the remainder on t-shirts, which sold out, and it just sort of went from there. That was how Rapanui started.

Fast forward a few years and we now develop some of the most sustainable casualwear around and employ nine 18-25 year olds in our Sandown offices. We do our best to give other young people like us decent opportunities in rewarding jobs that have some substance - making a genuine contribution to sustainability.

Our Rob, Cllr Pugh, the yoof of the Wight and the BBC Breakfast team.

How it's done

Category: Ambassadors

Nathan Sutherland, retired male model, full time skateboarder and face of Rapanui.

This week he has mostly been showing us how to wear the Climate of Panic Organic T-shirt.

Take it away Nathan...

Photo by Simon Toms

 

Newness is coming

Category: Inside Rapanui

Newness. We all love it. At Rapanui we're no different. Over the last few years we've tried to develop collections of casualwear products made with sustainability at their core. We've brought you one collection of t-shirts, tops and accessories per year: And that is about to get better.

Friends of Rapanui who've followed us for some time will know that around this time of year we usually launch a new collection. On these big occasions the founders usually write a letter to our customers saying what we've done this year and where the brand is going - after all our customers are our company.

This summer's new print collection won't be the revolutionary overhaul, new site, new launch once per year that we've seen before. It will be slightly less dramatic  - there will be some new prints, plus some new products, colours and styles that we're really stoked with, many of which were inspired by your feedback. There's going to be a Journal sometime soon too, which you can read in print or online.  Rather than one batch of stuff to last a year, a change of rhythm is coming -  more newness, with more consistency and more of your ideas.

That's how this year will look. But behind the scenes our design team has been working on some really exciting new stuff that is slightly more... experimental. It takes a little longer than normal to develop this kind of stuff though, so we're in for a little wait. You may already know that our current collections of tees, tops and accessories are made from natural fabrics, sometimes called 'eco-textiles' - things like Organic Cotton, Bamboo or Eucalyptus Tencel. These tees and tops are made in ethically accredited factories - and most go through one particular factory, in India, that's powered by Wind Turbines. All are hand finished in the UK. We're going to keep doing that, as we think it's the best way to do casualwear at the moment and we're going to work with the people in this supply chain to develop it and create new styles. We'll continue to keep things fresh by designing and printing more epic designs too.

Circular Economies

But we're also going to try and do something radical with another collection of products in development now - outerwear. After all, when it's raining, or windy, a Rapanui t-shirt wont keep out the elements. We've been working with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that is a hub for sustainable design, and they've inspired some new design ideas. Their work is a generation ahead of the business-as-usual approach to sustainability: they are developing the economies and technologies of the future. At the core of this is the idea of the circular economy - where products are designed to be made again. For example, a jacket that is made of a technical material that, when you're done with it, goes back to the factory to be recreated into another jacket. If that whole process is powered by renewable energy, and if the economics make it worthwhile, it's potentially sustainable in the literal sense: it could go on forever. As yet there are very few examples of real products that fulfill this entirely.

So about 6 months ago, we decided togive it a pop. We're working on it behind the scenes right now and hope to able to bring you a collection of new outerwear products in the future that look and feel quite different to the casualwear we stock now -  in a good way: They'll all have sustainability as a fundamental design building block, and will be useful products that solve problems our current lines do not.

The Journal

We're also collaborating with some new people. For the last year or two, behind the scenes we've been supporting World-Champion base jumper Dan Witchalls. This list of ambassadors has grown to include some household names and these collaborations will have their own home, as well as on our blog, in a dedicated publication - The Journal. The Journal will be a twice yearly limited print run where you'll be able to read some of the great stories that we feel deserve to be put on paper for those that like to keep hold of this kind of stuff. It'll also be available online - Click here to be the first to know when it lands.

Rapanui is going to change its rhythm a little.

The main change you'll notice is a gradual shift to two collections per year, starting with SS13 and AW13. Great news, as it means twice as much Rapanui newness each year. Plus you'll get some great new stories, product features and offers in new piece of reading material, The Journal, every 6 months. Best of all, the type of products we'll be developing will represent a progress for us as a company from a design point of view as we try to do more to contribute to sustainability. It'll be good for our customers too: You'll have much greater choice - not just of t-shirts and sweats - but from a full range of apparel, each item designed to complement the other layer.

You might see Rapanui in a few more stores this year, or see a few more people wearing our stuff. But fundamentally we will say the same thing each year - this growth is a good thing, if managed well. As long as we're at the helm, we're not going to move away from the founding principles of the company,  design for sustainability. In fact we hope that we can do the opposite: the bigger we get, the more we can invest in this stuff, and the more radical we can be about it.

Apple was in the news recently because they've managed to amass something like $500bn of cash in the bank. Just imagine if they invested half of that money in wind turbines? That would change the world, and it's the kind of thing we want to do with this brand one day.

It's about more than just fashion, we see ourselves as a sustainable development company by proxy. For a 4th year, thanks for reading, and being a part of our it.

We're stoked to have you on board.

Rapanui

Skunkworks

Category: Inside Rapanui

Do you ever wonder what you don't know? Like what kind of cool stuff exists in experimental labs that we dont yet know about...

There's a building in America that is famous for this sort of thing. It's a huge white hangar, with no markings on the outside, just a small black and white picture of a skunk. It's called the Skunkworks: Inside there's a whole load of brainy people who invent weird and whacky stuff to solve the problems of the future.

The top aerospace engineers from all over the world get cherry-picked to work here and live a secret life designing, building and testing futuristic aeroplanes and space ships - which results in a lot of UFO sightings. It's the  same place that made the stealth bomber around ten years before the wider public got wind of it. (Admittedly it's a war machine, but a revolution in design nonetheless) and right now it's the place that's designing the next generation of space ships for manned flight to Mars.

It's exciting to know that this kind of stuff is going on in our world. Innovation, problem solving and secrecy is essential to creating the atmosphere needed to realise these new projects and solve problems.  But it's kind of also a shame to know that so much of this investment, effort, research and brainpower is allocated by us in the name of war, conflict or international security - whatever you call it.

The challenge of sustainability feels a little bit like war too. There's a very big threat, yet divided opinions, huge sacrifices being called for, changes to lifestyle forecast - resources to be put into action and people who might give their all in an effort against climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation, resource depletion - whatever you want to call it: there's a whole world of problems that all fall under the umbrella of sustainability and at some point society must deal with them.

But we have no skunkworks to invent solutions. No established sustainable economy or mainstream appreciation of the cause as yet.

 

We can't change the whole world at Rapanui, but we can change our own little bit of it.

It's the reason we may, or may not, have our very own skunkworks here at Rapanui HQ that has dedicated time, people and resources just for experimentation, ideas and testing. The projects? Time might reveal some, but not all.

Get £10 when you spend over £50

Category: Customer Care

What is the offer?

Spend more than £50 in the Rapanui online store and we'll give you a £10 voucher to spend on your next order. We like to say thanks when you place an order and what better way than with £10 worth of store credit?

Redeemable in the Rapanui online store or in our flagship Rapanui Store in Sandown on the Isle of Wight; we'll pop the voucher in with your products when we send you your order.

How do I get the offer?

Shop as normal on the Rapanui site; once you're happy with the items in your bag, click checkout now or click on the bag icon at the top right. You'll get taken to the Bag Summary page.

On the Bag Summary page check that your product choices are correct. Choose the correct postage option. Once you're happy with everything, find the 'Voucher code' box and type "cashback" (without the quote marks!).

If you're right you'll see a green message saying "You entered a valid voucher code. It will be applied when you click "checkout now"."

Click checkout now and proceed as normal.

(If you're not sure look at the image below for help or call us and we'll be happy to talk you through it)

 

Terms of Promotion

The £10 credit will not be applied to your order today; we will send you your unique voucher code inside your order.

Promotion starts: 03/05/2012

Promotion ends: 06/06/2012

Wind Powered Car

Category: Environment

Sometimes great stories get drowned out in the news. This is one of them.

Not long ago, during the flare-up of the Arab spring, eco adventurers sportsmen Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer drove their silent, wind-powered vehicle across Australia almost un-noticed. They rolled into Sydney to a friend's-and-family heroes welcome.

Eighteen days earlier the two Germans had left Albany in the south-western corner of Australia with the intention of breezing along the 3,000 mile route using nothing more than the power of the wind.

As the pictures show, a power kite is the primary tool used to pull the car along. When it's not possible to fly the kite, the car is propelled by a super-efficient electric engine, driven by lithium-ion batteries which, when charged, give a range of about 400km (250 miles).

And if the batteries are flat and there’s no wind? Easy – they erect a 20ft telescopic mast which is fitted to a wind turbine (all stored in the boot) that can charge their batteries overnight.

A wind powered car has been invented; it works, and can comfortably cross Australia in 18 days, carbon free. That's revolutionary...

Download a T-shirt

Category: Environment

Sustainability is a hot topic but when we’re looking for solutions to the big problems, it’s easy to overlook the little day-to-day things in our lives.

If you look around you, chances are there will be some keys, a light, a computer, a desk, some furniture: Sustainability isn’t just about creating future energy sources; it’s about creating new sustainable ways to make all of these little things too. It’s about changing everything, from power stations to pens.

Little stuff actually makes up a lot of all the stuff in the world. To make stuff, we take raw materials, transport them to factories, cut them down and refine into a finished product on a factory assembly line – then we package and ship them off to the shops, to which we travel to do our buying. The off-cuts get binned, and we bin the product when we’re done using it.

But imagine if you could download a digital blueprint of that product – like a 3d drawing, then have a machine in your home that could ‘print’ it out for you. 

The truth is, it already exists. 3D printing works by layering materials in either a powder or liquid. The technology has developed slowly since the mid-’80s – and in recent years has been grasped by a community of enthusiastic DIY amateurs. Recent advances, particularly in medical science (creating new bones from scans of existing patients) has created a rapid change in people’s expectations of the technology.

Today 3D printing is being earmarked as a potential solution to industrial manufacturing which is, let's face it, largely unsustainable. The aircraft manufacturer Boeing already uses the technology in the production parts and with each demonstration of the technology working, more companies are beginning to look for applications in the consumer market. Already people can buy basic printers and are able to design or buy a product digitally and print to a professional standard at home.

The best part? There’s no packaging, no transport and no off-cuts. No giant warehouses or couriers needed.

No waiting for the postman either. All you need is an internet connection, and in 2016 you might even be downloading our t-shirts to print at home.

Watch this space...

Wash Cool Hang Dry

Category: Environment

Did you know that 80% of the environmental impact in a t-shirt's life comes from washing and drying after you've bought it?

We thought we were doing a pretty good job of reducing the impact of our clothing (by sourcing organic fabrics and using renewable energy powered factories, for example) but then this fact came along and made us realise there's still a lot more to be done.

And that sort of re-iterates an important lesson we've learned along the way with our project - it's not that people dont care about this kind of stuff, it's just hard to know. At the same time, once people have the right information, or education, all they need is an opportunity to do something about it - and they will.

Part of the problem with this post-purchase stuff is that the impact is out of sight, out of mind: Fossil fuels are burnt creating emissions to create the electricity needed to power your washing machine, tumble dryer and iron. Britain's tumble dryers use more than £1.1million of electricity every day; enough energy to power 2,650 homes for a year.

To put this in perspective, if you left your fridge door open 24/7 you still couldn't rack up an electricity bill that represents that much carbon. Either way, tumble dryers are the most energy intensive household appliance in your home and the leading cause of household appliance-related fires. Despite this, over 35% of Britons use tumble dryers all year-round.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In Italy, home to some of earth’s most fashion-conscious inhabitants, only about four percent of households own a dryer – they hang up their clothes on the balcony or in their garden. Conversely in America, over 60 million people live in communities where hanging clothes out to dry is banned because it is considered to be unsightly and reduce the cost of their homes.

The toxicity from washing powders  can also be harmful to our environment and it's not hard to change. Infact, studies have shown that the washing power and cost of phosphate-free washpowders are no different to standard options.

It's not rocket science - wash cool, hang dry just makes sense.

You can read more about Post Purchase impact here

So you have the facts and practical alternatives. We're also trying to develop ways to design-in some features. It would be better if we could design clothes that need washing less, or that wash themselves. Or if we could create clothing that dries so fast you couldnt tumble dry it even if you tried. More on that later in the year.  Right now you might have noticed a few additional features designed into new Rapanui products for 2012 onward - like the message stamped into that green circular button on every product - that makes it easier for you to Wash Cool, Hang Dry.

Ultimately though this comes down to you making a decision at the point of wash:

So we'd like to ask you a favour: So much effort has gone in to making our t-shirts sustainable that it seems a shame to chuck them in the tumble dryer. Next time, please think about using a clothes horse or line :)

Translate Website: Fr | De | Es | 日本