From Bee&Sons to Baker Miller Pink

When I first set up Bee&Sons, my little knitwear brand that makes new cashmere sweaters out of old ones, everyone, and I mean everyone, said it wouldn’t work. Let’s call it Plan A. They said people don’t care enough about sustainability, not when it comes to buying a cashmere jumper they don’t – it’s a question of luxury, not scruples they said. And they said anyway, recycled cashmere was too expensive and why wasn’t it cheap, if it was made of old jumpers? Even the knitters in Mansfield said I could make my life a whole lot easier if I’d just stick to a new yarn, not a recycled one.

By the way, they were all right. Bee&Sons sweaters are expensive. And unless you’re a big believer in saving the world, it’s beyond many people’s affordability.

But the problem is, recycled cashmere yarn is too expensive. It’s a complicated process, done (very expertly|) in Italy. All the UK’s old cashmere jumpers get stored up, then shipped there, sorted, cleaned, reduced to fibre, re-spun and shipped back again… which costs a lot.

So armed only with passion and determination, I decided to plough right on, and create Plan B. I thought I could bring recycling back to the UK, to save on the cost of travel, reduce the price of the sweaters, and make use of centuries-old skills in Yorkshire. And this is when I discovered the real problem. (Isn’t that typical? You only find out what’s at the bottom of it all when you try to do it yourself.)

Turns out that most cashmere sweaters are sewn together with polyester.

I know.

Even if it says 100% cashmere, all the seams, in order to be super strong, are stitched together with plastic thread. And not only that, most of the ribbing at the waist and on the cuffs and collar, those have elastane knitted into them to make them springy.
Which means...

When you recycle an old cashmere jumper, you have to cut out all the seams and cuffs and trims, or else you ruin your fresh cashmere yarn. So one third of every second hand jumper has to be thrown away - wasted. Plus, cutting up a sweater takes time and effort, and adds more to the cost.

At this point I’d have torn my hair out, if I hadn’t torn it out already.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, was right.

At which point… Plan C sprung into life. Good old Plan C.

What if you could make cashmere sweaters, new ones, without adding polyester into the mix. What if you could sew the seams with extra-spun (stronger) cashmere threads, and tighten the tension on the cuffs and trims to get that elasticky feel without the elasticky polyester to ruin the recycling. What if you could make cashmere sweaters that were 100% cashmere, for real?

So I was moaning on to anyone who would listen, and eventually a very nice man in Mongolia said he could do just that, provide a polyester free cashmere sweater, at a price that was reasonable, in a quality that was better than anyone else’s.

What? That’s what I said too.

Plan C is a winner.

For Bee&Sons, this means a reliable supply of 100% cashmere that doesn’t include ANY polyester, so less labour and no waste.

But for the cashmere industry as a whole, it means there’s an easy alternative to adding polyester that doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s literally pennies to swap out polyester for natural fibre. It’s an industry-changing hack that makes 100% sustainable sense. Plan D.

While we wait for the Bee&Sons’ supply chain to get old enough to need to be recycled, please meet Plan C - the transparent, new, sustainable, organic, 100% cashmere sweater brand, Baker Miller Pink. Named after the happiest colour in the spectrum, we hope you’ll love our new sister brand. We’ve chosen the highest quality cashmere – extra fine with a long fibre, because it’s the best quality, and also because it’s the easiest to recycle. And if, when, the rest of the UK’s cashmere retailers join in, we could have a huge supply of 100% recyclable cashmere right here, to make into affordable, fresh new yarn.

Good grief. Plan A might work after all.