Sustainability, Intention, Community, Joy!

Sew Alpine is founded on a firm belief in sustainability; both environmentally and in terms of our life-work balance. The vast majority of outdoor gear is made from petroleum products and whether we like it or not, we’re supporting extractive industries every time we pull on our Gore-Tex and step into our skis. We herald the outdoor spaces that we spend time in, yet the gear that takes us there is quickly fueling the climate crisis. And all the while, we humans live in a fast-paced consumer culture that values work and endless productivity above most things.

We think there’s a better way.

Sourcing

Sew Alpine purchases 99%+ of all our materials from US manufacturers and distributors. When we go looking for materials, we always prioritize local, independent small businesses that are climate-minded first. We want your dollars to have the biggest impact possible, so we do everything we can to support companies that pay their workers fairly (or better!) and support the planet. We try to minimize shipping emissions by ordering in bulk. And when we need a highly-specialized part that we can’t find anywhere else, we look for independent makers all over the globe. We absolutely do not shop from Amazon.

We follow all the same guidelines when looking for office supplies and workshop items too. We shop at local thrift stores and search for items in the neighborhood before looking online. We also try to reuse and repurpose as much as possible. Our sewing table is actually someone’s old ping pong table and Hannah’s desk came out of the trash! If we can’t find what we need in any of those places, then we shop at our few local big box stores, so at least our dollars are paying someone’s wages right here in our community.

As far as fabric and components go, we’re always looking for and experimenting with recycled materials! There’s a growing demand for recycled and eco-friendly fabric and we adopt it into every product that we can. Not all of our fabric is recycled yet, but we’re switching over little by little as manufacturers are continuing to develop their goods.

Production

We look at production in a radically different light than most companies. We primarily create items on a made-to-order basis, which keeps waste to a minimum. It also means that you can design exactly what you want! In some ways, we’re trying to reimagine the way we look at our closets: what if we had fewer items that were higher quality and did exactly what we needed them to do? They’d last longer and we wouldn’t need to buy as much stuff nearly as often.

When we’re figuring out what pieces we need to cut for each item, we lay them out on the fabric intentionally. Traditional production methods dictate that the grain or pattern of the fabric needs to face the same direction all the way around the item. But this creates a lot of waste! We decided to throw this tradition out the window so that we maximize the amount of gear we can make out of every single yard of fabric. It’s pretty dang stylish too!

We save all the scraps we do produce, including all the thread bits and even the tiniest fuzzes! We sort it all by size and material and reuse everything we can in other projects. We’ve even done some really cool custom bags for folks made almost entirely out of scraps. The thread ends and tiny bits will eventually be turned into pillow stuffing for our future storefront! Or maybe we’ll even post them for sale to all you lovely people…

Shipping

We strive to ship our goods in repurposed packaging as much as possible. And we put it all straight into the box; no plastic film here! We’re moving toward even more sustainable packaging this year too. We’ve been experimenting with water-based tape and eco-friendly adhesive labels. Keep your eyes out as we work toward finding the best solutions.

repair

All good gear deserves repair! All Sew Alpine goods are designed with a future repair in mind, so that if it ever does break, we can fix it for you. And everything comes with a lifetime warranty too! We’ll also gladly help fix any of your other gear that we can. We try our best to keep our rates affordable and give you different options so that repairs are friendly to the planet and your wallet.

balance

When Hannah started Sew Alpine, she was fed up with feeling undervalued and overworked in past jobs. So we’re trying to build thoughtful systems that support everyone who works for the business to be the healthiest, happiest version of themselves. This means holding fair boundaries around work, setting realistic expectations, and supporting each other in what we do.

We’re working toward 4-day work weeks for full-time folks and our contract sewists get to work on a very flexible schedule. Sew Alpine pays above the living wage for La Plata County and is always striving to pay employees more. As wild as it may sound, we find over and over again that over-working is highly inefficient. When our sewists get to take more hours out of the week for their own passions, they work more efficiently and produce higher-quality work.

If you’ve ever emailed with us, you may have noticed the little tagline at the end of our response that says we may be a tad slow to respond. For our team’s mental health, we try our best to keep required screen time to a minimum. It gives us more time to sew your goodies and it also nourishes happy brains. Don’t worry; we will respond! But we ask our team to hold healthy boundaries with devices and to mono-task as much as possible. It just plain keeps us all healthier. And we hope you can give it a try too!

I’ve been tremendously privileged to call myself an artist, outdoor educator, instructor, and mountain guide. Since graduating from Colorado College, I’ve worked weeks (sometimes months) at a time instructing and guiding in the mountains of Colorado, the canyons and cliffs in Utah, glaciers in Alaska, and other beautiful, inspiring venues in Wyoming, California, Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile. The time spent away from technological connection has taught me how important it is to connect to all of the little details in the world around me. And the natural consequences I’ve experienced outside have taught me perspective; happiness, safety and equity are far more important to me than emails or social media.