Have you ever wondered where Progoti’s funky resort shirt fabrics (and others) come from?
Progoti means “progress” in Bengali and through our primary mission of funding individual life insurance and pension policies we strive for progress in the lives of our enrolled garment workers. We want to thank each one of you who is helping us achieve this through the impact of your contributions - they are making a big difference! But today we want to talk about another of our goals - being mindful of the types of materials being used in our collections and how to be more sustainable.
Once a year, our founder Nurjahan visits the very well known textile markets in Dhaka known as Bikrampur Garden City. BGC is a five-storey building with hundreds of fabric stores on each floor where most of the inventories consist of surplus rolls of quality fabrics from garment factories purchased by merchants after production runs for various projects are finished. As part of our efforts to encourage environmentally-friendly and ethical practices, we make the best use of these quality textiles as raw materials instead of making more new rolls of fabric and adding to the problem. Reducing fashion waste is beautiful isn’t it?
Progoti has focused on using natural fibres sourced in Bangladesh since its founding and 90% of our collection are viscose or cotton. You might be wondering where viscose comes from - well it is wood pulp that is turned into fabric. Despite the need for chemicals during the extraction of the wood pulp, viscose is considered biodegradable and is highly absorbent with strong colour retention qualities. As fabric technology continues to advance, manufacturers are making considerable advances in developing clean production processes.
Our customers are always excited to see the beautiful new collections when they arrive in-store. We offer fun prints and textures available in the fabric markets and we never know what we’re going to find and be able to share with our customers! Our desire to limit fashion waste combined with the limited availability of various fabrics means Progoti has small-run collections. Our vision of making positive impacts in the lives of garment workers is supported by a consideration of what materials we use, and how, in our collection.
Progoti fosters long-term relationships with customers through integrity and transparency in all our product offerings and we will continue to operate with ethics at the core of our operations. We want to show you the impact you can have supporting the garment workers in Bangladesh who have been working hard to clothe the world for nearly 40 years.
Join the progress!