Organic, Fair Trade and Fashionable:
Taking Organic Cotton from Hippie to Hip

An Interview with Marci Zaroff, the Founder of Under the Canopy


Marci Zaroff, founder of Under the Canopy, was into eco-fashion before eco-fashion was cool. In fact, this organic cotton pioneer actually trademarked the term back in 1995. Today though, green is the new black due in large part to Zaroff’s efforts to educate consumers and develop the organic textiles market. After working hand-in-hand with Whole Foods to bring organic textiles to retail, Zaroff took the story of organic cotton to the masses and now her eco-fashions, including everything from clothing to linens, are being sold by retailers ranging from Macy’s, Origins and Bed Bath & Beyond, to Sears and Target.

Zaroff has not only enlightened consumers on the hazards of conventional cotton farming, but also forged the fair trade organic cotton movement. In India, she helped create healthy, economically viable communities for over 8000 cotton farmers, and she is now taking this a step further by working with Transfair to develop a U.S. fair trade certification for textiles. She also assisted in the development of the Global Organic Textiles Standard (GOTS), helping drive authenticity in the organic and eco-textiles market.

Zaroff’s efforts to bring the eco-fashion story to the mainstream have led to appearances on shows such as The View, The Today Show, E! Entertainment, The Discovery Channel and ABC’s “Legends & Legacies,” as well as features in Newsweek, CNN, Entrepreneur and People, just to name a few. Her work has also won her numerous accolades including the “Socially Responsible Business Award,” New York Moves Magazine’s “2008 Power Woman Award” and Fashion Group International’s 2008 “Rising Star Award.” Zaroff recently took some time away from her busy schedule to chat with Organic Processing about the roots of the eco-fashion market and what it’s going to take to continue the momentum.

OP: What was the inspiration for starting Under the Canopy?

Zaroff: Before starting Under the Canopy, I spent almost a decade in the natural and organic food and beauty world. As I became more immersed in the agricultural side, I learned that food and fiber were interconnected; 60 percent of a cotton plant is ending up in the food stream and cotton is the most heavily chemically treated crop in agriculture. I said to myself, “Why doesn’t anybody know about this?” I went out to see what existed in organic cotton and all I could find were frumpy, boxy t-shirts that had no style or color. I didn’t see a reason why great textile products could not be made from organic cotton; the market just needed to be expanded. So, I coined the term “eco-fashion” to fuse the whole wellness and ecology story with real fashion, focused first on style, quality, color, fit and feel—things consumers want—and then made sustainability and organics the value-added benefit that would set the brand apart from the conventional counterparts. My concept was to drive the market from hippie to hip; to launch not just a clothing line, but a whole lifestyle brand that embodied the interconnection of food, fiber and wellness.

OP: How did you go about developing the market?

Zaroff: It was really a matter of getting in on the ground floor, doing the trailblazing and convincing farmers and factories to buy into my vision. I partnered with the Rodale Institute to help on the educational side of transitioning farmers from conventional to organic cotton, the same way they were working with farmers to transition food. From there, I started looking for factories globally that would embrace this as a future opportunity. From the beginning, Under the Canopy was going from the farm all the way to the finished product. The initial foundation of the brand was to position the final product at an affordable level and being vertically integrated allowed us to pass cost savings on to the consumer. We give people a way to make a difference, and all they have to do is buy a great product that they’re going to love. That’s the principle we built our brand on—that social and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive with price, quality and style. I wanted to shift the question from, “Why would I buy organic?” to “Why wouldn’t I buy organic?”

OP: What about breaking into retail?

Zaroff: When I started the company in ’95, retailers were not ready to embrace the concept, so I took it to market through a mail-order catalogue and website. In 1996, I started out of my home, mailing 1000 to 2000 brochures. My entire basement and garage were my shipping area. By the end of 2002, I was mailing over a million catalogues a year.

We expanded to retail when one of our board members, Jim Sud, the senior vice president of growth and development for Whole Foods, asked me to become the apparel partner for their internet launch of WholePeople.com. Everything was going forward, and in 2000, the internet bubble burst, and so did WholePeople.com. But that planted the seed with Whole Foods and in 2002, Walter Robb, the president of Whole Foods, gave me the opportunity to put my vision together and bring it to fruition. I worked hand in hand for two years with key people at Whole Foods, and pulled together the entire launch of the organic fiber category. We launched the prototype—a 2000-square-foot store-in-store organic clothing and home products boutique—at Whole Foods’ flagship store in Austin, Texas in March of 2005. Since then, Whole Foods has been one of our largest customers and part of the roots of our brand. Within six months of that launch, our brand was in every Whole Foods in the country and we were part of the launches in Canada and London as well.

Soon after the launch we started getting a lot of media attention—there wasn’t a week that went by that I wasn’t being interviewed for TV or print media. The more people heard the story, the more they were asking for the products and the more retailers started calling. They would see us in Whole Foods and want to partner with us to develop and launch this type of concept into their stores. Soon we found ourselves working with Target, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears, JC Penney and many others. One of the early adopters was Aveda, who had us create a line of accessories. So then we were working with two of the biggest environmental leaders in the marketplace—Aveda and Whole Foods. It was a seal of approval and authenticity. I think one of the reasons that we’ve been very successful launching into so many of the conventional retailers is because none of those retailers want to become the poster child for making claims that aren’t authentic. Organic fiber and sustainable textiles manufacturing is a very complicated model—35 percent of the cotton being grown in India today and sold as organic is not certified. If it’s not certified, it’s not organic. Just because you’re not spraying it doesn’t mean you can call it organic. There’s a whole system for organic—crop rotation, not using GMOs, etc. Retailers recognize that it would be very risky for them to just trust anybody who came their way saying, “Hey I‘m going to give you organic product.” But, we were transparent. I also was helping drive the development of the Global Organic Textiles Standards (GOTS) to help ensure more authenticity. Certification is critical to our brand’s success. It’s in our DNA. It’s not a marketing proposition that we’re trying to leverage to sell our products—it’s who we are.

OP: So why GOTS and not just USDA organic?

Zaroff: Because most of the manufacturing of textiles is done outside the United States, the standard really needed to have a global approach. GOTS was formed as a collaborative effort among trade organizations from around the world to create a global, uniform standard that took into account everything from how the fiber was grown to dyes, finishes, transportation and a code of ethics. This is important because there are lots of so-called organic or eco-textiles on the market today that use non-environmentally friendly dyes and finishes, or don’t take into account the conditions for workers.

GOTS is about creating a universal seal of approval and transparency. It’s a major market breakthrough. Most of our factories have now been GOTS certified and we’re hoping to label a few of our products with the new GOTS logo by 2010. Currently, there are not many products out there that are GOTS certified. Some products, like ours, are produced in a GOTS factory, but in order for the product itself to be GOTS certified, every single factory in a chain of production has to be certified, as does the end product.

OP: You are also involved in fair trade efforts. Can you discuss the importance of this?

Zaroff: Conventional cotton is not sustainable for the farmers on many different levels. Financially, they can’t afford the pesticides and they get paid so little for the cotton that at the end of the day it’s hard for them to make any kind of investment into their community or projects, not to mention make enough money to survive on. We are doing a few things to help this situation. For one, we’ve partnered with Soladaridad, a non-profit in the Netherlands, to contract with farmers and provide money upfront to grow organic cotton. Secondly, our company has made a three-year commitment to help fund other needs such as cows, sheds and irrigation. Lastly, most of the cotton we buy is fair trade certified through the European fair trade association, FLO. Of this premium, 50 percent goes directly to the farmers and the other half goes into healthcare or educational initiatives in the farming communities.

One of our focuses has been to help women through educational and microlending programs. In India, many of the farmers are women. In fact, it’s not unusual to see a woman walking through conventional farm projects with a baby in a sling on her front and a pesticide sprayer on her back. They don’t understand how toxic these pesticides are and why they’re all getting sick. When I first went there, I was surrounded by literally 100 women farmers. They sang songs for me and cried tears of gratitude, and I was crying too. The consumer doesn’t realize how much their purchase can actually change lives. That’s the difference between authenticity and not authenticity. We’re doing this work because it is making a difference to the planet and the farmers, and ultimately to human health in the future. There’s such benefit to both fair trade and organics—from the standpoint of health, livelihood and quality of life, they go hand in hand.

In addition to this, our company, Levi’s and a number of NGOs are working with Transfair, the U.S. fair trade certifier, to develop a pilot program for textiles. This is a great step forward because it not only applies to the cotton growers, but also the manufacturers who cut and sew the garments.

OP: So what are you doing to educate the consumer about all of this?

Zaroff: We’ve done everything from brochures and flyers to point-of-purchase signage. Most importantly, I do a lot of speaking. It’s a personal mission of mine. I speak at least once or twice a month at major retailer and consumer conferences. I just spoke at Bio-Fach and at the Teens Turning Green conference in San Francisco and within the next 45 days, I will be speaking at Sustainable Brands International in California, LOHAS in Colorado, Green Cities in Orlando, and Bridges of Fashion, a supply chain conference in Istanbul.

Through all this I’ve discovered that there are still many people who don’t know that conventional cotton is ridden with chemical pesticides, insecticides, and sprays and that it’s bad for them because Cotton, Inc. has done a phenomenal job marketing cotton as the ultimate natural fiber. Many people say, “What? I thought cotton was organic.” Then they learn cotton is a leading cause of air and water pollution and that there are more chemicals sprayed in the cotton industry than any other industry even though cotton represents less than 3 percent of the world’s agriculture. Past statistics have shown that 25 percent of the most harmful insecticides and 10 percent of the most toxic pesticides are used in the cotton industry. There is information out there that the consumer hasn't had access to, similar to the fact that people smoked cigarettes for 40 years not knowing that tobacco was bad for their health. Also, a third of the population today is "chemically sensitive," walking around with asthma, allergies and skin conditions such as eczema and rashes, not to mention cancer. Nobody's made the connection in the past to fiber, yet our skin is the largest organ in our bodies—and we put textiles on our bodies almost 24 hours a day, from the sheets on our beds to towels and clothing. Most people haven’t really stopped to think, “Hey, what I’m putting on my body might be just as important to my health as what I’m putting in my body. I do expect more studies over time are going to start addressing this.

Consumers need to see that conventional cotton is not sustainable on any level; from a health standpoint or financially. Most of the cotton in this country is subsidized by the government. In developing countries, farmers get on what is called a “pesticide treadmill,” where they start using GMO seeds and chemical inputs and their farms become dependent on these. The pesticides weaken the soil and the plants, and the bugs get stronger, so the pesticides have to get stronger. The farmers can’t afford the more expensive pesticides, so they leverage part of their farms to banks that partner up with the pesticide companies like Monsanto, and the cycle continues. It’s gotten so bad now that every half hour in India, a farmer is committing suicide.

Logically, organic fiber is a solution on every level. It’s better for the environment, better for human health, better for farmers, better for the future. That’s where I focus the education.

OP: You’ve also mentioned that collaboration and social networking are important. Can you tell us about this?

Zaroff: One of the important things we’ve done is connect the dots between organic food, beauty and fiber. We’ve done many cross-marketing programs with companies like Hain-Celestial, Enzymatic Therapy, Zia and many others. We also partner with organizations outside the natural products industry. For instance, every year we produce the t-shirts for Sting and Rainforest Foundation concerts and for the Rainforest Alliance’s big annual gala, the LA Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, just to name a few. We’re out there giving people t-shirts or washcloths, scarves, etc. Ultimately we’re putting the organic cotton story in their hands.

We also are frequently written about in blogs. There are many new eco-fashion blogs launching and it’s really great to see all these people out there telling the story. Since we coined and trademarked the term “eco-fashion,” the initial springboard for this market, we are excited to see interest growing so rapidly as the concept has crossed into the mainstream.

OP: So what are some of the latest innovations in eco-fashion?

Zaroff: We have always experimented with all kinds of new fibers and fabrics to marry eco-fashion with great style. Some of the fibers I’ve recently looked at are made from seaweed, eucalyptus, beech wood—even the cellulose of milk or cactus. I’ve also seen fibers spun from lavender, green tea and sage. One of my projects right now is to redefine bamboo, which has been completely mismarketed. It has quickly risen to the top and become the poster child of eco-fashion because people associate bamboo with serenity and health and the plant itself is extremely sustainable because it grows so quickly without pesticides. There is great potential but the problem is that the current manufacturing process uses large amounts of water and energy and requires a lot of chemicals to break down the bamboo into a soft enough fiber to spin. I am exploring technologies that are eco-friendly to work in conjunction with the bamboo fiber.

Also, we are working with an international organization that has created the technology to extract the extract the cellulose fiber from eucalyptus trees and break it down using a non-toxic recycled detergent—and uses no chemicals at all. It’s biodegradable, three times stronger than cotton and produced in a closed loop system with minimal energy and water use and no irrigation needed. It’s also grown without any chemical pesticides or insecticides. I’ve actually redefined this fabric and coined the term “ECOlyptus” so that I can start marketing it.

OP: Lastly, what is important as eco-fashion goes forward into the future?

Zaroff: I think a lot of the focus has to be on the next generation, which I’m really excited about. In the early years when I first started Under the Canopy, I used to say “eco-fashion” and the average consumer looked at me like I was crazy. Now, whenever I mention organic fashion to a young consumer, I get this excited, wide-eyed smile. The next generation has grown up with stores like Whole Foods as their local supermarket and yoga in their gym—there is already a lot of awareness there. There is also a growing demand for transparency, combined with a sense of disillusionment after living through terrorism, war, corporate disasters and economic failures. Organic fashion gives them the opportunity to feel empowered and connect with something positive that can affect the world. It’s about telling that story, and being transparent and authentic while telling it.