One of the challenges of running a company dedicated to sustainability is adjusting to the ebbs and flows of other small businesses in our supply chain—businesses that are devoted to sustainable practices themselves. Sadly for us, one of those companies has closed its doors after almost 20 years of operation. North Carolina-based Tumbling Colors, our dye house since 2008, worked with Natalie and the Alabama Chanin design team on color development for all of our fabrics. They dyed small batches of our 100% organic cotton jersey with low-impact dyes, producing custom colors for our Collections and DIY. To Chuck and the rest of the Tumbling Colors team: we have thoroughly enjoyed doing business with you.
Beginning last month, Green Textile, located in Spartanburg, South Carolina, became our dedicated dye house. We have employed them as our knitters since 2006 and now they will also be dyeing our fabric with the same low-impact processes we are used to.
As a small business ourselves, we’re always navigating the challenges of supply and demand. Last fall, a portion of cotton was contaminated, lowering our stock of 100% organic cotton. Since then, we have been working to build up our stock. With recent changes in dyehouses, our stock in colors has been substantially reduced, and much of our fabric is currently low stock or backordered (as noted on the color cards). We appreciate everyone’s patience, and we are diligently working to match our supply with our demand.
If there is a fabric color you’d like to order that we currently stock, we encourage you to make your purchase now. We’ll have more updates soon and a lot of new DIY offerings in the coming months. Be sure to check back on our Journal and subscribe to our mailing list for the most up-to-date news.
Purchase our 100% medium-weight organic cotton jersey colors here.
oh wow! i wondered what the issue was! totally understandable…but hopefully you will be back up and fully stocked in the very near future!
also, will you be offering maize to your DIY customers? you whet my whistle for it with yesterday’s post! 🙂
Grateful for your transparency and committment. Never seen a company do something like this. Love your t-shirts! Best wishes that this works out better than ever ❤️
Thank you for your continual commitment to doing things “the right” way. Hard as it is, we must all make small steps to do what we can in order to improve our own sphere of work, and our environment.
Thank you for this post. I was wondering what was happening (and hoping you weren’t discontinuing fabric altogether). I’m working on an Alabama capsule wardrobe (just finished dress #1!), so will stock up on fabric just in case.
I really admire your commitment to sustainable, local product sourcing. I hope it’s always able to be a sustainable business model. The world needs more businesses like this!
I’ve been curious what was going on with that and appreciate the information. Love your cotton. Love what y’all do. Good luck with getting everything on track with your new dye-house. What a bummer the other folks weren’t able to remain in business. I’ll be back for more cotton 🙂