Our purpose

The Extra Smile was set up with the purpose to improve the lives of textile workers and to reduce the environmental impact of kids clothing.

With the chaos going on in the world, we have to be flexible and rethink our business model with the aim of securing the future of our social enterprise, whilst improving our social and environmental performance at the same time.

During my 7-week visit to Europe, I talked to plenty of people who could enlighten me about the going rate of kids fashion. 

Let me tell you it was an interesting journey. On the one hand, quite some people were trying to convince me that price was *the* decisive factor for parents. According to this logic, consumers don’t care whether it was made by kids or slaves, as long as they can buy what they need (or want). And kids grow out of their clothes so fast, so who would pay a premium price for something that has such short utility? Another person told me that even high-earners were proud to score discount deals at fast fashion retailers for their offspring. Ha! 

When Samantha and I decided to launch an ethical and stylish fashion brand for kids in April 2018, we really thought things would go a lot faster and smoother. Little did we know that we had a lot of ground to break.

By the end of last year, we realised that we were in the slow fashion business, which meant that things were, well, slow.

Black Friday originated in the United States in 1952, as a big shopping day to kick off the Holiday Season. In the last decade, it started to get a foothold in Europe, and it is seriously getting out of hand.

Thankfully, more and more brands are opting out of this craziness, and we are proud to be one of them.

People ask us: why are you producing in Cambodia? Indeed, Cambodia is not an obvious choice for sustainable fashion.  Read our story of how we ended up producing our beautiful garments in Khmer's Land, and how we aim to move the needle for Cambodian apparel workers.