Thami Schweichler On Creating A Sustainable Fashion Industry Using Design Thinking Principles

Thami Schweichler is a social designer and entrepreneur based in Amsterdam. He co-founded Makers Unite in 2016, an award-winning social enterprise providing a platform for the inclusion of refugees in The Netherlands and Turkey.

In 2022 as fruit of a collaboration with Patagonia and Amsterdam Economic Board, Thami founded United Repair Centre. A B2B repair business for fashion and apparel brands to put repair on the map, creating social and environmental impact collectively.

Thami is a TEDx speaker and has a background in product design, having studied at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, ENSCI-Les Ateliers in France and at the Santa Clara University in the USA. Before Makers Unite, Thami has worked on the development of Kibo Africa, a social venture providing a moto-taxi service system and products in Kenya.

His focus of work is connecting to individuals, organisations and stakeholders for a shared contribution to a sustainable and socially responsible future.

Thami discusses why fashion businesses should integrate sustainability into their operations to create a positive environmental impact and his thoughts on the upcoming Social Enterprise World Forum in Amsterdam this year.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in purpose led enterprise?

[Thami Schweichler] - The purpose of my work is directly connected to my background. I was born in Brazil and my mum is Dutch. I had a little bit of an influence from my Dutch mum while living in Brazil, and many things about society there were a little bit different. I forged my education around social innovation and the idea of using design as a tool for change. My initial dream was to be working in NGO projects across Africa, and that was a little bit of an adventurous ambition. What I realised was my big goal is to work against social inequality, and that's basically my purpose in work. I was fortunate to experience working with a social enterprise project in Africa called Kibo Africa, where I could understand the influence of a commercial model to create sustainable impact over time through social innovation projects. I believe that the sum of this experience is what brought me to create Makers Unite to address refugee immigration and most recently the United Repair Centre where I am extending this to youth, people with disabilities and older minorities. All in all, it's a combination of opportunities arising from a commercial perspective and the social challenge that can be tackled by applying them to my work.

As the CEO of the United Repair Centre and Makers Unite, could you please share more about these impact led organisations and the social and environmental impacts they're creating?

Primarily we have the intention of using the fashion system (the clothing industry) to put people first and create a dignified position for those working across the supply chain. What we do with Makers Unite is the make side. We produce sustainable clothing; sustainable merchandising and we produce upcycled collections of clothing. This is all with the intention of creating employment for people with a refugee background; we do this in Amsterdam, and Istanbul, Turkey. On the other side we the have United Repair Centre, which is a repair service within the fashion industry. Our objective is in partnership with Patagonia to create repair systems and repair programs for brands. It can help more brands to discover their repair capacity and make it possible to bring products back to the consumer, with the big hope that one day we're going to have cleaner clothing industry.

Why do you think it’s important for businesses to be socially responsible when developing products, and how can they do this while growing sustainably?

It's directly connected to the fact we should be responsible for everything we're creating. Especially in the clothing industry, we have clearly understood the impact our consumption behaviour predominantly in the West creates across the supply chain globally and how people are treated in such an unfair way that is not humanising.

For us to achieve harmony and an inclusive economy, it is fundamental brands and companies take responsibility for what they create and bring into the supply chain.

(What is) most interesting is we see what's called a social constraint, especially if you look at the Doughnut Economic model, which shows all the dimensions of impact a company or one individual can create. We have an environmental ceiling, which everybody's talking about due to the climate and how we must protect the climate, but inside a Doughnut, you have social constraint. How do we make sure we live in a planet where there's a harmonious society that operates to create an environment that is protected? It is important and crucial we all work together, and that companies consider the environmental value with the same importance as the social dimension.

How can emerging entrepreneurs and changemakers apply the principles and techniques of design thinking to build their own impact minded businesses?

Everything we do at Makers Unite and United Repair Centre is design thinking based using predominantly human centred designs. We see ourselves as a tool connecting to a bigger whole, and we are constantly attentive to our audience who we are trying to serve.

A few simple tools I have come across in design thinking have to do with creating your value proposition canvas, your business model canvas and design sprints to think of different ideas and try them out.

But I think the most important thing which has served us along the way is the idea of prototyping an idea and trialling a certain concept as simply as possible.

Understand if your product works, and if it doesn't work, you need to research iterations before bringing it to the market. In this way you can understand the impact a product or solution brings and create improvements to avoid a lot of time and money being wasted throughout the process.

I believe everyone is a designer and can be a designer. Everyone has a creative capacity to think as a designer. There are numerous tools online, and after COVID we all got used to working with mirror boards or different ways of connecting ideas, and I encourage people to bring this not only to your head, but to share this with your team.

As guest speaker at the upcoming Social Enterprise World Forum in Amsterdam, what are you most looking forward to?

For me, it's a great honour to be speaking at the Forum, primarily because I am inspired by all the entrepreneurs, companies’ and organisations joining this year's edition. I'm very proud to have this being hosted in Amsterdam, which is my second city at heart. It gives us so many opportunities to grow and showcase impact.

What I'm mostly looking forward to is to have the conversion of positive energy to think about a better world. It's important for social entrepreneurs to share and learn from their peers. A connection and this positivity are what's going to make change in the world.

I'm really looking forward to having this big conversion of positive energy which is optimistic and looking for better perspectives on change.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across that are creating a positive social change?

For me this is a very challenging question because I'm passionate about so many peers in our sector. It was so difficult to choose, but there are two very close to us which I am positively flabbergasted by the impact they are creating. One of them is a toilet paper company called The Good Roll, and they're also based in Amsterdam. What these guys do is they have made a very engaging way to sell toilet paper. They revert the proceeds to build sanitation across Africa, and if I'm not mistaken, last year they built over 200 toilets. It's just their humble approach and impact which for me is very inspiring. The second enterprise is Sheltersuit. Bas Timmer is a fashion designer that created a sleeping bag out of old tents, and he has been spreading these sleeping bags across the world for homeless people who wouldn't have the opportunity and dignity to sleep overnight. He's coming up with a fashion label; it helps to bring proceeds into his foundation The Sheltersuit Lab. It's amazing the number of brands, companies and people joining the initiative, which is so pure at heart and inspiring to see.

To finish off, what books and resources would you recommend to our listeners?

The first book I'd like to share about is not directly in design thinking, but it has been touching to me lately. It's a book by Giles Hutchins called Leading by Nature. At this phase of our enterprise and fieldwork, I find it's very important for every social entrepreneur to have a real connection with themselves and nature. This helps people understand the bigger picture and how you can harmoniously work in between. I would also recommend a design thinking book, w called Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley. These guys have been partially running IDEO, one of the leading design firms in the world. They have helped design thinking all over the world. This book talks about the creative capacity we all have, and it's important we use this creative capacity to design businesses for the future and make sure we have fun within the process.