No fast fashion here! A look at Bedhead's ethics and sustainability

Pardon us while we pat our own backs and toot our own horns for a minute. Sometimes, through all the busy-ness of running a business, it’s easy to forget how much more a company is than the end result bought by consumers.

Behind each product are designers, makers, models, photographers, marketers, graphic designers, warehouse staff, sellers, writers, customer service officers, administration officers… How these different people work and where they work and to what ethical, moral and environmental standards they operate can vary immensely.

At Bedhead, we like to consider ourselves an all-round nice company. We are nice people, selling nice things to help families stay safe in the sun. It’s a nice thing to do, right? We could grab our hats from a bargain-basement online marketplace made of cheap, synthetic fabrics in a one-size-fits-all and resell at a crazy-high price to do that. But we’re not a fast fashion company. We know good things take time, and we’ve spent a great deal of time tweaking designs to improve our products and ensure they’re a good quality, essential product that can grow with your child. They’re hats children want to wear, are made to last and be passed down or sold to another wearer. And that is … much nicer!

Bedhead is dedicated to making high-quality, ethically produced products with minimal environmental footprints and maximum feel-good imprints on those we deal with. From the people who make our hats, to how we package them up to you, to where and how we operate as a business, we’re doing our best to do our part for our planet, our customers, our community, our makers and our employees. We’re certainly not perfect, but bit by bit we strive to constantly improve. We thought we might share a little about how we do this…

Our products are fashionable essential, protective items, not trendy fashion

A hat is not a want, it’s a need. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful, fit well and be comfortable and stylish. We’ve spent years perfecting the styles and just change the prints each season for a freshen up when we need to replenish our plain colours too.

Our makers enjoy excellent working conditions in a family-like environment 

When Bedhead got too big for its founder Richelle to keep sewing the hats she created, she went for the next best thing: a small family business just like her own. Having worked with the family-owned factory in Changzhou, China in a previous job, Richelle knew her product was in the best hands. In the 15+ years she has known the owners, they’ve formed a great relationship, with the factory owners staying with her family on their visits to Australia, and their children referring to Richelle as their “Australian aunty”. The factory staff are a large mix of mature male and female workers who experience great working conditions in a natural light-filled factory. They’re passionate about their job and really great at it, producing beautiful, high-quality products for our customers. Each day, the factory owner cooks a huge meal for all staff which they eat together as a team, something Richelle has adopted in our fortnightly team meetings.

We minimise manufacturing, freight and stock wastage by only ordering three times a year

There are no styles or prints added last-minute when something becomes a trend. Our seasonal collections are designed a year in advance of launching and our hats are such great quality they are not just thrown away after a few wears or when the next big things comes along – they last the distance. So many of our hats see three or four owners in their hat lifetime!

Our warehouse is now completely off the grid

We have 64 solar panels and a huge battery system saving each precious sun ray. We even got to see it all in action when a storm took out some powerlines in the area recently. We were able to keep soldiering on!

We make use of water tanks and an absorption trench septic system

The septic system feeds waste under the ground back into the earth. Every little bit counts! Our green-thumb boss lady Richelle is forever planting and growing so the rain tanks are crucial for keeping green things green in the middle of nowhere!

We use compostable mail bags and recyclable paper packaging for all retail orders 

We do our best to avoid plastic. While a lot of clothing is often individually wrapped in plastic, we ask our factory to place as many hats into one plastic bag as possible to reduce the amount – up to 60 hats in one bag rather than 60 small plastic bags for each hat.

We reuse as much as possible

We have used hat fabric scraps and turned them into beautiful heirloom quilts, while our factory packaging is reused for sending our wholesalers and charities their stock. 

The majority of staff work remotely, meaning a better work/life balance and less time on the roads

Lucky for us, we road-tested remote working just before Covid hit so we were able to iron out dramas before a lot of the country was forced to work from home!

We’re committed to educating customers on the importance of sun safety

By giving away thousands of newborn hat packs away each year, we not only start newborn babies lives off protected from the sun, by starting them so early, we help set them up with the skills to be sun safe for life.

We hope this gives you a little idea of what you're supporting when you buy a Bedhead hat! Not a big coorporation but a small NSW-based local business with many employees and lots of niceness