Bethany Pollack, Safety Products Manager, Draper Knitting

Yvonne Georgi, Owner, Tomorrow In A Year

About Bethany:

Bethany joined Draper Knitting in March 2019. She has a degree in Textiles Marketing from the University of Rhode Island. Bethany worked in various aspects of the textiles industry, such as retail management, sales, marketing, and product development. As Safety Products Manager at Draper, she’s fulfilling her passion for development of technical textiles to meet strict requirements and working on passion projects like this one with Tomorrow In A Year.

Yvonne: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today! Draper Knitting is such an interesting company with such a long history. We feel incredibly lucky to work with you and you personally helped us a lot in this process. 

Bethany: Thanks for having me! The beauty of working in a small company such as Draper, is that I get to do lots of different things. Draper is a sixth-generation family-owned and run business. It was started in 1856. It's been at the same location in Canton, Massachusetts, all those years. Draper makes three different types of fabric formation with dyeing and finishing under one roof. Our current president is the sixth generation of the Draper family to run the business and other family members still work here as well.

Yvonne: So, it's literally hundreds of years of expertise…

Bethany: Yes, it is. It's helpful to have somebody who's been here for 50 years in the office next to me, when there’s questions. Kristin's (Kristin Draper, President Draper Knitting) dad has been here for over 50 years. Kristin's been here for over 30. Kristin’s sister Wendy's been here for 15 to 20 years. And a lot of the employees on the mill floor have been here at least that long. And we want to be around for more years… 165 is good, but we would like to stick around for a lot longer.

Yvonne: We’ve certainly benefitted from all that expertise within the Draper organization. Let’s talk about what went into making the Tomorrow In A Year fabric for our premium raglan baseball tees.

Bethany: Draper is primarily a made to order business. We start with a conversation with the customer about what they're looking for. We’ll go down to the sample room and see what we have that's closest to their needs. That’s how we started the fabric process with you. We sent samples, talked through them and did a trial. We tweaked a couple of things to some of the jersey knits we've made in the past and added a matching rib fabric for the collar. All of it was based on using the organic cotton we sourced through Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC). They've been very helpful and connected us with you in the first place. Then we sent you the trial and you did your own testing (via Intertek), next to product development and fittings. Then we had another conversation sort of like “still not quite where we want it” or “great, let's go into production!” In the TIAY case, we made a few more tweaks and did a smaller first round.

Yvonne: Probably important to mention here, that I had done a lot of research and contacted many fabric suppliers. But made in the US organic cotton was almost impossible to get based on our needs and quantities. So, I think it was the perfect choice for us to work with you at Draper.

Bethany: Dealing with minimums is tough. One of the great things we try to do, is keep those first trial runs as small as possible. We want to run a full piece to get it right and see how it's really going to act in finishing.

Yvonne: Can you describe the fabric from your perspective?

Bethany: It starts with the fiber itself. You've got this beautiful organic cotton that’s combed and spun which adds to the quality and softness. Then we knitted on our finest cut machine. So, you get that really close-knit jersey appearance and the way that it's finished with carefully selected dyes. And last but not least, the finishing equipment that is used to maintain and add softness without using softener while taking some of the shrinkage out. It's a hundred percent cotton so you want to pre-shrink during this process before it gets to the consumer. I know that was the one thing that was most important to you, making sure we were doing everything to get the best quality for the consumer.

Yvonne Georgi: Finding the right dye house was also so important as we wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible.

Bethany: And achieve that great color… Color and color fastness are important for this two-tone style to avoid bleeding or fading. It's not that simple with a baseball tee.

Yvonne: Yes, that’s why this is a garment that comes with a higher price point because of the custom development, the organic cotton, the care we all took in developing it and of course, we chose to make everything in the US.

Bethany: Correct. There’s several factors that go into that one. You are starting with organic farming which costs more as there’s a limited supply of grown in the USA organic cotton, that's traceable. And, you can really know it's organic as opposed to somebody just throwing a label on it. You have that complete US supply chain, from the growers to the spinners to knitting, dyeing and manufacturing in LA. All of it costs more in the US. But it means that the employees here at Draper, and the rest of the supply chain are making a living wage, are getting full benefits including paid vacation and sick time. They're working in a safe environment. It also means that the carbon footprint of this item can be reduced, and it's not transported across an ocean. You as the brand have oversight over the supply chain, which is more transparent and potentially faster.

Yvonne: For us that's important. But also finding the types of suppliers and forge these deeper relationships, get a better mutual understanding about each other's needs and hopefully growing and scaling while building the mutual understanding... 

Bethany: And, we could have conversations with the entire supply chain as we’re in the same time zone. Each supplier has valuable input along the way, like the dye house. And there's things we can learn from the cut and sew factory and from your team. Everybody helped improve the quality of the fabric.

Yvonne: Do you think that US organic cotton automatically equals better quality?

Bethany: Over the last few years, the desire to use organic cotton has substantially grown. We get a lot more inquiries for US organic cotton than we used to. At Draper, we've only ever used organic cotton fiber from the TOCMC. So, it’s hard for me to compare organic cotton from this US region to another region. We have seen that the pricing of the organic cotton is on the rise because people want to use it and there's a limited supply. Let's see. So far, it's been easy to work with quality wise. It's been consistent.

Yvonne: Are there any other advantages that you see working with US-based suppliers?

Bethany: A good majority of our supply base is in the US and the advantages we have found in working with folks in the US are easy communication and customer service. It's less risk on proprietary development. Shorter lead times to meet deadlines and labor laws, stricter environmental protections, etc. You’re avoiding costly international shipping and delays, as well as import fees, taxes or tariffs and you're helping local communities.

Yvonne Georgi: What most of us, including myself before starting TIAY, don’t know is that the scope of what we needed for our product wasn’t readily available and we had to find a lot of solutions ourselves. We made it through the challenges because of partners like Draper or TOCMC.

Yvonne Georgi: As a brand, our mission is all about longevity and memories we make wearing the clothes we love and wear every day. Do you have an item in your closet that holds a special memory? What’s the item and what memory does it hold?

Bethany: It was hard to narrow it down because I have a lot of older items in my wardrobe that are all special, but I was able to pick one. I bought a skirt in college that my roommates dubbed “the ugly mohair skirt”. It’s special because it reminds me of the close connection I had with them. I wore it for dressy nights out in college, in my early 20s, I've even worn it a little more recently when I was just about 40, for a special night out to a traditional Italian American restaurant with close friends around Christmas. I'm from Rhode Island, so that's a big deal… The skirt doesn't fit right now - either I'm gonna fit it again or it's going to somebody very special. It's a fabulous plaid mohair mini skirt with little buttons.

Thanks for sharing this amazing gem of a story and telling us everything about Draper Knitting!