SuperLooper!

Hi, my name is Jenny Barrett,

I live in Hove and I am the founder of a new sustainable and social business called SuperLooper.

SuperLooper is one of a kind. It’s a waste free wardrobe for babies and toddlers that doesn’t break the bank. Although there is an increasing number of businesses renting baby clothes in the UK, SuperLooper is the only online preloved baby clothes library.

The 1500 adorable babygrows, dresses, leggings, cardis and other baby clothing essentials come entirely from donations from partner brands and families who want to help fellow parents while making space in their homes as well as preventing waste - triple win!

I started working on the idea of a baby clothes library two years ago but I now realise that creating a business that extends the life of garments has been on my mind for a very long time.

My background is in fashion.

I have a BA degree in Fashion and Marketing. My final year project was working with beautiful old American workwear shirts that were ripped and torn. It was the 1980s and ‘Street Fashion’ was de rigueur.

I took great care in patching holes, swapped the front of one shirt for another, mixed and matched pockets to create a completely new favourite shirt - basically doing some upcycling long before the word became widely used.

In 2016, after two decades working in the fashion and music industries, I decided that commerce as such was not for me. Selling baby and children’s clothes under my own organic brand seemed absurd considering the very abundant offer in this segment and the amount of textile waste ending up in landfill each year.

I was on the verge of turning my back to the clothing sector entirely when I discovered the circular economy, a philosophy and manufacturing process that entails designing items with their full life cycle in mind, keeping things in use for as long as possible and making sure that manufacturing materials are not wasted at the end of the product life.

Keeping things in the Loop!

This all made a lot of sense to me - particularly in the case of baby clothes that only get used for such a short period of time. Babies grow 8 sizes by the time they reach 2 years of age!

When I heard that there are 183 million items of unused baby clothes sitting in UK cupboards, I started thinking about how I could use my knowledge and skills to tackle this problem.

Brighton, an eclectic and open-minded city, seemed the perfect place to get working on a business aiming at creating a low carbon baby clothes solution.

I held focus groups with young parents asking them whether they were ready to sign up to a baby clothing rental service on the model of the Danish brand Vigga.

I found that Brighton people were very interested in the idea of a baby clothes library. It ticked a lot of boxes for them. They loved the idea of sharing good quality clothes with other families, saving money in the process and also protecting the planet from overconsumption

I processed all that information to the sound of ABBA’s 1980s hit Super Trooper in my head. SuperLooper was born.

Team SuperLooper

SuperLooper is not a solo adventure. It wouldn’t have happened without the SuperLooper Warriors - friends who share either a rich history in fashion and textile manufacture & retail or great organisational skills.

Myself, Lorraine Pendlington, Sharon James-Alderton, Sue Pickering and Gaynor Williams are driven by the desire to work with purpose and give something back to an industry that we love but is now the second most polluting industry in the world.

We deeply regret that our generation eschewed the more sustainable and community lead life styles and practices of our parents. We grew up in wasteful and frivolous times. We let the insatiable need to own more and more throw-away stuff take over our lives.

We now want to use and share our experience to make do and amend. We’re also genuinely excited to learn new things and we want to be part of positive initiatives to protect our planet. Also, we are convinced that SuperLooper can influence behemoth high street brands and galvanise them to work with better practice.

After a year of planning and testing the concept with families in Brighton, we created a simple and affordable membership model. We established SuperLooper as a Community Interest Company (CIC).

Being a not-for-profit organisation best suits our brand values. We hold people, product and service above making money while still wanting to be a strong, sustainable and self-sufficient business.

SuperLooper is first and foremost an online preloved baby clothing library, where parents pick and choose the clothes they want and rent them for as long as they need, before returning them for another baby to enjoy. We charge our customers £20 a month which is a fraction of what a lot of UK parents spend on baby clothes. According to a study done by Ergobaby, parents in the UK spend about £80 per month on average on clothes during the first year of their babies’ life.

SuperLooper is not just a pile of cute baby clothes though.

We also have the ambition to create a social network for parents and carers. We want to establish a non-judgemental and inclusive community of people who can meet up online or - hopefully at some point in the near future - in person at our monthly SuperLooper Socials to let off the steam of looking after young children, exchange tips and discover new things.

Meet-ups

The Family & Childcare Trust found that over half of parents (56%) with children under five feel lonely - 21% feel a lack of companionship, 23% feel isolated from others and 76% feel left out at least some of the time.

It’s so important for parents to have a way of meeting new people for support and friendship. We consider this as an extremely important part of our offer and we promise that our members get to experience something new during our monthly social meet-ups.

We want to seek out unique local businesses and venues that SuperLoopers may not have visited before – local zero plastic shops, organic cafes, cinemas who host mother and baby viewing groups, modern libraries etc. In Brighton, if we were able to meet in person right now, we could meet in Café Domenica currently situated in the Brighton Dome.

The super potential of SuperLooper

Addressing The UN SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) numbers 12 - sustainable consumption and production and 13 - climate change, the SuperLooper team are intent on making a long term, sustainable impact on the indispensability of the fashion industry. We want to change the way people shop and make reducing waste, reusing and mending clothes a complete no-brainer.

To SuperLoop could become the way to eBay with purpose - why stop at baby clothes when we could get all ages SuperLooping? Our vision is to reduce clothing waste locally and, eventually, nationally. It cannot happen soon enough. Extending the life of clothing by just nine months could reduce carbon, waste and water footprints by around 20-30%. The potential to reverse overconsumption is huge!

We want to help give people the confidence that doing SOMETHING about climate change - at home and at community level -  is powerful and within everybody’s grasp. Within the first three years of operation we hope to have a nationwide service offering a circular model for at least ten participating cities.

SuperLooper & Covid

We feel with the current pandemic there is a shift to finding practical, sustainable and affordable clothing solutions and the need for people to  connect with their local community has grown.

There is a move towards more conscious consumption as people realise that we have to change our wasteful ways in order to protect our planet - 80% of clothes get worn 20% of the time!

As the economic crisis deepens, people are also having to watch their pennies and can’t afford to splash money around on baby clothing.

Although we wish we can all get back to a sense of normality in the next few months we are glad that SuperLooper can offer access to affordable good quality clothes at a time where a cute jumper on a small person rented for a couple of pounds can go a long way in lifting someone’s mood.

Our website is: https://www.superlooperlife.com/ and we are on INSTA @superlooperlife