If your gym clothes weren’t born in a coffee filter, hear this Tacoma company’s pitch

September 26, 2017

Brooklynn Gould-Bradbury’s quest for the perfect yoga pants took her to an unlikely place — the coffee filters in Taiwanese Starbucks.

The result is a budding Tacoma-based business called Five12 Apparel (Named for the highway linking Lakewood and Puyallup) that sells athletic clothing and gear made with recycled and sustainable materials. Leggings and shirts made with coffee grounds. Raincoats made with recycled water bottles. Backpacks made with recycled windshields. And they soon hope to make products from recycled fishing nets.

The clothes made from coffee grounds — 75 percent of which come from Taiwanese Starbucks — are proving to be the company’s most intriguing items. NPR briefly featured Five12 on an August edition of “How I Built This.”

As it turns out, using fabric with coffee grounds is more than just a good sales pitch. Coffee helps block odors, dries quickly and provides UV protection, Gould-Bradbury said. Gould-Bradbury and her silent business partner found a company in Taiwan that creates material by blending coffee, cotton and polyester They worked with the company and factory in Vietnam to make the first Five12 clothes. They now use a factory in China. The company researched and visits the factories to assure they are properly run and don’t use child labor.

The company debuted in January 2016 and broke even its first year. It’s ramping up business this year.

Also, Gould-Bradbury said, the leggings resolve a problem prevalent with a lot of sportswear – perpetual stink. Many technical clothes used regularly for exercise have a nasty tendency of retaining the aroma of hard work. Even after multiple washings. It’s enough of a problem that a market for workout clothing detergents has emerged in recent years.“I wear mine (leggings) all the time and I never have that problem with these,” said Gould-Bradbury, a former college volleyball player from Auburn. “And I use them a ton for hot yoga, one of the sweatiest things you can do.”Ryan McIntosh is a former college basketball player and Five12’s sales director. He says the shirts made from coffee “feel like a cotton shirt but breathe like a (Nike) Dri-Fit shirt.”Five12’s biggest customers so far are volleyball clubs. More than 20 beach volleyball players and fitness professionals are listed as brand ambassadors on the Five12 website. Most are women because the company’s gear is predominantly for women, but they plan to add more men’s clothing. “We’ve had a lot of requests,” Gould-Bradbury said.
Source: http://www.bellinghamherald.com