“Made in the USA” can tell a brief story in the space of a clothing tag, but a Vancouver company hopes to tell a larger story.
For the last year, T-shirt screen printer Ryonet Corp. has led an initiative to make apparel in a more environmentally conscious and humanitarian way. The Vancouver company’s top executive says it hopes to set an example for its industry, reportedly among the most wasteful in the world.
“The more your customers can understand how their choices in buying can affect the planet and affect people, the stronger our relationship is,” said CEO Ryan Moor. “It’s a win-win.”
It’s understandable if the name Ryonet doesn’t look too familiar. Compared with Portland-area apparel giants such as Nike and Columbia Sportswear, Ryonet has been a quiet outfit. Except it isn’t so quiet.
The warehouse at its boxy headquarters in the North Image neighborhood beats with rhythmic assembly. Pop music blares over workers’ heads as they clap together screen printing presses, industrial dryers and other T-shirt printing gear. The machines, for now, drive Ryonet’s revenue.
One quirk about Ryonet: it is an apparel company that has not historically made apparel. It manufactures and supplies products for others to make shirts. The green machines range from $200 to well into the thousands of dollars.
“It’s really hard to explain,” said Moor, the spiky-haired Battle Ground native who founded the company. “People are like, ‘Oh, you make T-shirts.’ No, we actually don’t. Our customers make the T-shirts.”
Revenue growth
So far, that had been a fine business model. Revenues climbed from $4 million in 2006 to nearly $50 million last year. It now employs 120 people across 10 warehouses throughout the country.
Now, Ryonet is large enough to start making T-shirts of its own. That move is not only planned as the next phase for the company, but also addresses garment industry practices criticized as unsafe and inhumane.
“We wanted to get into the shirt game, so we decided to do it now because the fashion industry is the second most wasteful industry in the world, behind oil,” Moor said. “And there are human rights abuses like sweatshops.”
Mass-produced shirts today are largely made from cotton, with is grown using lots of water and pesticides. The cotton is then shipped to other countries to be woven into fabric and sewn into shirts by impoverished workers.
Last year, Ryonet teamed up with nine other clothing makers to set up a manufacturing plant in the poor island nation of Haiti. The plant makes shirts using unsprayed, organic cotton and recycled water bottles. Its workers earn wages five times higher than their peers, Moor said.
T-shirts made at the plant — branded as “Allmade” — are more expensive, but Ryonet said the premium is worth it for a laundry list of reasons.
“We started to make a shirt to make a better print, but we ended up making a better impact and a better future for the planet with this product,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for the company for the revenue potential, but it’s also a different way to shift the industry.”
All profits from the Allmade brand are currently reinvested into the Haitian operations. Today, the plant employs close to 250 people. Creating well-paying jobs is a by-product that the plant’s founders say they can live with.
“The whole goal is to sell more shirts so we can create more jobs,” said founder Jarrod Hennis. “Just in over a year of us starting it, we have added more than 100 jobs in the factory, and that creates more jobs in the U.S. for shipping and warehousing. It’s global job creation.”
Leading the way in that job creation is Ryonet, he said, a company that started as inauspiciously as a garage band.
DIY idea
In 2002, Moor played bass for a touring punk rock band called Not Long After. It was an alt-rock group in the vein of Blink-182 or MxPx, he said.
Hoping to save money, Moor started making the band’s merchandise himself. Using Ryobi power tools — the root of Ryonet’s eventual name — he built ad hoc screen printing equipment from paint sticks and 2-by-4s. T-shirts were dried and cured in his family’s oven.
“They definitely put up with a lot of messes,” Moor said. “And loud music.” But soon he realized what he had on his hands: ink, sure, but also a business.
It was not long before other bands wanted kits to make merchandise themselves. He was selling kits on eBay, as well. His father eventually sent him to a business seminar and helped him buy equipment to get started.
An ethos to help others get started is today a major part of Ryonet’s business model. It does sell to big corporate concerns, but most of its growth has been targeting the growing contingent of do-it-yourselfers.
Ryonet has hundreds of free tutorials posted to YouTube, starring Moor, teaching people how to do just about everything in the screen printing process. Those videos can also pitch the company’s growing product list.
“We’re always in R&D,” said Cody Scherer, director of marketing for Ryonet. “We’re constantly having new versions (of products) come out every couple of years.”
Hennis was one early customer and today employs seven people at its boutique apparel company, Rockford Art Deli, in Illinois. His company’s growth is owed to Ryonet, he said.
“They’re definitely changing the industry and they want to push it forward in a positive way,” he said. “I could fly out there tomorrow and stay with a handful of (Ryonet) guys because I know them personally. They’ve been a great partner.”
