Fibre2Fashion Magazine June 2018 June 2018 | Page 89

What products did you begin with in 2015?
We started manufacturing GOTS-certified organic
cotton boxer briefs and mid-rise socks for men. Initially,
we sold those on a subscription basis, but later pivoted
to a more regular e-commerce setup focusing all of our
efforts on making sustainable products.
W
Mads Fibiger Rasmussen, Co-founder and CEO
hat was the seed capital you began with? Who are
the major investors now?
Organic Basics launched through Kickstarter, which
gave us the initial capital for our first production. Since
then, we have done several Kickstarter campaigns, and
in the late summer of 2017 we took in our first venture
capital from Nordic-Eye Venture Capital, Bumble
Ventures and an angel investor.
What course corrections did you have to do from
conceptualisation to implementation?
We did a lot of pivots in Organic Basics. As
mentioned, we initially sold our products only
through a subscription service and only wanted to
make two products (boxer briefs and socks). After
our initial launch, we saw a lot of demand for other
organic and sustainable basic products for men,
and about that time we also started getting a lot of
demand from women who wanted the same basic
products. Thereafter, we wanted to create even
more innovative products, and decided to introduce
SilverTech. We took our organic cotton and spun
actual pure silver into the material to make it anti-
bacterial. This year, we have started to work with
Polygiene in order to make technology-advanced
underwear, which is more durable, comfortable,
odour-killing and sustainable than any of our
competitors’.
A large part of the market for underwear (especially women) still prefer to buy their products in physical stores, and in order to have an impact on the
fashion industry and drag it towards a more sustainable direction, we need to be present where our customers prefer to shop.
JUNE 2018 FIBRE 2 FASHION |  89