Ethical standards - the human cost of production (2023)

Ethical standards - the human cost of production (2023)

Liam Byrne Liam Byrne
4 minute read

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You are most likely reading this because you care about Ethical standards - the human cost of production, and that's a great thing! :)

One world, one human race is a great mind-set, but how do you balance this with a very fast, high quality product line with thousands of order requests coming through each month?

That was the difficult challenge we just had to solve.

And we did!

Yourstuffmade.com was started by a team of artists from many successful product brands who wanted to have more power in controlling the whole experience.

From taking the order, a fast reply, making payment easy, ethical production, being carbon neutral and finally the experience of you opening your custom products to find them amazing new homes :)

 

So where do we start?

Without going off topic in cultural, economic and industry differences to ethical standards, we started our company by hiring the right people. We couldn't afford people who didn't care about wanting to create something better.

The best thing about hiring the right people and our own team meant they had little fear of losing their job if they weren't happy (in a primary Asian country this is much harder than you may think). Until we hired our own team we visited factories operating in very dangerous conditions, low pay and crazy long work hours with no support structure, with employees claiming a 100% job satisfaction... Something smelt funky!

The first action we ever took was simply asking our team what they thought was most important to their happiness on a scale around key workplace topics, and started building the below employee benefits.

 

Yourstuffmade employee benefits

Pay/wages: We decided early on to pay 50% more than other factories maximum pay to attract the best team and support their family/community. Higher pay has meant we receive a higher quality or product, our team members can afford a better lifestyle and we receive hundreds of job applicants per month!

Conditions: We hand-made all smaller orders of custom products and use our leading technology/machinery to produce larger quantities. Let's face it, no one like doing the same thing over and over for too long. Repetitive work is not just boring, it causes fatigue, increases the chances of injury/strain and reduces the quality of products.

Safety: We align with the same high standards for safety in manufacturing from the United States, Australia and Europe. Part of this safety is using the latest machinery/technology to align with the latest safety measures, produce high quality products and lower our environmental impact.

Support: Everyone team member is allocated holiday pay and sick pay which normally does not exist in this industry.

 

Why we care?

It just makes sense to do the right thing for other humans and treat people the same way you would like to be treated. What is the point of running a company without ethical standards? Nobody can afford to be just another large money hungry company who only focuses on price, or a cringey middle man feeling they can charge far too much, make money from you doing nothing and not care after they take your cash (no further explanation needed... we know who they are)

As you can tell we are very passionate about this topic. We have personally visited over 100 factories across China and the countries we are based in (US, UK and AUS) and have created a company anyone would be proud of. Our efforts have allowed us to work with some of the largest global companies and an easy choice for artists who want to offer their fans something amazing without the guilt.

Even if you don't manufacturer with us yet please challenge your factory on its ethical standards to help your fellow human so they can also live their best life :)

 

Our team is so excited to work with you! Want to know more? Contact us below

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