Shop Feature: Everyday Hustle

Meet the makers

Everyday Hustle is a 100% Canadian clothing brand focused on making ethical, versatile pieces that will take you from one hustle to the next. We believe ethical choices in fashion should be accessible to everybody and fit every body and our goal is to upgrade your wardrobe while doing our part in slowing down the fast fashion industry. I’m Kerstin on the left, alongside my sister Jerrica (on the right) and we’re the founders behind Everyday Hustle! Thanks for taking the time to read about how our biz came to be!

Shopping is a big responsibility, we are so happy you’re doing it locally!

As a customer, you are much more powerful than you think. Every purchase makes a difference, whether it be adding to the problem or helping to solve it. When you purchase from a local shop, you should feel good knowing that you are supporting them and their family directly. When you purchase from us, you can feel good knowing that your pieces are ethical and 100% made in Canada by some pretty awesome people who we have personally met and had coffee with (maybe coffee and doughnuts…).

Who needs sleep when you are starting a business?

Our research led us down a rabbit hole of endless nights reading through articles about textile and garment manufacturing. Watching documentaries and listening to stories of the workers and the horrifying conditions causing injury and even death. We don’t mean a couple deaths, we mean THOUSANDS of lives. If that wasn’t enough, the facts about fast fashion’s impact on the environment was the nail in the coffin for us – literally. Did you know that the fashion industry is the 2nd highest polluting next to the Oil industry? MIND. BLOWN. We could not stop reading about it – hallelujah for unlimited wifi and Netflx.

Not to sound harsh but unfortunately for many retailers and clothing brands, the answer is profitability over human lives.

Just because we don’t see their faces and will probably never have the chance to meet them, the people who make our clothes matter. Their life is valuable. We should not allow any industry to treat another human being inhumanely for the sake of a cheap t-shirt.

We have all done it – shopped cheap and looked for an awesome deal. That $10 sweater that lasted 4 washes before falling apart. Not gonna lie – we have done it ourselves! But that rush that comes from getting an awesome piece at a dirt cheap price tag never had us thinking about the effect that single purchase may have until we started doing some research while starting our own brand.

We may be small, but every bit helps.

All of that led to us making the decision to keep every part of our business in Canada. This may not work for all brands as it can be extremely hard and expensive depending on your business type. For us it DOES work and we saw it as an opportunity to do our part. With all this new knowledge we couldn’t turn a blind eye to make extra dollars. If we were going to do it, we wanted it to feel good in our soul.

We walked the facilities, we met the owners AND the employees and we made our decision to work with our manufacturers and textile knitter based on our comfort level with the quality in their work coupled with their ethical practices. The employees are on payroll, they work regular hours, they have exit signs to follow in case of an emergency, crazy right? Believe it or not, these 3 ‘normal’ things would be a luxury and not a right in some textile facilities overseas.

It’s extremely important to us to know exactly where every part of our product is coming from. Did you know that Made in Canada can be on a tag but that doesn’t mean that the fabric isn’t made in a factory overseas? It may look pretty when its all done and delivered but we also feel good knowing that there are actually no ugly or questionable parts of any process that represents our brand. For us, it was a non negotiable to keep it all on Canadian soil and we have worked pretty hard to do it.

A few commitments we have made to our brand and customers;

1. Low-waste pattern making. This reduces the amount of unused fabric that ends up on the cutting room floor.

2. Our fabric will not be purchased overseas, we want everything to remain in Canada and we will continue to check in on all parts of our process (right now, everything is within a 40 minute drive from our own houses!)

3. We will continue to find new ways to improve our footprint in any way we can from shipping bags (ours are compostable) to keeping up to speed on new opportunities we can implement in our business to make a difference.

Keeping our business 100% Canadian does run at a higher cost for us, but we believe that it’s our duty to offer our ethical pieces at prices that make them available to everyone. You may pay a bit more than a big box store, but we promise that the quality, customer service and happy workers will make your decision worth it! That extra price you are paying helps us keep everything ethical and on Canadian soil.

When you are shopping for your clothes, you should really really love the pieces you are purchasing. It should either be a staple that can be worn with everything, or a statement piece that you want to wear every second of every day. Quality over quantity, right? It’s our mission to provide everyone with clothing that they feel good about wearing because they know exactly how and where it’s made – OH and because it’s damn comfortable and size inclusive too!

You can take a look at our online shop by heading to www.shopeverydayhustle.com or come meet us at the upcoming Picks and Giggles markets – September 22nd and December 15th in Oshawa at Kingsway College.