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Recently we stumbled across SIMON&ME, a young brand that is not only on its way up, but also very environmental-friendly. From t-shirts with designs of a melting snowflakes and penguins that you can paint yourself, these guys have it all. Sounds good? Read on, because we are giving a lot of items away. Looking good and doing something right for the world, we love it! We had a chat with the two young men behind SIMON&ME: Simon Freund and Alex Rückheim.
The name SIMON&ME seems pretty obvious but you state on the website it communicates a message of sustainability, can you elaborate?
Simon: Well, first of all, the ‘me’ in SIMON&ME is the customer. A lot of people want to do something for the environment but say: “I can’t do anything by myself, it won’t help”, so when I was thinking of a name I thought well, let’s say it’s Simon and you, we’re doing it together. Simon is therefore the name of the company, not just my name.
Your slogan is ‘limited styles for a better world’, what exactly does SIMON&ME do for the world?
Alex: We’re committed to being a sustainable brand. Our shirts are from 100% organic cotton and fair-trade. While making them, even renewable energy was used; we only produce climate-neutral clothing. The t-shirts are from Turkey and the new hoodies from India, because organic cotton is easier to get there. The printing is done in Berlin, they’re good at what they do there so we know that there’s no child-labour involved in the entire process.
I saw on the website that the idea started because you were concerned with snow melting since you’re snowboarders! Would you say your brand started there and that it’s a ‘snowboarding’ brand?
Simon: Well, I don’t think it’s a brand solely for snowboarders but it is inspired by the look. Two years ago I did an internship at Nitro (a well known snowboarding brand) and that really helped me develop the brand. I learned how to distribute clothing and other aspect of the wholesale.
The color-me project (where you can paint your own t-shirt) is very interesting! How did you get the idea?
Simon: Well, designer toys fascinate me and some of them have a cool feature because you can paint them yourself. Unfortunately, those toys aren’t for everybody but a t-shirt is. I put the idea in my phone and we later translated the idea onto our shirts. It started really badly though, with pens that washed off, but we now have different designs and over 15 colours of good paint with real brushes. However, some people –most people actually- are lazy so in the future we’re going to do custom designs as well.
Alex: Yes, that is the new stage of this project. If you say well, I want a flower we’ll get you a shirt with exactly that.
Are you going to have well-known artist do some of the custom designs?
Simon: No, that would be too expensive. People are willing to pay for a nice ecological shirt but with a custom design on it, the price would be too high.
Alex: We will launch some new designs soon; geometrics. You can choose between a circle, square or triangle. And you can choose if you want to paint it yourself or have us do it.
Yes, because I saw you do a lot of collaborations. Who would you love to collaborate with in the future?
Simon: Right now almost our entire collection is being sold at the AMFI Statement Store at Spui, but we have to be picky where we sell and who we collaborate with because you have to share a margin of the profit with the store and since our entire profit is going into the company again, we need it ourselves. We also work together with ‘One person for the planet’ and ‘Protect our winters’, they either receive a portion of the profit per shirt or an amount from our entire income. A lot of big companies aren’t environmental-friendly and that’s also a deal breaker for us. We have some plans but I can’t tell you that yet because it isn’t set in stone.
Ok, but can you share a little bit of your plans for this year?
Simon: This is an important year, SIMON&ME started as a hobby and this year is still meant to be fun, but like I said, also more important.
Alex: We want more customers. We have customers from Europe but not a lot, we want to broaden our scope of followers.
Simon: Yeah, more customers, same collection but sold out in one day! But seriously, I have a lot of ideas and it used to be just me, but now that Alex is here I have someone who shares those ideas. So the process is going to be quicker. We know more now than we did a year ago.
Alex: I do all the managing now, and Simon does the graphical things. But we decide together.
SIMON&ME give-away
We’re giving away 6 pairs of sunglasses in different colours, a shirt from the color-me collection (It’s a size small for guys so it will fit a skinny guy or any girl) with three colours of paint and a brush, and a baseball cap from their newest collection which isn’t even on their own website yet! See them in the gallery below.
To compete comment below this post on Facebook with a short, good idea to help the environment and what you want to win and we’ll pick the best ones!
Interview photos by Annelijn Hooij / photos of collection by SIMON&ME
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