physicoolsports - The physicoolsports Blog

On our 6th Anniversary: 6 things you probably didn't know about physicoolsports but really should!

2017-04-10T23:29:00+05:30

It's April 11th, 2017...already! W.O.W.

It's been 6 years since we started this little "project" of ours. 6 years of organic, 6 years of fairtrade, 6 years of working with cotton farmers, 6 years of getting to know all of you (btw, have we told you lately that we love you?)!

But we can't help wonder - after 6 years, do you really know us?

Here are 6 things that you probably didn't know about physicoolsports:

1. We are India's FIRST Fairtrade licensed clothing brand

That's right - we're #1! When we started out, there were several fairtrade producers (farmers & factories) in India but we were the first to get a Fairtrade License as a brand selling in India.

We've been 100% organic and fair trade since day 1 (April 11th, 2011) - 6 years and counting!

2. We're a REALLY small team!

We are a lean, mean, motley crew of 4 people. Yep, you heard right - just 4!

We are a family-owned, couple-run business with Apu & Shweta at the helm.

Shweta is our creative head, handling ALL design and production. (Read her design philosophy).
Niyati lovingly packs all our e-commerce orders & manages the inventory.
Priyanka handles all our Ops & Customer Service (she's our newest member - she just joined us last week!)
And me, Apu - I handle the biznessy & techie stuff, the sales & the yak yak, and claim to be dreaming up new visions for the company so I can sleep some more.

ps: We are actively looking for a 5th crew member to head up our Marketing & Social Media digital madness so if you know someone who'd be a good fit, please ask them to email us at [email protected].

We miss everyone who's been part of our journey so far (special shoutout to Diti, Ruth, Amrita, Felix, Anushka, Nilofer, Christina, Vishal, Maeve, Ruta, Asja, Yashika, Chris, Jayanth...oh boy, this list is long and they're already cueing the play-off music to get me off-stage...)

3. We don't compete; we collaborate.

We want to create a movement for ethical fashion to help put a stop to farmer suicides in India.

That's our raison d'etre; our mission; our purpose!

And we need more people to join us to achieve this. Together, we can.

Here are a few things we've done to help grow this movement:

Helped launch other competing brands! We have directly helped at least half a dozen ethical fashion brands around the world and consulted 100+ aspiring brand owners on how to go about it. For us, it's not about getting a bigger piece of the pie but sharing the pie recipe! If you want ANY help, just ask - really! (Ask here: [email protected])
Co-founded The Green People of India in collaboration with other Indian organic cotton t-shirt brands which later grew into a wider community of "green" businesses.
We are joining an international group of brands to provide more stability and support to our cotton farmers co-op (Chetna Organic) as part of a global coalition called ChetCo (read about it on Forbes.com) - super excited about this!
We are an active part of the Fashion Revolution Day movement and were the country co-ordinators for India when it launched. We continue to be a part of this amazing global campaign (hey - come for our movie screening on April 24th in Goa! Email us for details - [email protected])

4. Have you met Doug?

Did you know we started and run a non-profit project too?

Did you know that it's kinda, sorta, really super-duper awesome??

It works with women from the cotton farming community of Maharashtra, India (from the regions that have the highest number of farmer suicides) to give them a reliable, secondary income AND create awareness of the agrarian crisis in their region. It's working!

It's called Once Upon A Doug.

5. A Global Goan Business

Recently, we shifted our base to the lovely beach town of Goa (it's lovely but...) and we love being local + global. Being online means we've reached all corners of the planet - literally! Don't believe us? Here's a list of countries that we've shipped to in 6 years:

Australia (that's like all the way down there!)
Austria
Bahrain
Belgium
Brazil (that is literally the other side of the planet from us!)
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland (up top!)
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Maldives
Netherlands
New Zealand (down low)
Norway (up top again!)
Peru (how did they even find us!?)
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Slovakia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden (one of our faves!)
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States

That's 45 countries that have received some physicoolsports loving, and we love that! Though our focus has always been to kickstart a consumer movement in India for ethical fashion, it's humbling (and quite a high!) to know that we're catching people's attention around the world.

6. The Bottomline: Happiness!

We're not here for the money (though it helps); we're not here for the fame (it's fleeting); we're not here for anything but happiness. Happiness for us and for our farmers and factory workers and supporters and customers - all of us.

We believe happiness comes from Purpose.

Sure, pleasure & passion are sweet too but it's purpose that is the wind in our sails.

We've drafted our mission accordingly. Here it is, scribbled on a whiteboard many moons ago but still standing tall in our office as a daily reminder of why we do what we do. (click the image to open our Instagram account).

ps: a big shoutout to the folks at Happy Startup School that have inspired us & shaped a lot of our thinking. If you haven't yet, do yourself a favour and check them out!

Conclusion:

We'd like to leave you today with these 3 things to ponder on:

a movement for ethical fashion
a clothing brand that you will love
an invitation for you to join the above.

Join us, won't you?

The Truth about Living in Goa

2017-02-08T14:30:00+05:30

As you know, Team physicoolsports packed up our organic, fairtrade bags and made the big move from Bombay to Goa three years ago. Be gone, traffic! Come to mama, susegad!

We've waxed lyrical about our new adopted home state before. Goa's beaches, lush greenery and sweeping vistas have certainly permeated our designs and provided gorgeous photoshoot locations. Those squeezed-on-the-spot juices and fish thalis aren't half bad either.

But what's it really like to run our business here?

Here is what our fresh-from-the-city, starry-eyed dreams imagined our life would look like when we first came to these shores:

6am: Waking up to the sound of birds and church bells, we roll out of bed for a relaxed morning of reading and a freshly-brewed cuppa.

8am: Yoga. Ahhh. S-t-r-e-t-c-h.

10am: Making healthy Pinterest-worthy breakfasts to eat on our veranda, and generally soaking up the beauty of the day like nothing short of a Disney princess singing to a squirrel.

11am: Reach work – but no emails just yet! Let's crack on with some big-picture project stuff. You know, the things that make your heart thump a bit louder and get you all fired up. Booyah!

1pm: Before you know it, it's lunch hour. Where shall we go today? Eva Cafe, then dip our toes in the sea? Bean Me Up, and finish with the best raw vegan desserts under the tropical sun? Baba Au Rhum for some french baked goods? Artjuna for Middle-eastern? Nah, let's go to the local haunt, Vinayak - family owned, delicious Goan food, located on the edge of a paddy field. And hey, there's totally time to stop for a tender coconut on the way back.

(Photos: The yoga shala, the verandah & the lovely Eva cafe)

2-4pm: We'll get down to correspondence emails and work with the team to make sure everything's running like clockwork across the business. Chai? Go on then.

4-6pm: And then, having totally shown our work diaries who's boss, it's time for an ocean swim. Oh, unless it's an Ultimate Frisbee day. But that's on the beach too, so not far to go to cool off our feet after the workout. Not far to the bar for a feni and Limca, either. When in Goa...

6pm-zzz: What's the number one rule? No work after sunset! We like our evenings free to switch off, meet friends, cook at home, have a drink, sleep early. After all, those squirrels will need serenading tomorrow too.

(Photos: Miles of beaches, paddy fields and sunsets)

Well.

That's the dream. Here's the reality.

We might do early morning yoga every day for a month. And love it! But then we're out of town travelling and eek... the habit slips.

We spend much longer hours in the office dealing with small issues, erratic internet connections, customer service, chasing down the Fedex guy, running out of boxes. There's a lot of firefighting! Because we're a small business and that's just how it works – but with some extra Goa madness thrown in. All that can mean less time to work on the 'big picture' view because dropping all the other things being juggled just isn't an option. Hey look, the neighbours’ cow is in our yard again.

Lunch gets skipped. We get sucked into our computers and suddenly... oh no... it takes effort to go to the beach! It's something we really have to remind ourselves to do for our own sanity – it's such a short season and a bookend to the day that is so relaxing when we make it a priority. But oh, the internet just went down again. And where is that Fedex guy?!

(Photos: The new office, the commute & where's the Fedex guy!?)

So our reality can look a little different. But you know what – it's worth it.

We work longer hours, but they're still more peaceful somehow. Not having to commute or stress out over traffic means we don't start and end the day feeling super hassled. For us – though we know it’s different for everyone – a long day in Goa still beats a half day in the city, hands down!

Moving not just ourselves but our stock to Goa has also been hugely rewarding. There's already been so much to learn and enjoy about bringing our warehouse back in-house: we love being able to add more of a personal touch, to take on special requests and improve order turnaround time. As a brand focused on sustainability it's also been fun to hunt out reusable packaging – are you the lucky customer whose big physicoolsports order turned up in a Parle G biscuits box?!

Outside of work, we've also been blessed to find an awesome community here. Goa has a great crowd of socially-conscious people, and because the group is smaller it's way more interactive and great for getting to know folks. A little effort to shut down the laptop on time is rewarded with a reliably fun social scene: Monday night is reserved for cultural & social night at 6 Assagoa, Tuesday evenings is movie night at Tamarind with Wall Fly...and the list goes on. Plenty to choose from...or plenty to skip to find that inner JOMO.

So, if we knew 'back then' that cycle rides down to the sand and leisurely big-picture dreaming would have to budge over just a tad for a bit more real life, would we still make the move?

No question. This is home now. It might not be rose-tinted, but it's still sunny as heck.

Update 2022: A lot has changed since we first published this article but we're still calling Goa our home. Our flagship store is in the beautiful little village of Assagao in North Goa, see here, our office is right next door. Come visit us to shop 100% organic cotton clothing, made in India.

physicoolsports - Time for a Reintroduction!

2014-06-04T16:12:00+05:30

Have we met before?? Allow us to reintroduce ourselves: howdy!

Let's start at the very beginning (it's a very good place to start).

Once upon a time, there was a Mumbai-kid-turned-techie-go-lucky-guy living in the US. He had the plush office, the swivelly chair, the 12-year software development career and the happy, shiny, frisbee-tossing lifestyle that dreams are made of. But this kid (codename: Apu) was about to burst his own bubble in a fairly major way.

Enter stage left: an article on the plight of cotton farmers in India. Suicides committed at the average rate of one every 30 minutes, over 250,000 in number, the largest wave of suicides recorded in human history. The famous Indian cotton belt running across the width of the country becoming infamously known as The Suicide Belt. An industry in crisis following the introduction of expensive GMO seeds & toxic pesticides, and the vicious cycle of bank loans that follow suit. This was too much to take and idly watch from the sidelines. Something needed to be done! But what?

What could be done?

The solution to the farmer suicide issue already exists in organic, fair trade, sustainable cotton farming: better for the earth, better for farmers, better for communities. But the challenge is that there's not enough consumer demand for this cotton. You've taught the proverbial man to fish, but no one's buying it. So fast forward five years, a huge amount of research, a couple of one-way tickets out of the Big Apple and a very deep breath: physicoolsports is established in Mumbai in April 2011! To create a movement for people like you & me to make a difference just by way of our purchases. Voting with your wallets. Indian consumers supporting Indian farmers. Nothing fancy, nothing grand, no moving to villages, no going all granola for those who are by nature more bagel-and-latte-to-go, just the simple habit of buying a good t-shirt can make a huge difference if a lot of us do it together; if this becomes a movement!

How do you start a movement?

To create an engaging, inspiring movement that actually takes flight, we knew we needed to be relevant, fun and non-preachy. So here's our secret recipe for a movement: A product that you really want, A brand that you truly love, A story that you want to be a part of! Ta da! So what goes into making our products awesome? Quality, premium organic cotton. Way too much time spent on fits and details. Something for everyone hence working with our amazing designer community for prints that are fantastically diverse but united in awesomeness. Making it fun to join and giving you what you want (and a lot more coming soon as we move from the easy canvas of t-shirts into becoming a full clothing brand).

What's physicoolsports about it?

The name physicoolsports is our promise to you - nothing bad will ever go into our products - no gm seeds, no carcinogenic pesticides, no toxic dyes, no unfair business practices, no nonsense! We will always be transparent in our doings and beings: in fact, we were the first Indian clothing company that we know of to share our complete supply chain even though it's one of our biggest assets, and the first to be offering 100% organic & 100% fair trade licensed t-shirts. Booyah. That's the kind of meaningful company we want to be for our customers.

And what do we want to create for ourselves?

We're all about the Happy Startup School's 4 P's: passion, purpose, people, profits.

Even though we're a business, profits are the last thing on our mind. We're passion-filled & purpose-driven, making fantastic products in the belief that profits will eventually follow. We employ people we love working with, and have a simple recruitment motto of hiring "adults" - responsible, motivated people who will do the right thing. We're happiness-focused, with our fabulous team working from wherever gives them joy. physicoolsports HQ recently shifted from Bombay to Goa for a more peaceful, happy life of enjoying the simple things. (Sunset ocean swims beat rush-hour on the Mumbai Western Line, for sure!)

What difference does all this make?

For our farmers?

A more sustainable way of farming – not maximising output, but minimising risk. On average, farmers get paid 30% more for this cotton, while the fair trade community premium fosters social and environmental development. Farming organically reduces health risks by taking away carcinogenic pesticides and reduces dependency on external factors like seed companies and export quotas. In the end, it all results in fewer suicides, healthier lives, happier communities.

For you, our customers?

It gives you the chance to make a difference without really changing your lifestyle too much at all. You want to do good, but it has to be something within reach – hello! At your service. With a simple purchase you're now making a difference to both people and planet, and in return, are getting one helluva awesome t-shirt! Win win!

And for us?

physicoolsports is an incredible experience to work with passionate people all trying to make a difference. It's a hard journey, but a happy & satisfying one. Look good. Feel good. And do physicoolsports.

(Numbers shown above are at the end of 3 years. We're almost 6 years old now. Yikes, time to update this!!)