Edun LIVE is a trade solution for anyone who wants ethically produced T-shirt blanks. Founded to produce promotional merchandise for U2’s Vertigo tour, Edun LIVE’s mission is to drive sustainable employment in Africa through high-volume sales of blank T-shirts.

Continental Clothing will launch its distribution of Edun Live this December, creating a partnership that will help drive trade with Africa.

Continental Clothing director Philip Charles said: “Edun Live completes Continental’s garment offering, by giving us a genuinely ethical Fairtrade T-shirt line, not just a T-shirt with a commercial fair trade label attached. Edun LIVE is for people who really understand the social issues involved and who want their apparel purchases to count.”

Bono, his wife Ali Hewson, and New York-based Irish fashion designer Rogan Gregory launched the socially conscious blank T-shirt line in 2005 in an attempt to shift the focus in Africa from aid to trade.

Edun LIVE's goal is to use factories in Africa that provide fair wages to workers and practice good business ethics to create a business model that will encourage investment in developing nations. The Dublin-based company stresses that its message is ‘trade, not aid’.

U2 front man and humanitarian Bono (Paul David Hewson) is famous for working to fight poverty and human rights abuses in developing countries, especially in Africa.

For Continental, the partnership is another chance to further its ethical initiatives within the promotional industry, as Charles explained: “Together we’re showing that it is possible to work in the apparel industry using only ethical and sustainable business models.”

Edun LIVE is a sub-brand of Edun Apparel Ltd, the socially conscious clothing label. It manufactures 100% African T-shirts from ‘grower-tosewer’ in the sub-Saharan nations of Lesotho, Uganda and Kenya, to name a few, and sells them blank for merchandising purposes.

From the African cotton it sources, to the spinning and knitting process, all the way to the manufacturer, Edun LIVE’s blank t-shirts are 100% African – or as it likes to say, ‘grower-tosewer’ African.

One-third of the T-shirts are organic and are available in a pure colour palette including Positively Black, Great White and Super Natural. The offering comprises unisex styles as well as men’s, women’s, toddlers and kids, with style names inspired by Mitochondrial Eve – the universal matrilineal ancestor to all humans who is believed to have lived over 140,000 years ago in what is now Ethiopia, Kenya or Tanzania. The styles are: GENESIS (unisex); ADAM (of man); and EVE (of woman).

According to the comany, 80% of Africans live directly off the land, so it is imperative that Africa's natural resources are managed sustainably.

“Edun LIVE appeals to a wide market through high-volume business-to-business sales of a simple product that everyone loves – the basic T-shirt. It is a for-profit business that wishes to promote trade, not aid, to the developing world,” it said.

“We want to demonstrate that you can do business (and do it very well) with developing countries like those in sub-Saharan Africa. It is our hope that others will replicate the business model and grow the trade and employment opportunities available in these impoverished regions.”

Last year, over 100,000 t-shirts were produced under the Edun brand and production is growing every day.

“We ensure that every individual involved in the value chain benefits from the purchase of each T-shirt,” said Edun. “That's why we say that ‘we carry the story of the people who make our clothes around with us’. This means that everyone from the farmer to the factory worker is given fair pay for his or her contribution. This also means that the factories with which we partner are held to very high environmental and social standards.”

It added: “There is no doubt that the demand for socially and ethically produced goods is growing. And there is no doubt that the driving force behind this change is the consumer.

“Many of our customers are proud to support edun LIVE knowing that their purchase helps create jobs in Africa, but they also comment on the excellent quality of our tees – we use super soft 100% combed African cotton, which falls easily and stylishly over your body but also provides enough weight for your screen printing needs.”

For more information email: edunlive@continentalclothing.com or go to www.continentalclothing.com and www.edun-live.com

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