Responsibility

WHAT DOES RESPONSIBILITY MEAN TO US

Myllymuksut thrives to promote responsibility for the better tomorrow of the environment, society, and people – kids and adults alike. Our main values are safety, sustainable local production, and reliability.

 

SAFETY
We want to ensure that the materials we use are safe for all, and do not cause environmental harm during the production. We do not order fabrics from high-risk countries and we only use and sell fabrics with the ÖkoTex 100 certificate, ensuring they contain no harmful chemicals or residues. Most of our materials are knitted in Finland, where the environmental laws and regulations are one of the highest in the world. Also, the rest of the fabrics that come from Europe and Turkey, are well tested and certified.

LOCAL PRODUCTION
All Myllumuksut products are made in our own sewing shop in Juupajoki, Finland. We also have many local producers for the materials we use and are powered by fossil-free, local energy. We prefer to support small, local companies to ensure quality and ethical treatment of employees rather than calculate where and how to obtain the highest profits, which naturally come from the high-risk countries.

We employ, on average, ten people. By producing everything on our own, we can be completely transparent about the working conditions and origin of our products. The Finnish work laws and regulations are strict and well enforced. In Finland we pay much higher wages than most of the world and even European Union countries pay, and this ensures fair and ethical conditions for the workers and their families. All our employees have the right to a flexible working schedule according to their needs and are entitled to paid holidays, paid sick leaves, and medical care. The average Finnish workweek is 5 days up to 40 weekly working hours and the days consist of two shorter breaks and one long lunch break. Our employees have the right to stay at the workplace using the machinery for their own projects in their free time. All our clients are welcome to visit our factory store together with our sewing facilities at Muksut Shop!

RELIABILITY
A long-lived product is a great ecological deed! We want to provide quality that our clients can rely on. We use high-quality materials and maintain close observation on the sewing and top-notch machinery to ensure great quality products for the market.

Certificates are an independently tested and publicly recognized way to promote and ensure safety, quality, and origin among other things. Myllymuksut zero-waste products have been awarded the Allergy, Skin and Asthma Association’s Allergy Certificate, which means that the products are suitable and safe for sensitive skin. We also have the Key Flag Mark awarded for products made in Finland or materials of Finnish origin. All our fabrics and products are made of Öko-Tex 100 certified materials.

We have been in the field of textiles for almost 20 years and our experience in the textile industry brings reliability and trustworthiness into our operations.

 

 

SLOW FASHION


We aim to make products that last long not only by their quality but also by their design. Bringing forth fresh, strong colors, fun and versatile designs, and safe comfort brightens up the everyday life of kids and adults. We design user-friendly and sustainable details for our products and favor our classic styles of designs and colors making it easy to mix and match outfits and refill later on if needed. Our opinion is that a good product will last strong from one season to another, and for this reason, we don’t have seasonal sales and stock clearances.

 

 

MATERIALS

We aim to make all Myllymuksut products durable with long life, and therefore we always choose the materials with the best features and quality. Being aware of the challenges that the long supply chains may cause in the textile industry, we will make our best to choose the most responsible and sustainable option with internationally recognized certificates. However, as a small company, it's impossible for us to trace the origin of each and every material. As a basic rule, we will not choose the price over quality.

 

Together with clothing and zero-waste products, we also sell fabrics and sewing materials for both consumers and businesses. Our wholesale prices help small businesses to acquire ecological and ethical materials affordably, yet in achievable quantities, they would not normally be able to order due to high minimum order amounts.

We provide a great selection of materials for different uses. Please read the extensive material selection specifics here, including information on the materials we use, their origin, and characteristics.

 

 

PACKAGING AND SHIPPING

Myllymuksut consumer orders are packed in brown paper bags or recycled carton boxes without receipts as our consumer orders are paper-free. The wholesale orders for businesses are packed in mainly recycled carton boxes, or recycled plastic wrappers to keep the material safe during transportation. We do not ship air, so we choose the best fit of a box for your order and remove any excess size by cutting if needed to not have to fill your box with bubble wrap, air pillows, and such. If we ever add those, they are recycled that we have received and see suitable in protecting your order.

We use responsible couriers to take your orders to you promptly. Since we are located in the countryside, a sub-contractor company will pick up the parcels at first and take them to the courier terminal later on. For this reason, the tracking numbers will not work right away.

 

 

RECLAMATIONS, RECYCLING, AND SOCIAL AWARENESS

We take care of any complaints personally with care and respect. Our primary option, in case of a product fault, is to fix it instead of sending a new product, as this is the most sustainable way. For instance, a fallen plastic snap on a cloth diaper or a cloth pad is easy to fix here and there is no need to discard the product.

We aim to minimize the amount of productional waste. Most materials can be reused and reloved, for example, packaging materials. The fabric leftovers we use for smaller products on our ”Aarre” production line. Bigger leftover pieces of fabric are being donated to associations and individuals requesting fabrics for sewing of premature baby clothing, cloth pads for third world countries, and children’s apparel for the underprivileged, to name a few.

Every year we focus our aid on associations working for the well-being of children. We donate clothing to Hope ry, for example, who uses donated goods to delight families with financial problems. Other donations go towards shelters, social programs, and money-raising events for good causes.

Our clients are super important for us and we thrive on serving you well. Any problems with orders are being considered with attention and the best outcome in mind to solve the situation. We offer an opportunity to order our newsletter which arrives once or twice a month and we encourage you to follow our social media for any new arrivals, interesting materials, or other information and campaigns. We also post questionnaires of your experiences as a client with a possibility to win prizes, and we have great product giveaways to interact with our followers.

Upon ordering our products, we can flexibly customize your needs with products of special measurements, functions and fabric combinations, etc. Just give us a call or leave a message and let’s discuss your project or need. If you have left your order already, we are flexible to make changes to it or combine another order with it so don’t hesitate to ask. Our ambition is to keep our customers satisfied!

 

 

FUTURE GOALS

We at Myllymuksut want to operate and do business in a sustainable, ecological, and responsible way, yet we know you can always do more.  In the textile industry, there are always challenges in the global market and long supply chains. We focus on resolving any issues, that is at our reach, one by one. Most problems we avoid by operating locally and relying on certified goods, but the main challenges for the future are in the raw materials, and we keep an eye on new alternatives.

The use of cotton includes many problems. For instance, irrigation consumes a lot of water and the fertile fields are being used for farming cotton instead of food. Our goal is to reduce the use of cotton and replace it with more ecologically sustainable alternatives, such as Tencel lyocell and bamboo-viscose, or other plant-based textiles such as linen and hemp.

We have started a new project to gather information on the total amount of cotton vs. other materials in our sales. Yearly, we will make research on knowing the total percentage, and this way we can follow the reduction of it.

We also aim to make statistics of our returns and exchanges to even further keep track of possible ways to save resources.