Hi, My name is Jenny Barrett. I live in Hove on the South East coast of the UK. I’m the founder of SuperLooper, the preloved baby clothing rent and recycle service. Along with my biz partner Ashwin Susarla and our amazing assistant Kate Mager, we work to keep garments, that already exist, in circulation longer and therefore reduce the waste which takes the joy out of dressing babies in lovely clothes.
Babies grow sooooooo quickly and leave a trail of hardly worn, beautiful clothes in their wake. Parents either pass clothes down to friends, family or charity shops (which is great), or try to sell them … which is also great, but it uses up a lot of time … time that could be spent having fun with their babies!
Actually, a lot of these clothes end up being put aside waiting to be handed down to other families, or for a twinkle-in-the-eye baby, or for sentimental reasons. This situation has resulted in Hubbub reporting that in the UK there are 183 MILLION items of outgrown baby clothes stored and forgotten in store cupboards! Thankfully, these days we’re beginning to realise that materials are precious and finite, so it’s clear that this hoarding habit just has to end!
As well as hoarding, there is also the obsession with fast fashion that has gripped us over the past decade or so. Fast fashion is designed for the over-production and over-consumption of clothes and is responsible for so many negative effects on our environment and on our collective mindset. Clothes are made on the cheap, sometimes using unethical and toxic practices, with workers often marginalised or exploited and employed in poor working conditions. The clothes are made to be disposable - they look good when new but more often than not don’t wear or wash well. Fast-fashion baby clothes have flooded the market. It makes sense because baby will grow out of them in a short while anyway and they don’t cost much, so just use them until they’re worn out or you grow tired of them, then throw them away and never give them a second thought! Sometimes the clothes aren’t worn at all! This is understandable for parents on a budget, but it’s part of our economic system that values profit over people and planet, and we have to change this mindset in order to create a positive future for our children.
In the UK, we buy more clothes than any other country in Europe. Worldwide, clothing sales have doubled from 100 to 200 billion units a year, while the average number of times an item is worn has decreased by 36%. One bin-lorry of textiles is burned or landfilled every second in the world and less than 1% of material used to produce clothing is recycled into new clothing, meaning 99% of all textiles and fashion are waste!
The thing is, we don’t really need to shop for fast fashion when there are already millions of already-existing, gently worn clothes, just waiting to be given new homes and to be loved & looped for as long as possible.
All the baby and children’s clothes in our ever-growing clothing-library are from brands and families doing a ’conscious clear-out’ of their cupboards. We wash, prepare and upload them onto our site so that other parents can choose just what they want and keep what they choose for just as long as they need - easy peasy! Our rental fees are very affordable - starting at 50p per month for messy-play clothes and just £3.50 for snug winter coats and snowsuits.
SuperLooping saves time, money and storage space and we believe that it’s the way forward when it comes to shopping more sustainably. Parents can indulge in dressing their babies in as many clothe as they want, try out new styles and colours that they may not have had the money or confidence to experiment with before, and change them as their baby grows, or with the seasons … or just because! They can do this knowing that they’re not responsible for creating more waste - that’s the joy of SuperLooping!
At SuperLooper, we love a collab! We partner with wonderful brands like Little Green Radicals and Lucy & Sam to help re-cycle their customers’ outgrown clothes - in return the customers get chunky discounts for their next shop with the brands. We recycle so they don’t have to!
This collaboration with Plastic Free Baby is super-exciting. We’re great fans of Laura’s beautiful products, ethos and style. She’s got fab taste and works really hard to curate the best plastic-free and natural products for her loyal customers. We’ve combined her gorgeous Plastic Free New Baby Bundles with our gift cards so that friends, family and work colleagues can give new parents the opportunity to make sound choices when they bring their little ones into the world. With these gift bundles, not only are parents making responsible switches from plastic-filled toy boxes, feeding equipment and cleaning materials to natural and plastic-free goods, but they’re also renting, rather than owning clothes that they’ll only need for a short while, keeping great clothes in circulation longer, and reducing the demand for fast fashion. What more could a modern, eco-conscious parent ask for? 😃
Jenny Barrett, Founder of SuperLooper