FL - CIR #1

Local Laundry: Folding Laundry - Community Impact Report

One of our goals when we first began Local Laundry was to build community and impact people. We felt a greater urge to celebrate Calgary communities and embrace the local residents that make up our beautiful city. Local Laundry was started as a way for people to come together and represent where they come from and showcase whom they are. We didn’t want to do this by ourselves though; we wanted to involve as many people in every way possible as we could. By involving as many groups of people we could have better opportunities to help our communities shine and grow. This community impact report will show you each month how we are giving back to the community, how we are growing the community and how each decision we make as a business is helping our communities become stronger.

When we first decided to showcase this community impact report we scrolled through our Instagram account and were grinning from ear to ear as an abundance of memories flooded our minds. We want to first thank the charities we’ve worked with. Local Laundry has many ambitions, one of them being supporting local charities by pledging to donate over $1,000,000 to local charities across Canada. The philosophy behind Local Laundry has always been about promoting and building our cities and neighborhoods. We want to encourage communities by supporting local causes that matter to the locals. Therefore, 10 per cent of Local Laundry’s profits will always go back into the community to support causes that our customers believe in as well to build a stronger sense of community. When you buy a piece from Local Laundry, on the online store there is a section where you can tell us which local charity you would like us to donate to. The charities that we have supported include Kids Up Front, Accessible Housing Society, The Calgary Drop In & Rehab Centre, Calgary Food Bank and Calgary Women’s Emergency Centre and the Canadian Red Cross. It’s because of these charities we have been able to give back into the community and help those in need. Our largest charity efforts were directed to the YMM fire fundraising. All profits from the sale of our YMM t-shirts went directly to the Canadian Red Cross to help with disaster relief and support. As shirts continue to sell, we continue to donate 100 per cent of the profits.

Building community is not just about donating to local charities, it is also about engaging with local communities, showcasing the talent and giving exposure to those with the same amount of passion and pride for our communities as we do. Which is why we decided to collaborate, get in trouble and work with as many passionate people as we could. Big thank you to all of the professional models and everyday awesome human beings who have worn our crew necks, t-shirts and tanks. It’s an amazing feeling when you see someone wearing your clothes who’s not related to you and you didn’t have to bribe to wear them. You like us, you actually like us?! Some of models we have worked with include Allana Davison, Katie Ronsky, Greg Coulas, Garrett Jubinville, Aneil Rajaram, Erin Lawrence, Jillian Currie, Cassandra Paisley, Jenna Burge, Chandel Metcalf, Alex Paisley, Sarah Lynn, Elle Bergeron, Bianca Mancuso, Erin Leroux, Kathleen Smiley, Rachel Antony, Kolby Myers, Rebecca Frederick, Alex Putici, Zandra Thompson, Abbey Ronneseth,Derek Rucki, Shayan Gilani, and the list goes on and on.

So if people are wearing our clothes we actually need proof of it and that’s where the brilliant eyes of the phenomenal photographers come in. Many of Calgary’s finest photographers and videographers have reached out to be apart of the Local Laundry club and snap powerful and meaningful shots of our beloved models and clothing. Capturing these moments creates imprints in our minds and allows a story to be told. The stories told in each of photo represent a piece of time where joy, love, pride and happiness were felt in a certain moment. As Local Laundry continues to evolve we are thrilled to share the stories of our communities and the inhabitants that occupy them and only hope the pages can continue to turn. Photographers we have had the privilege of working with include, Taysa Jorge, Morgan Worthmor, The Lower Sixth, Laura Paisley, Travelling Lenses, Alistair Shipley, Brooke Cupelli, Milton Photo, Meraki Supply Co., Stuff4Him, Style Out There, Danielle Couterier, Sai.Jung and the list grows every day. Thank you to photographers for capturing the beautiful and memorable moments of the Local Laundry story, we are truly spellbound!

Someone wants to wear our clothes, someone wants to photograph our clothes and now someone wanted to write about our clothes. Kathleen Smiley reached out to us after what she claims, weeks of Instagram stalking. Don’t stalk us – talk to us, which she did eventually! Kathleen came on board to be our writer and blogger. With everything going on in our Local Laundry world Kathleen said she wanted to be the one who wrote about it. Kicking off the blog with an intro about her plans for the blog, Kathleen introduced herself along with a couple quick anecdotes. Since then, blogs have been published every Monday evening. Please continue to watch for weekly tales and stories from the Local Laundry crew.

It’s funny each time you meet someone you have the opportunity to tap into their network and wealth of resources. The people Kathleen have brought forward, both willingly and forcefully, have included Alex Putici, Rebecca Frederick, Katie Evans and Brooke Cupelli. Alex is the owner of Work Nicer, a progressive co-working space on Stephens Ave. Rebecca owns Creative Nobility, a graphic design agency. Since meeting Rebecca from Creative Nobility, we have invested in her and her local team of designers, who have recently designed the newest community shirt for Bankview. Creative Nobility is the design agency we are working closely with for our t-shirt design expansion, but we’ll get to that later. Katie Evans is the owner of Marda Loop’s finest consignment store, The Clothing Bar. Brooke Cupelli works alongside Katie as the photographer, among other ventures, for The Clothing Bar.

Since having the blog many collaborations and guest bloggers have happened. The latest collaboration was with The Clothing Bar. The Clothing Bar owner Katie and photographer Brooke featured Local Laundry styled outfits on their blog with our blogger Kathleen Smiley and her two friends Erin Leroux and Bianca Mancuso as models. Brooke caught and edited beautiful photos that us and the girls are thrilled to show off. Other bloggers who have offered to be a guest on the Local Laundry blog have included Sam from Sugar and Sam and Kolby and Rachel from Simply Modern Marketing. Thank you to Kathleen Smiley for initiating the blog and collaborations with amazing local Calgary businesses and to our guest bloggers for thinking we’re cool enough to want to blog with!

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our heads around the fact that people want to be apart of our dream and help with designing community t-shirts to represent our beautiful city. Designers we have worked with to build our ‘Community Collection’ include Rebecca Frederick for the much anticipated new Bankview t-shirt, Dan Markin and his design for the Renfrew t-shirt, Scott Mitchell for expanding the Local Laundry club into Airdrie, Erin Lawrence for the Kensington and Sunnyside t-shirt designs, Yasmin Gamea for Cranston t-shirt design, Shannon Larkin for the Elbow Park t-shirt design, Karla B. for the newest Beltline t-shirt, Declan McKay for the Lake Chaparell design and Cyndi Slobodian for the Cliff Bungalow design. We are always looking to find more local designers to come up with awesome designs of their local communities, because let’s face it, we can’t visually describe your neighbourhood as well as you can!

We absolutely love collaborating with other local Calgary businesses and entrepreneurs, as you can probably already tell. Finding ways to get involved with other entrepreneurs only helps to benefit each other and let’s be honest here we’re pretty popular! Some of the companies we have been thrilled to work with include Cupcakes and Curls, Friday Sock Co., Calgary Heritage Roasting co., Lululemon and Paws in the Park, which we made a limited edition tee for and all 50 per cent of profits went supporting Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS)! We also host monthly meetups of entrepreneurs, sidepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, at our Startup and Beers meetings. Startup and Beers brings together all those who have a small business, startup or company that want to network with others like them and discuss similar problems and see how we can help each out. Each month we are hosted by a different local small business such as The James Joyce Irish Pub, Tool Shed Brewery and Work Nicer, while we showcase a different small business like Goat Locker Beer, TLink Golf Watches, Spot Dog Walking and so many more! We also organize a smaller group people who want to start their own business but have trouble coming up with a solid idea, this group is called Beers and Better Ideas (starting to see a theme?) and also meet once a month to discuss and bounce ideas off each other. If you are interested in joining either please let us know, we’d love to have you!

So to recap we’ve got charities, models, photographers, writers, collaborators and suppliers. One of the biggest questions we receive from customers is where can we find you stuff? We are elated to inform people Local Laundry swag can be found at Stuff 4 Him, Meraki Supply Co., Lukes Drug Mart and now at The Clothing Bar as well.

So far the Local Laundry brand has expanded into Airdrie and Lethbridge collaborating with Scott Mitchell and Silla Designs, respectively. But now we are hungry for more. Earlier in this report we mentioned expansion. The cats out of the bag we are expanding! We have hired Rebecca and the Creative Nobility team to work alongside us and design 10, yes 10, new city shirts. Some of the new cities included are Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and we’ll let you guess the last seven. Stay tuned YYC!

Don’t think we are doing enough to build community? Think there are areas that we could be doing better? Want to get involved somehow? Give us a shout at info@locallaundryapparel.com

Love,
Dustin, Connor & Kathleen