The circle of it: This upcycling company creates beautiful lifestyle products from recycled materials
hamilton Perkins collection
Summary
Hamilton Perkins Collection offers a wide range of lifestyle products (bags, clothing, etc.) created from unconventional and/or recycled materials. Some of the materials used in their products include pineapple fiber, recycled plastic bottles and repurposed billboard vinyls. The company received accolades, including the Black Ambition Prize, and has participated in programs like Techstars and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which support innovative and sustainable businesses. The company has also partnered with organizations such as Hewlett-Packard, Nordstrom, Target, and Paramount Pictures to repurpose their waste materials into bespoke products, aligning with corporate sustainability goals. In recent years, they have launched initiatives focusing on repairing, remaking, and reusing materials to extend the lifecycle of their products and reduce textile waste. (Source)
Story
Founder Hamilton Perkins was looking for a bag. A bag he could be proud of, and said something about his values, one of which is sustainability. He understood the problem of plastic waste and other social and environmental problems and wanted to make a product that also had a social mission attached to it. The company started out with a Kickstarter campaign, and immediately gained traction. In 2017, they created trunk shows at Bloomingdale’s in New York city, and we’, with a trunk show that we hosted at Bloomingdale’s in New York City, and started their web store in early 2017. (Source)
Pic Credit: Hamilton Perkins (right and top)
“I think that’s the beauty of crowdfunding. We didn’t know … we had no idea, really, what the response was going to be, but what we were clear on was, we could launch this in a place that early adopters are already hanging out and looking for new products, and we could really tell our story there, and you know, offer them a chance to buy it. Either … it would be on of two outcomes. It would be binary. Either you would show up, and you would support the project, or you wouldn’t, and either way it was a win for me. At the end of the day it was a win, because we knew the answer, and that’s half the battle. “
Hamilton Perkins in an interview
Founder(s)
Hamilton Perkins
Headquarters
Norfolk, Virginia
In business since
2014
Business type
for profit
Impact
As of 2023, over 1 million plastic bottles have been used in their products (Source)
Technology
creating demand for a new type of product, repurposing billboard vinyls, creating fabric out of pineapple fiber and recycled plastic bottles
Material
recycled plastic bottles, pineapple leaf fibers, repurposed billboard vinyls
Website
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