In 2017, Gianni Kina and Linnie Tam started Kina and Tam with a simple dream: to create a playful fashion space for the wonderfully weird. As first-time business owners with no prior business experience, we navigated the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, learning and growing along the way. By 2020, we knew we wanted to make a difference, so we committed to slow fashion and started working with factories that shared our values.
Now, we're proud to partner exclusively with BSCI-compliant factories that we’ve fostered an amazing relationship with that help us ensure that every garment is made responsibly with care. From design to production, the wellbeing of our garment workers, the environment, and our customers are at the forefront. We're so grateful for your support on this slow journey and can't wait to continue to share more.
Our 2 BSCI compliant factories are based in China. Yes, we know what you’re thinking: unethical labor and poor quality, and we had our own reservations initially. We even explored options in Vietnam, India, Turkey, but were met with silence or rejection due to our inability to meet their minimum order quantities, or their tech not being advanced enough to create the highly detailed and unique designs we’re after.
Ultimately, we chose to manufacture in China due to its long-standing expertise, excellent responsiveness and customer focus, and its willingness to work with and believe in small indie brands.
While it's true that there's a lot of trash coming out of China, there are also many exceptional products. The key is finding the right suppliers who share our values of integrity and care. We've done exactly that, building strong and caring relationships over the years to create great products together!
BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) is a framework that audits factories on ethical and social standards. It isn’t a simple “ethical/not ethical” label as ethics is a spectrum, so the goal is ongoing improvement! Audits look at things like fair wages, safe working conditions, and labour rights, and then create action plans to keep raising the bar. We're proud to partner with factories that have consistently passed their BSCI audits and are compliant.
