At Y.O.U Underwear we like to support our fellow ethical businesses and this month we’re showcasing Bare Kind as our Mates of the Month! We love their soft bamboo socks with animal prints and they donate 10% of the profits from every pair sold to help save the endangered animal on those socks. In this blog we look at their successful business journey so far and their brilliant work with animal conservation charities ...
How did Bare Kind begin?
Back in 2018, founder Lucy Jeffrey, started up a reusable straw company. She spent a couple of years building her Bare Kind business using straws as the main focus. She also dabbled in some recycled tote bags and t-shirts too, but things changed big time when she introduced her very first sock - Turtles. To this day they’re still a solid favourite and in 2022, Bare Kind turtle socks raised enough money to fund the construction of a turtle hatchery where particularly endangered turtle nests could be relocated to The Turtle Foundation - a charity that works to protect endangered sea turtles and their habitats.
What was the best year so far for Bare Kind?
2021 was founder Lucy’s first full time year on the business so it accelerated like never before! Wait for it….
- She brought out 17 more sock designs.
- She made her first two hires.
- She won a £7.5k grant.
- She took on £50,000 investment and spent over £50,000 on stock.
- She got a fulfilment warehouse.
- She took out an ad in The Times. Bare Kind was featured in The Financial Times, the Guardian and The Big Issue.
All this activity meant that Bare Kind enjoyed record breaking days, weeks, months - and then - the year, in revenue and this was reflected in their amazing charity impact report for 2021 which you can read here.
Sending David Attenborough Socks
In 2022, socks sales continued to go from strength to strength. Bare Kind went from having 20 retailers to over 500! As a further indicator of their success, Lucy sent David Attenborough some socks and he wrote back to thank her! You might also recognise Bare Kind socks from the FINAL of Strictly Come Dancing - there was a full on slow-mo of them on screen and they had radio ads that went out to millions of people across the UK
The Challenges.
Of course, with all the triumphs they have had, there have been challenges. Covid, Brexit, supply chain delays, lack of lorry drivers, the Ukraine war, the cost of living crisis, the strikes...But Bare Kind keeps rising up and in 2023, together with Y.O.U Underwear won an opportunity to run a pop-up shop on Oxford street, Europe’s busiest shopping location! You can read more about oup pop up experience here.
So we hope you love Bare Kind as much as we do – with their animal saving mission, it’s clear why they are our Mates of the Month! Socks are almost as essential as underwear, so we wanted to give you a sustainable option that gives back - just like we do. We now have Bare Kind's Premium ribbed socks in a variety of colours, lots of exciting new designs and also their trainer socks, all in adult sizes, as well as a large children's range. So whether you go for your favourite colour or the animal you want to protect, the choice is yours!
Shop all Bare Kind's beautiful bamboo socks from bees, panthers, elephants to orangutans on our Y.O.U website here.
