Bena Burda, founder of
Maggie's Organics, wasn't initially trying to save the earth with organic cotton socks and t-shirts. She just wanted more colorful corn chips.
"I was complaining because as we stored the grain it got lighter and instead of blue chips, we were selling gray chips by end of season," Burda says of her experience as VP of sales at
Little Bear, which sold organic blue and yellow corn tortilla chips.
"We tried everything from substituting oil to irrigating the grain bins, but nothing worked," she says. "I asked the farmer what we could do and he got a gleam in his eye and said he'd take care of it."
Unbeknownst to Burda, the farmer planted cotton in the cornfields, which fixed the nitrogen levels to maintain the vibrant blue color of the grain, even when it was stored for a season. However, this also made Burda the proud owner of 200 acres of raw, organic cotton - which the farmer expected her to sell.
"My former boss pre-paid a couple thousand dollars for the crop," says Burda, whose expertise was limited to organic food. "We thought we'd just take the raw fiber to a company who'd turn it into apparel. But it's a much more complex process, with seven steps just to make a t-shirt. We were in way over our heads and didn't know what we were doing."
So Burda quit her job in 1992 to join forces with her former boss to start Maggie's Organics, an organic cotton company based out of Ypsilanti. After six months, her partner was ready to pull the plug, but Burda knew she had to do something with this venture for which she'd left her job. Out of haste and fear, she chose to have the cotton woven into socks. "Socks take one step less than a t-shirt and we could make them in just two sizes and sell them without a fitting room," she says.
Burda soon bought her partner out and took over the company at age 39. Today, Maggie's Organics sells socks, tights, scarves, and t-shirts, and has recently branched out to offer simple t-shirt dresses, wrap shirts, and yoga pants.
The organic clothing industry is a far cry from the career path Burda imagined for herself while studying childhood psychology at the University of Michigan. After graduating, she landed in sales at Eden Foods, where she first learned about organic agriculture. "I thought organic was a scam until I started to meet farmers and tour fields," she says. "Then I got the bug - no pun intended - and there was no turning back. It's just a whole different feeling when you see bugs and butterflies in the fields and truly get a sense of what is going on."
As Maggie's Organics grew to master the art of organic, the company has since grown to become a model for labor and fair trade issues. "You can't have organic sustainability without social responsibility," says Burda. "I'm an optimist but I also believe there aren't bad people. No one wants to exploit workers to make millions."
Burda's first foray into labor issues came in 2001 when she took the advice of an NGO to look into employing workers from Nicaragua, which is one of the poorest areas on the continent, suffering from 80 percent unemployment. Burda was sick of working with disenfranchised workers who had no connection to the company and its mission, and wanted to develop a new kind of relationship.
"I told them that if they could build a facility where everyone was vested in our success, we'd give them all of our contracts," says Burda. Although it was a huge risk to invest in the co-op, Burda says it was also the best business decision she's ever made. Fifty-six Nicaraguan women founded the co-operative, providing Maggie's Organics with their t-shirts. And the business is flourishing.
"The idea that workers should have a vested interest in their customers' success is theoretically pure and makes sense to me," says Burda. Maggie's Organics also works with a co-op in North Carolina to make socks and stuffed animals out of irregular socks, which are more feasible to produce in the United States than other garments.
In January, Maggie's Organics became the first apparel company in the world to be certified for Fair Labor Practices and Community Benefits under a stringent auditing process by
Scientific Certification Systems, which examined every step in the supply chain.
"It's not just about feeling good," Burda says. "I truly believe that when people take two seconds to make a decision about which camisole to buy, there's a kinetic energy that they can feel when they put a product on their bodies or touch it in the stores."
As larger companies have since jumped on the organic bandwagon, the independent Maggie's Organics has remained successful by sticking to the roots Burda planted in 1992. "We've stayed true to our base, selling accessories and other things that don't require fitting rooms," Burda says of the line that is sold locally in Whole Foods and
Ann Arbor's Organic Bliss and
People's Food Co-Op. "We want to be basic but affordable."
Burda relies on input from the 10 employees at the Ypsilanti headquarters, along with workers and partners along every step of the production process. "We engage completely with the supply chain at every level," she says. "They are committed to finding us solutions because they know it will better the work for themselves and their coworkers."
Burda, 55, lives on a lake in Pinckney with her husband and begins every morning with a swim to clear her mind and "de-stress". She says the next step in the evolution of her company is a succession plan. But when the time is right for Burda to retire, it is unlikely that she will be content to just sit idle.
"I'd like to consult with other small start-ups who have cool ideas and help them deal with the realities," she says. "The current distribution system is ancient and clogged, and it needs to be turned on its head."
If she were to start by consulting herself circa 1992, Burda says she would advise herself to let go of fear and paranoia. "I was afraid to share information and became really fraught with people knocking off designs. It made me really closed and paranoid," she says. "If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bought into that and would have just said it was the nature of the beast -- people imitate good. Fear is silly."
Kelly Quintanilla is a freelance writer who pens stories for Rapid Growth and lives the dream as the Microbrew Editor for Revue, among other assorted marketing and communication pursuits. This is her first article for Concentrate.All photos by Doug Coombe
Photos:
Bena Burda at the Maggie's Organics offices and warehouse in Ypsilanti.