You know how sometimes you go to an event or listen to a lecture or read an article or book that just “blows your mind” and from that event onwards a significant change in the way you think or speak your ideas happens?
A mention in a magazine spoke about a lecture concerning environmentally friendly textiles and that the lecturer is someone (Albin Kälin – CEO EPEA Switzerland ) from some European upholstery mill (Rhoner) – so, long story short, Reut (my wife and partner) and yours truly, drove over 100 km to listen.
Seated in the back row at the Material Library, where the lecture was held, amongst the biggest companies of the local textile industry, I was fascinated!
Presented by the Israeli representative of EPEA – Yair Engel (who from that day on became one of my closest friends and colleagues) – Mr. Kalin, with his amazing story, introduced me to the idea of cradle to cradle and encouraged me to pursue sustainability options for textile.
Great!…
But… I have no mill or manufacturing facilities…
I just had to create this wonderful type of material! Let’s buy some C2C (cradle to cradle) yarn, and weave it at a local mill (I thought I would even buy a loom for it)
So where can I get the yarn? Well, Mr. Kalins’ mill of course uses it but they didn’t sell the yarn, and another mill I found by the name of Backhausen from Austria weave C2C – but they also didn’t sell the yarn.
Snap…
Not giving up of course, a few months later I visited Heimtextil – the worlds largest home textile fair – at Frankfurt, Germany, and walked straight into Backhausens’ booth.
The introduction I made led to cooperating and creating a collection of C2C upholstery fabrics, we designed at our studio in Israel and the produced at the mill in Austria – the collection was presented to an American client.
When I look back at this experience and think – what if would have decided to be a bit lazy or find the excuse not to waste time and go to this lecture…100 km away…
I would have missed out on life changing knowledge, that led to an international experience and meeting a person who would become one of my closest friends.
Think about it…
