Near Sea Naturals | memoirs-that-matter

NearSea Naturals

Family owned business is New Mexico's largest retail supplier of organic fabrics

By Celene Adams

When Tara Bloyd gave birth to her extremely premature son she was at a loss as to how to keep the fragile infant's lungs functioning.

The 24-week-old child, who lived in an incubator for the first 101 days of his life, could not inhale the fumes emitted by every day items such as carpeting or even commercially produced cotton baby clothes.

"People think of cotton as a wonderful fiber. But an unknown fact is that it's probably the most heavily pesticided cloth that we have," says Winnie Culp, Bloyd's mother.

So Bloyd and her mother set about finding organic materials with which to clothe Neil. But they came up empty handed.

Not only were such fabrics largely unavailable, they were exorbitantly expensive.

"We realized that if it was so hard for us to find [organic] materials it was probably really hard for other people to find them too. So we made it our mission to make this important material accessible to everyone," Bloyd says.

Bloyd, her husband, Peter Norby, and her mother decided to form NearSea Naturals, an organic fabric and notions supplier that, just over two years into business, has developed a domestic and international customer base of 2,000.

Organic cotton, wool and hemp are expensive to produce, and growing more so, due to a decreasing supply. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) last year released a report showing that organic cotton production in the U.S. has dropped, despite increasing sales. According to the report, farmers are hesitant to increase production because they aren't sure consumers will pay more for U.S. produced organic fabrics.

"Large corporations like Nike and Patagonia are giving the fabric industry a boost by using organics in their products, but they rely heavily on imports," says OTA. But the imports are fumigated by U.S. customs, thus defeating the purpose, Culp adds.

How would this family operation make such a scant and pricey product available to all?

Between the three partners and the two other family members who work in the business, they had a wealth of experience in technology, communications, working with Internet businesses and in marketing and sales.

So they designed a Web site, from which all operations are now conducted. Consequently, the company has virtually no overhead costs. "We don't have the rent. We don't have the insurance for people to be coming in and shopping. We don't have utilities; we're off the grid so we don't have utilities at all," Culp says. And customers pay for their own shipping.

And less than $2,000 a year is spent on advertising -- primarily targeted messaging on the Internet. The best return on investment is paid placement with various search engines, Bloyd says. "It's such a specialized product that it's a lot better to use targeted advertising than to put an ad in the newspaper where maybe only one out of every ten thousand people would care about organic fabrics."

The only external infrastructure includes a small storage unit in Santa Fe and a 1,000-square-foot building owned by Culp, in the Pecos Valley where the fabrics are stored. Aside from some initial adjustments the building required, such as a wood sealant to prevent "off-gassing" into the fabrics, and an air filter, there is little to maintain besides buying an occasional new shelving unit and paying the Internet and phone fees.

Along with lack of overhead, having an online business also has other benefits.

"There's a whole network of people that have like-mindedness on the Internet," Culp says.

Indeed, it was by chatting online that, just over two years ago, Bloyd made the first inroad into acquiring a serious inventory -- she discovered a company that was selling off its organic fabrics in bulk.

Taking a deep breath, the foursome spent close to $20,000 on their first major purchase -- 5,300 yards of natural and dyed knit fabrics "It's not that much, but for somebody who'd never bought more than four or five yards at a time, 5,300 yards was quite a lot," Bloyd recalls. Overall, that first year, the group went on to spend $50,000, Bloyd says, adding that the company's prices range from $2.50 to $16.50 per yard and cost the company, on average, about $5.50 a yard.

While it's difficult to speak of a profit margin on an average yard, as the prices of each type of fabric vary considerably, as do the quantities sold, the profit margin on less expensive fabrics is much higher than the profit margin on higher priced fabrics. It's not unusual, however, to make 80 percent profit, says Marguerite Kearns, NearSea's communications specialist and Culp's sister.

The next step was, through both a deliberate and evolutionary process, to define four highly specific target markets. "When we started out, it was more to provide a service to people who had home businesses -- a lot of work-at-home-mother type people... . And very quickly we went from that to being available to the home sewer. Then businesses came looking for us because of our Web presence [because] when they would search the Web for organic products, not much came up," Culp says.

Those businesses especially include manufacturers, fashion designers expanding a line, or specialty businesses -- for example, a greeting card company and a brewery that order organic fabrics to make T-shirts to advertise their naturally made products. Interior designers are also frequent customers.

People with health concerns and politically conscious consumers -- those who want to make a statement about trade or environmental issues through their clothing -- also soon evolved as markets.

"The whole market of people becoming conscious of organic fabrics is exploding right now," Culp says, adding that revenues tripled in their second year of business.

The decline of the U.S. dollar against the Euro has also contributed to foreign sales, Bloyd adds, noting that the company has customers throughout Europe and in Canada as well as in every U.S. state.

Consequently, although NearSea Naturals now has about 15 suppliers, it's constantly searching for more to meet demand. "A lot of the people we work with are small farms. We'll go to the farmers markets and find a source for organic yarn or we'll go to the Taos wool market and find a source," Bloyd says.

NearSea Naturals also has a few larger suppliers that it works with to maintain a consistent inventory in certain fabrics, such as organic cotton, which it buys largely from Texas.

But the fledgling company is still not in a position to be able to order large volumes from a mill, Culp says.

So, one way it acquires fabric is to collaborate with manufacturers who order in bulk or with designers who need small quantities. "We will get in on the tail end of those purchases," Culp says, explaining that mills have minimum order requirements. Consequently, if a manufacturer orders 6,000 yards of a fabric, the mill will tack on another 500 yards for NearSea Naturals. Similarly, if a designer wants just 500 yards of fabric, the mill will add NearSea Natural's order of, say, 3,000 yards of the same fabric to that.

"I have a working relationship with several manufacturers. They will either let me know that something is coming along or I will have them look out for me. It's just a back and forth dialogue really," Culp says.

"Some of the manufacturers know what we want. And if they can't reach us, they'll call the next week and say, 'So I had them stick another 500 yards in there because I know you'll want this fabric.' And they're generally right," Bloyd adds.

Such collaboration has the added bonus of enabling the company to acquire fabrics it wouldn't otherwise be able to -- for example, NearSea Natrals recently acquired a fine organic cotton rib knit milled specifically for underwear. It's easier to maintain and improve the variety of inventory this way, says Bloyd.

That inventory has grown from 50 fabrics in the first year to around 170. Stock has also been expanded to include notions, such as organic lace, elastic and trim. "We actually have many of [the notions] made especially for us. You cannot find them elsewhere," Culp says. The company has also added organic yarns -- to accommodate a resurgence in knitting -- and hemp fabrics, pre-made socks and blankets to its offerings. The next step, Culp says, will be organic underwear, T-shirts and, possibly, baby clothes.

A lot of people think of organic fabrics as being "granola," Culp says. But NearSea's stock is sophisticated and varied, including silks, colored cottons (cottons that are grown colored, not dyed), cotton hemp, silk tencel, flax and EcoSpun (made from recycled soda bottles). The fabrics are either the natural color of the fibers or dyed with low-impact dyes. "We've had customers buy our fabrics to make wedding dresses, to upholster couches, to make infant gowns, formal attire and children's play clothes," Kearns says.

That diversity and quality is the reason why the company was chosen to donate fabric to several top New York designers who've created "one-of-a-kind" garments for "Verdopolis: The Future Green City," a sustainable fabrics fashion show that took place in New York from February 8 through 11. Barneys New York will display the creations in its storefront.

"It's an extraordinary opportunity to promote the domestic production of sustainable fabrics, especially organic cotton. ... And it's a personal victory for our family," says Bloyd, whose son, a once fragile infant, recently celebrated his sixth birthday.