Meet Liam Cooper | Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Liam Cooper and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Liam, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
We wanted to start a brand that focuses on using natural materials wherever possible over synthetics and plastics. Inspired by the outdoors and nature wooden sunglasses is really where we wanted to spend our efforts.

What should our readers know about your business?
We really do try to think differently and really focus on natural materials. When we created our hemp T-shirt range. We firstly had to source the hemp to make them to our cut after speaking to maybe 40 suppliers we found one who could help. Then we wanted to print using natural inks luckily we had a friend who could help. The whole process was time-consuming and make the product more expensive than say just a standard cotton t-shirt. Designing the wooden sunglasses and finding someone to create them for us again was challenging. We wanted to make them in the UK however the sustainable wood was being shipped from Asia so after some calculations, it was more carbon efficient to ship the final product. Explaining all this in a succinct way is incredibly challenging.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My partner is a designer and she always pushed the creative side of things. Using a mentality of being different and slow fashion over big brands. She’s spent many a weekend on market stalls around Manchester and London.

Website: Oldyouth.co.uk

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