“That was something no one else was doing at that time.” It would literally be them making it and doing custom orders,” says Emson, who has been with the retailer for nine years. And we knew their line of like production. “We just started with 20 designers that were local, we knew them personally. The London flagship in King’s Cross has 12,000 square feet and three levels of items to discover-a veritable wonderland of ethical design.įounded in 2010 by brothers George and Henry Graham, Wolf & Badger has always prioritized designers that produce ethically.
This store only carries a fraction of Wolf & Badger’s over 1,000 designers.
Once people see the interesting products and read about the designers behind them, and realize there’s a whole store full of the stuff-silk pajamas, astrological jewelry, and cut crystal decanter and glasses, to name a few-they come in to browse. Website traffic is up by over 200% since December, and the brand has also been driving a lot of traffic to the store through Instagram product ads. It seems customers are responding positively to Wolf & Badger’s focus on unique, ethically made products. (Usually, the only stakeholders whose needs are considered are the shareholders.) Although Wolf & Badger is the first UK retailer to become certified, it does join a half-dozen neighboring Soho brand stores who have the certification, including Patagonia, Allbirds, Eileen Fisher, Veja, and Athleta. To qualify, a business must earn at least 80 points out of 200 related to how it impacts workers, customers, community, and the environment.
“Since the weather picked up a few weeks ago, it’s been great,” she says.ī Corp status is awarded by the non-profit B Lab, and has become a handy heuristic to help consumers identify which brands care about more than just profits. The B Corp certification, which took 14 months of meticulous documentation of their sustainability efforts to get, coincided neatly with New York’s springtime reopening. The joyous events they used to throw in support of up-and-coming designers haven’t come back yet.īut Emson’s mood was giddy. Downstairs, the bar made of upcycled gym floors had its liquor bottles behind lock and key. Emson was showing me around Wolf & Badger’s New York store, which shuttered for only a few months last year before reopening with a tasty selection of brightly-colored notebooks and pens where the non-toxic beauty products used to be, a nimble pivot for a year of introspection and germophobia.