Word: bassing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This concept seemed like a no-brainer to Fair Indigo CEO Bill Bass, a former Army paratrooper raised in Knoxville, Tenn., who worked for the U.S. Department of Education before entering the business sector. "It's hard for me to feel right about not paying people fairly," he says. "But most apparel companies are focused on cutting the cost of production and see the people in their factories as commodities and replaceable parts." In 2005, Bass and three other executives from Lands' End, where he had been working as e-commerce chief, decided to leave the company...
Over the next year, Bass and his partners scoured the globe for factories that met not only their standards for clothing but also their standards for wages. In what Bass, 44, describes as a "long, arduous process," they interviewed employees, audited payrolls and spoke with owners. "Oh, yeah, it was hard," he says. "Because nobody does that. There was an initial disbelief we had to overcome in some of these factories...
...Bass and his colleagues eventually chose about 20 sites, most of which are family-owned and -managed and offer above-average wages and generous benefits. With their own capital, they assembled a staff of 30 (25 of whom used to work at Lands' End), but to this day, the founders still personally visit each factory on a regular basis. They also hand over 5% of the company's profits to the Fair Indigo Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving educational opportunities in the countries where the company's factories and co-ops are located...
...sustainable bamboo, the walls are covered in wood pulp, and the clothes are draped on bamboo hangers. Customers can scan the bar code of any item at an Internet kiosk at the center of the store to read detailed information about the factory in which it was produced. Bass hopes to open four stores a year nationwide starting...
Poetry doesn’t have the prominence it once did. Bass professor of English and American literature and language Louis Menand attributes the decline of poetry’s reputation to the increasingly more professionalized study of literature...