Why La Romi?

Without really realising it we have build up a lot of benefits for not only our customers but their littles and even the environment and world health too. I wanted to put all of these in one place as an overview to why our little side hustle is not only different but much better from quality to ethically.

Truly Handmade

There isn't any dropshipping or outsourcing of production. We make everything in London and source our fabric from around the world. Sadly most of the fabric with amazing patterns aren't available in organic cottons. But at least we can nearly completely eliminate child labour and terrible working conditions where we can, sadly not everyone is transparent on the web selling/manufacturing fabrics.

You-centric

Try going to Primark or 99% of brands and ask if they can get you a specific fabric you have fallen in love with and 99% of those times it will be a no. Scale and mass market locks big brands into specific lines a less and less flexibility. Starting small and wanting to continue that mindset means working with you to bring products and patterns that show off you. We are not too bothered about being vanilla to everyone but being amazing to a small selection :)

3% to fighting Neglected Tropical Diseases

Over half a billion people are vulnerable to neglected tropical diseases that in the first world (what a terrible term) we take for granted and have vaccines for. It takes as little as $0.55 for a year of medication and vitamins and so even 3% of your order can make a massive difference to several people just from your order alone.

Over 750 years worth of vitamins have been paid for so far and thats only from when we first started.

Eco Friendly Packaging Is A Must

This is written up in more detail about the 100% recycled biodegradable mailer bags we use. In short we want to limit wasteful packaging and where possible and practical reduce plastic and even excessive cardboard packaging.

We have opted for always wrapping out products in a purple tissue paper and using either the biodegradable mailer bags for smaller orders or recycled cardboard boxes for large orders.

Showcasing Everyone's Beauty

We want to use this platform we are building to help support our communities that interact with us. Whether this is for supporting down syndrome month and making special products to showcase this with custom embroidery. We also want to showcase all the people that love our products and support their journeys too.

Range of patterns and customisation

Making every order from scratch allows us to tailor many things to how you want them. We have standardised templates of course as you don't want to go through a million options every time you purchase but from custom embroidery of logos and writing through to special sizes for products, we got you covered :)

Cheap materials don't really help anyone :(

Cheaper materials like just normal fleece instead of our dimple minky fleece fabric do mean you can get more but at a different cost. Also cheap in our experience ends up meaning questionable sources with even more questionable working conditions. We do look for bargains but always have the policy of maximum quality and sustainability in our minds. 

Paying a living wage

It's easy when you are starting out to try to cut as many costs as possible to make yourself competitive which often results in minimum wage jobs as you grow. Then when companies get bigger having already established a low pay policy there is no incentive to scale pay up.

After all if you can't pay your first employee £2 more an hour than scaling that up when you have 100 employees it's even harder to look at £200/hour extra when you are in theory getting the same output.

From the start we have gone in line with the National Living wage which is how much a person in the UK needs to earn to have a decent standard of living and stay away from the growing amount forced into poverty. We are working our way towards to London Living wage which is more because the city is so expensive. We are likely not always going to be based in London so having the national wage seems fitting for now :)

This means our staff are happier at work and more productive.