Saitex makes clothing, and money, without poisoning the environment

How Saitex uses environmental data to tell their story

It’s not for nothing that Everlane, Eileen Fisher, G-Star Raw, Madewell, Tommy Hilfiger, and many other world-class clothing brands have their products produced at Saitex. This Vietnam-based denim manufacturer is known as the most sustainable factory in the world.

Meanwhile, the company has grown into a company with more than 4,500 employees producing 20,000 pairs of jeans every day. It is their innovative, technology-driven approach to sustainability that has enabled Saitex to acquire big names. Despite everything, however, the name is not yet known to the general public. And they want to change that.

It’s certainly not weird if you’ve never heard of the company. You can’t find their labels in the jeans. Small-scale brands start revealing their supply chain. However, Saitex’s story does not yet end up with the consumer. The producer cannot distinguish himself well when they are different from the competition.

They invested $2 million in the water system alone to prove it’s not only possible to make environmentally safe blue jeans, but you can turn a profit doing it. And it’s not just recycling: Their solar-powered plant doesn’t use fossil fuels, relying instead on biomass generators that burn wood shavings and coconut husks. Eco-friendly washing machines bleach fabric with minimal water.

In sum, They use less than a liter to make a pair of jeans where traditional processes require 80 times that much. The factory even received LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the only jean-maker in Vietnam to earn it.

“This is what we want to deploy in the U.S.,” the chief executive of Saitex International, Sanjeev Bahl says as he walks among some of his employees during a November check-in. They rush around him, crisscrossing a spotless factory floor illuminated in part by natural light from transparent panels in the roof.

And the bottom line for all this high-mindedness? Saitex’s green strategy is in the black. The company saves $1.7 million each year compared with similar-size competitors, Bahl says. “It would be quite easy for other entrepreneurs to follow this methodology,” he says, “if they understand that this is profitable.”

Continuously making a momentum going, they feature the latest technology to manufacture and cut jeans. From Ozone treatments to lasers, Saitex is fast becoming the factory of the future. However, the new technology is not yet used for every order. When a designer of a clothing brand makes a design, it inherently affects the methods that can be used. A designer simply doesn’t have the tools to make his decision based on environmental impact.

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