So many people do business with China never knowing where it comes from,” says Jasmine Fullman, founder and CEO of apparel company Naturally Knotty. She says the best way to maximize sustainability in the world's manufacturing capital is to be on the ground.

Fullman started her company, which makes stylish scarves and bags out of natural fibers, in 2007 in Shanghai. In 2009, she moved the company to Oregon and partnered with major American retailers. But she maintains a hands-on approach in China to, as she puts it, “do the right thing,” which for NK means not bending over backward to be green, but taking a thoughtful approach that may help open doors for other environmentally conscious companies working with China.

Five years ago, Jasmine's husband, Mike Fullman, was a marketing director for a technology company. She began to notice black bags of scrap materials outside of textile factories and designed clutches that could be made from the fragments she found. “It was huge for me as an artist living there where you can have any kind of a sample made within 24 hours,” she says.

Soon, Jasmine was buying scraps in bulk, and by the time the family returned to their home state, Mike had become full-time COO of Naturally Knotty. When retailers like Coscto, Whole Foods, Target and Wegmans began carrying the products, Jasmine reluctantly let the scrap designs go, but continued using natural fibers and overstock materials. Many items, such as a bamboo-fiber shawl and other wraps, were ready to scale.

What's most genius about the bamboo shawls is the packaging. The long and wide scarf comes rolled in a bamboo tube that makes a great storage container for things like spaghetti. Best of all, it doesn't require plastic around it. There's an aesthetic joy in offering a product made of and packaged in bamboo. Unfortunately, despite how renewable bamboo plants are, chemically manufactured bamboo fiber is very soft, but not terribly green. However, NK uses Tenbro, a Chinese company that uses a different process called solvent humidity modulus to produce the soft stuff without any water waste or harmful gasses. 

In fact, all the facilities on the NK supply chain are hand-picked by the Fullmans. They've visited the Fujian Province bamboo factory and forest where their shawl tubes come from, and the Inner Mongolia farm their cashmere yarn comes from. Too many goats in too little space can cause desertification, making dust storms a big problem in the region, so Jasmine wanted to check it out.

“They are absolute about trying to preserve their ecosystem up there,” she says. She was pleased to find that the goats move freely and have plenty of space. “It keeps them happy and doesn't damage the terrain.”

Like most American companies in China, NK contracts with local manufacturers. “I know that the factories I use have bunch of certifications, but those change every year,” Jasmine says. Reports of labor abuses often come out of factories that have their paperwork in order, so for Jasmine, seeing is believing. She talks with workers when she visits several times a year, “They are happy and they are so grateful for the work.”

NK hires its own employees to do packaging in Shanghai and focuses on hiring older women, who are often left out of the Chinese workforce. They keep about 10 people on staff there, and just 1-2 employees in the US besides the Fullmans themselves. Their business is extremely streamlined, considering the amount of volume they do―it's paperless and has no office. It all runs on a software program Mike designed using the wisdom gleaned in his previous corporate life. The software itself will soon become a product for sale.

Kathy Long Holland, a business consultant with LongSherpa who has worked with NK since its founding, says sustainability isn't so much a conscious choice for the company, “it's just in the DNA and how they've structured it themselves.” As a former division head for Nike in the '80s, she goes way back with China, and says she isn't surprised that the Fullmans are able to find companies that meet their sustainability concerns. “At the end of the day,” she says, “the suppliers in China are responsive to the companies that hire them.”

That doesn't mean there isn't some finagling involved. Mike says that when NK makes a special request, their suppliers “do push back.” He recalls when he began asking about the plastic lamination that covers NK's tote bags, “That became a really complex conversation real quick.” Ultimately, he learned that the more sustainable option turned yellow in a couple of years, so NK went the conventional route. But at least the conversation was started. “Every time someone asks a question and pushes for better options, it opens the door a little,” he says.So many people do business with China never knowing where it comes from,” says Jasmine Fullman, founder and CEO of apparel company Naturally Knotty. She says the best way to maximize sustainability in the world's manufacturing capital is to be on the ground.