After nearly 10 years of traveling with old threads and jeans, young girl Bui Thi Kim Ngan has turned "fashion waste" into resources, contributing a new voice to the sustainable creative flow of young Vietnamese people.
The advantage of jeans recycling
The fate of Kim Ngan's recycling job came very naturally but meaningfully. For her, 2013 was the milestone marking an uncertain end after a health incident. During her recovery days, her sister gave her an old clothes bag to "fight". Ngan said: Jeans are too thick and stiff, I cant make clothes for my baby, so I came up with the idea of making a bag. I made a size tote A4 bag for my sister to go to school.
From there, she saw old jeans as not waste but a resource, as well as herself - if she changed her perspective, everything could be reborn. The simple but strong point of view made her spend nearly a decade pursuing a material that was considered "difficult" in recycling.
Initially, Renewjeans (RnJ) was just a non-profit project called Rescue the Old jeans. Ngan exchanged 6 jeans for a handmade tote bag for the exchanges. Transportation, additional materials, tools... all cost her many months of paying for her bag. But Ngan persevered, nurturing the dream of bringing these handicraft products to more people. As the number of jeans she collects skyrockets, she begins to commercialize so that the project can support herself.
Starting out as a bachelor of electronics and telecommunications, Ngan faced double pressure: Lack of vocational skills and lack of tools. The family sewing machine cannot handle thick fabric, the trays of pants are full of nails, making it difficult for the product to form. Ngan travels to craft villages around Hanoi to find people to show off sewing techniques and then finds out each needle and each style. She is determined to spend many years turning difficulties into skills.
At the same time, old jeans continued to pour in. Ngan estimates that the team has "rescued" more than 10,000 pants - a number that is enough to say that fashion waste, if properly viewed, is a source of ingredients that never go out. She considers the decision to pursue this market as a visionary choice: Starting a business must start with solving a social problem before telling a business story.
That choice does not always receive consensus. The family was worried when she turned away from her training. Social media public opinion divides into 3 flows: Support, indifference and opposition.
But Ngan just smiled and looked forward. She said: "If society does not recognize it, it means I have not tried hard enough".
Green startups become a trend
More and more young people are considering sustainable consumption as a way to live. In that context, renewjeans' journey has become a compelling testament to the fact that green startups are not a games of desire but can create real value. Ngan affirmed that her current job gives her a stable source of income, reinvestment and moreover opens up new connections with the creative community at home and abroad. To date, Ngan has opened 5 stores in Hanoi, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City.
However, for a recycled product to survive in a fiercely competitive market, being beautiful or unique is not enough. Ngan believes that the decisive factor is the reason for the brand's existence. RnJ operates according to a simple philosophy: internal discipline, tolerance, love between members and care for every small detail. Those values create identity, something that no opponent can copy.
For young people struggling with capital, skills or experience, Ngan does not give great advice. She just packed it with a belief she had brought since the beginning: "If you believe in yourself, everything the world says about you is not important."
In the future, not only producing bags, wallets or accessories from old jeans, Ngan and her colleagues are aiming for an experience workshop model for businesses and tourists. She wants to turn the story of recycling into a cultural journey, where each person can directly cut, graft, and touch layers of jeans that have traced back time.
As for consumers, Ngan does not expect to change their habits overnight. What she did was to let the product tell her own story.
The clearest statement for customers to believe in the green startup model is that your products and journey must be valuable and believeworthy - Ngan shared.
