The family owned R-Collection has produced top quality, functional leisurewear for four decades. We are best known for the classic anorak, the perfect T-shirt and sweatshirt, all with unisex appeal. High quality, classic and timeless design.
Our garments are designed in Kajaani, Northern Finland, with inspiration from the surrounding nature. We want our customers to have clothing worthy of them whether wandering in the bustling city, in the midst of nature or on the university campus.
Our R-Collection products are designed to be visually pleasing to our customers as well as durable. As the quality of the materials is of utmost importance, the design is always based on the special properties of the materials used. We want our garments to survive long term usage and to be easily maintained. We also like to design timeless products, so we do not necessarily follow the latest trends.
The classic anorak is the base for several products. Simple design makes it possible for the garments to be suitable for both leisure and party, now and for years to come. Light for the spring, protective for the fall. With the change of seasons R-Collection exuviates its skin. As in nature: what is most valuable stays intact.
We want to make our products as close as possible. We design all our products in Kajaani. Once an idea becomes into a drawing, it is made into patterns and sown to a sample garment. The samples are further developed in Kajaani, enabling effective product development. The production ready garments are then cut, embroidered and printed in Kajaani and sent to Estonia for sewing.
There we have our own employee to guarantee the high quality of production and to ensure the local working conditions of the employees. Most of our products (about 90%) are manufactured in Estonia and Finland. We also strive to increase the transparency of our production because we believe that transparency is the key to a sustainable future.
We cooperate with two dyeing factories. Our anorak products are dyed and finished in Estonia and our sweatshirt and T-shirt material is dyed in Finland. Our knitted garments are made in Finland and Lithuania from Italian wool yarn. We only use mulesing free merino yarn in our products. We manufacture our silk products in Istanbul, where we found a small family business that really knows how to handle this challenging material. Our canvas bags and backpacks come from Portugal. Anorak bags are manufactured in Finland and Estonia from production surplus material. Socks and soaps are also made in Finland. Our woolen beanies come from Finland and Estonia, our caps from Estonia and downjackets from Türkiye. We regularly visit our factories and work on R-Collection's Code of Conduct that will guide our operations and decision-making.
It is really important to us that we enter into long-term partnerships. It is not in our interest to switch to new suppliers, but to carefully nurture proven partners. We have been cooperating with most of our suppliers for more than 8 years.
Some of our subcontracting partners:
Loksa Clothing Expert Ou, partners since 2012
Kaluritie 1, Loksa 74805 Harju maakond, Estonia
Sweatshirts and pants, T-Shirts
46% of all sewing production in 2019
OU Vivatex, partners since 2012
Lai 4, Valga, 68203 Valga maakond, Estonia
Jackets
33% of all sewing production in 2019
Velmard As partners since 2018
Tondi 17 b, 11301 Tallinn, Viro
Hats
2% of all sewing production in 2019
Garlita Joint Company, partners since 2016
Rinkūnų k. Garliavos apyl. sen. Kauno r. sav. Stadiono 2, LT – 53280, Lithuania
Knitwear
4% of all sewing production in 2019
Top Knit Oy, partners since 2018
Kankaanpääntie 10, 29810 Siikainen, Finlnad
Knitwear
2% of all sewing production in 2019
Zeki Mert Ipek, partners since 2012
Hürriyet, Rumeli Cd. D:No:42 D:6, 34250 Şişli/İstanbul, Türkiye
Silk products
3% of all sewing production in 2019
We contribute towards the environment by utilizing environmentally friendly materials in the delivery of our garments. We pack our orders in recycled paper packages made in Finland and avoid plastic in delivery. In stores and factories, we only use cardboard boxes that we recycle. Our price tags and labels are made from recycled paper and instead of plastic bags we pack our products in paper bags in our stores. Also, R-Collection Gift Cards are made of paper instead of plastic. The production and storage facilities in Kajaani utilize geothermal energy. Geothermal energy is renewable solar energy and therefore an environmentally friendly form of energy. In the future we are planning to calculate R-Collection's overall carbon footprint in our operations and start to reduce it.
We have cooperated with WWF by donating 10 euros for each Outa-anorak for the protection of Finnish forests.
Customer satisfaction plays an important role for us. If, despite proper use, there is a manufacturing error in our product within a reasonable time from the date of purchase, we will always try to repair it instead of throwing it away. We want to help our customers extend their clothing life and our shop staff will be happy to tell you about the proper care of clothes.
We recommend to recycle used clothes properly. Our customers can bring used R-Collection products back to our own stores for recycling. Clean and intact clothing can be resold or donated to recycling organisations. The lifespan of clothes can be extended with proper care and repair. An old garment can continue to live as a material of another garment. Fiber recycling or mixed waste is the last place for unusable textiles.
It is important for us that the materials we use come from accountable resources and we continuously strive to find new, sustainable ways of producing and manufacturing high quality, long lasting products. We use materials produced as close to us as possible, and we believe strongly in natural materials. In our classic products we utilize cotton fabrics. Our seasonal collections contain besides cotton, other natural materials, such as wool and silk, which are practical, high class and timeless.
Most of the materials come from European suppliers, such as Finland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and sometimes from Asia. For years, our traditional sweatshirts and T-shirts have been made from fabric made in Orivesi, Finland. We collaborate closely with our suppliers to develop fabrics that fulfill the high standards of quality that R-Collection demands.
We are constantly striving to increase the use of organic and recycled raw materials in our collections. Our goal is to use only organic cotton in our classic collection by 2022. In 2018, we changed the material of our anorak products to US COTTON and used organic cotton in adult and children's seasonal collections. We are currently working on the development of organic cotton anorak and other recycled cotton products. It is important for us that these materials meet our quality standards, so we will test them carefully. R-Collection believes that a durable piece of garment that you use for years to come is the most sustainable way of consuming garments.
We used the following sustainable materials in our production in 2019:
Organic cotton 3,8% of all materials used in the collection
Recycled cotton 2,75% of all materials used in the collection
Recycled polyester 2,75% of all materials used in the collection
Total 9,3%
In the future, we want to further utilize recycled materials in our production. We have implemented several development projects with educational institutions and other experts in the field, where we have explored new uses for our production leftover fabrics. Currently, we utilize our leftover fabric to make new products such as anorak bags, pouches and pillow cases. We organize annual pop-up sales events, where we sell leftover fabrics and we have also donated fabrics to educational institutions.
We want to make sure that no environmentally harmful chemicals are used in production. Our anorak, sweatshirt and T-shirt materials meet the requirements of the international OEKO-TEX® Environmental Standard 100. Dyeing and finishing treatments use standard non-toxic colors. We require the OEKO-TEX® 100 standard for most of our products whenever possible. OEKO-TEX® tests fabrics for pH, formaldehyde, pesticides, soluble heavy metals and chlorine compounds, preservatives such as pentachlorophenol and tetrachlorophenol, as well as allergenic and carcinogenic dyes.
We do not yet have a policy for the brand to eliminate all hazardous chemicals from the whole lifecycle and all production procedures to make the apparel? We are doing a research in our production processes and working towards this kind of policy.
PACKAGING
In our production processes we only use heavy cardboard boxes that are being used for 20 years now over and over again. The heavy cardboard boxes are piled on top of an euro pallet and then the whole shipment is wrapped in plastic. This is how we ship the ready cut fabrics first to the sewing houses in Estonia and this is how the sewing houses return the same boxes packed with ready made garments back to our warehouse in Kajaani. During this process we use 95% recycled cardboard boxes and 5% plastic that we recycle afterwards.
In the online orders we ship the products packed in a paper back with no plastic wrapping. The silk and knitwear are sometimes exceptionally wrapped in plastic depending on the delicacy of the product. 95% of the shipments we don't use plastic at all. The paper bags of online shipments are FSC certified and made of Finnish wood materials which are 100% recyclable. Paperipussi Oy is the company who delivers these paper bags for us.
In our brick and mortar stores we use Cabassi paper shopping bags with paper string as a handle. The shopping paper bags are made of PEFC certified paper and they are made in Finland from Finnish materials.
As a conclusion, 100% of the consumer packaging is made of FSC or PEFC certified paper. This is how we have packed our products for 8 years now and we find it efficient and sustainable way of packing products. At the same time, we are still finding new ways to reduce waste and we are considering the use of RePack packaging solution for the year of 2021 as one option.
In the near future we want to be more see-through with our waste materials footprint and implement concrete policies to minimize waste, by reducing, re-using and recycling, and through this work we want to decrease our waste footprint. We are looking for a partner who can help us to find out what our weak spots are and develop our waste reducing policy to a next level. We aim to give better answers to this topic by the end of year 2021.
We have received the European Regional Development Fund for the comprehensive development of Rockseri Oy. Development areas include the development of the company's internationalization capabilities and internal processes. Through the changes, the goal is to acquire new customers internationally, as well as to deepen the trust of loyal customers in the brand at home. Developing production processes, improving accountability and transparency, and developing printing and embroidery services are the main points of the project. The project will be implemented with the help of professionals and with new equipment investments.