From Rags to Riches

From waste, to wealth, to world-class

Rags2Riches is a social business enterprise creating high-end designer fashion masterpieces and home accessories that are ethical and eco-friendly. Rags2Riches empowers women of poor communities in the Philippines and recycles scrap cloths discarded by garments factories around the country.

Rags2Riches respects and advocates respect for the environment through “upcycling” discarded cloth scraps. The process is also the product as the company ensures that from the production to the market, the steps are both ethical and eco-friendly. They aim to engage the market in creative recycling and advocating for fair trade.

Each product comes with the Rags2Riches story of transformation and a handwritten signature of the mother who made the product.

How It All Began

It all started with an irritation, a social injustice, talented but marginalized women, and very passionate young professionals.

Payatas is the site for one of the Philippines´ largest dumpsites. It is also home to thousands of families. Most of these families live through scavenging, doing odd jobs, or taking advantage of contractual opportunities.

Payatas is also home to a large pool of mothers who stay home to take care of their children while their husbands work or look for work. Their time at home, and the garbage pile near their homes, presented several opportunities for extra income for these women. A few years ago, some of these women found scraps of cloth amidst the dump site and around their area. They started weaving foot rugs and rags out of these. Not long after, the trend grew into an informal cottage industry of rug-weavers.

Unfair trade found its way into this informal cottage industry. The mothers lacked the market access and information, and thus, relied heavily on middlemen. These middlemen started to source the scraps of cloth directly from factories. As a result, no scrap cloth could be found around the area that could be used for free anymore. The mothers had to buy their raw materials from a series of middlemen. They would then sell their finished rugs that they weave for days and weeks, to another set of middlemen who get bulk of the profit. The women, who could make around 8-10 pieces of rugs per day, only earned P1.00 per rug (around .02 Cents USD), as a result of this chain of unfair trade.

In 2007 group of young professionals from Life Directions was brought to Payatas by the Jesuit Brother who was assigned in the area. Together, they discussed the problem of the mothers and were able to propose initial solutions. At almost at the same time, a group of students from the Business Innovations Class visited the rug-weavers of Payatas. The group of students were able to identify the same problems and created a framework that is designed to direct the women of Payatas to the market.

And so the Rags2Riches team was born. During this time, the team helped the women improve the quality and style of the rugs and transformed them from multi-coloured to solid-coloured. The market´s response to the elegant and stylish rugs was remarkable. The first few bazaars of Rags2Riches during this time were sold-out and garnered positive feedback. The number of women members also slowly grew from 3 to 30.

In 2008 Rags2Riches was established as a for-profit corporation that aims to provide product development, marketing, sales, and community development services to the women of Payatas.