The Journey of Outlery - Outlery

The Journey of Outlery

Hello there, welcome to our blog!

We hope you are doing well - both mentally and physically. Adjusting to this ‘new normal’ has been FAR from easy so remember to immerse yourself in a bit of self-care 🌻. Trust us, you’re doing great!

We want to take this opportunity to thank our growing family of 40,000 eco-warriors for making Outlery what it is today and share our story.

It all started with a thought to replace single-use plastic cutlery...for Mother 🌍 needs us to step up and take a stand!

We’re drowning in a sea of plastic cutlery - BILLIONS of spoons, forks and knives are thrown away each year after being used merely for minutes. Just like other plastic items (including bottles and bags), pieces of single-use plastic cutlery can take CENTURIES to break down naturally. This gives plastic waste enough time to work its way into the environment and eventually our food chain.

2018:

And so we rolled up our sleeves and put on our thinking hat. The idea was to create something that is not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. Portability was another functional aspect we needed to pay close attention to. 

Just as we were about to run out of hats to wear and sleeves to roll, the design was finalised and we started looking for production partners. Our initial plan was to find one in either the US or the EU. However, since our production process required manual work, labour arrangement was becoming tricky and we were unable to find any factories capable of fulfilling our requirements.

Hence, we had to look at China. We flew to China and spent 2 months visiting factories and observing if they had good practices in place (fair wages, human rights laws compliance, etc.).

And finally, after 2 months of intensive research and scrutiny, we signed up a factory in Guangdong Province. 

May 2019 - July 2019

Excitement galore, we launched Outlery on Kickstarter 🚀 and much to our surprise, we raised $1.2M in ONLY 2 months! Mother 🌍 was on our side 🌿. 

July 2019 - December 2019

Spurred on by the love and feedback we received, we were determined to evolve and move forward. We continued to tweak the design of our cutlery🍴, chopsticks and box packaging…and perfected it.

January 2020

Then came the day we had all been waiting for - our first lot was shipped to the first wave of eager eco-warriors! Humbled by the overwhelming response, we pledged to work even harder ☘️. 

However, the World had other plans. Nature took its course and EVERYTHING came to a standstill. All of a sudden we were living through a pandemic as our warehouses closed down and shipping was halted.

When things started picking up again, we adjusted our work processes in accordance with the new normal. This is when we came across a pressing problem. Our cutlery was getting scratched inside the box since there was no individual cover for each piece 😔. 

We asked the factory to cushion the pieces and much to our surprise, they wrapped the cutlery in plastic material... This had to be dealt with right away.

Our team members set off ✈️ to China to resolve this issue. Staying there for 2 months, they finally cracked it: we now use recycled fruit paper to protect the collapsible pieces of cutlery. 

Perpetual evolution is our motto at Outlery. In order to decrease our shipping times and further reduce our carbon footprint, we worked endlessly to set up warehouses around the world. Our US warehouse ships to US customers, the UK warehouse ships to UK customers, the NL warehouse ships to the EU and the AUS warehouse ships to AU and NZ. The China warehouse takes care of the rest.

Once warehousing and shipping was sorted, we launched our website in October 2020 and sparked an #EatResponsibly revolution. Since then we have sold more than 100,000 sets. Which means together we have prevented 550 tonnes of single-use plastic from polluting our oceans and endangering wildlife. 

And we’re only getting started…


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