With backgrounds in fashion and economics respectively, Brisbane-based sisters Karina and Samantha Seljak knew they wanted to combine their skills to create a business that was both satisfying and socially conscious. Thinking about the circular economy and recycling textile waste, they turned their attention to one of Australia’s most celebrated and storied resources: wool. After months of researching the wool industry and textile production, they discovered a mill in Tasmania manufacturing heirloom-quality blankets and were able to turn its offcuts into wool blankets. They created a model whereby wool blankets could be returned to the mill to be remanufactured at the end of their useful life and be turned into new blankets. In 2016, Seljak Brand sold its first blanket and, since then, has diverted more than 7000kg of textile waste from landfill. 

Today, Seljak Brand wool blankets are made in Lithuania using factory-floor offcuts and post-consumer textiles, like old woollen jumpers, as well as in Geelong using deadstock yarn. Seljak Brand blankets can be recycled, and the company is working on a fully compostable offering. As owners of a social enterprise, Karina and Sam have also addressed the topic of closing the loop in textile production to more than 3000 people during talks and events.

Here, Karina Seljak explains the steps that led to the brand’s success.

Define Your Business Vision

Sisters Karina and Samantha Seljak manufacture beautiful wool blankets from recycled textiles.

My sister Sam and I had always felt compelled to work together. I had interned in fashion and came to understand the wasteful nature of the industry, and my sister had been involved in multiple social enterprise projects in Brisbane. 

We started exchanging stories about the interesting models we were seeing popping up that were challenging usual business practices. Wool had a very rich history in Australia and we came across a woollen mill in Tasmania that was able to retain its fabric offcuts and recycle them, turning them into yarn and then new blankets. 

That was really the story we wanted to share: that there are alternative ways of making products, consuming products and ultimately disposing of products – because our blankets can actually be recycled at the end of their useful life too.

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Do Your Market Research on Paper and in Person

We began our conversations with the woollen mill via email and phone calls, then had an on-the-ground visit. It’s important to see things physically and tangibly so you can speak to your suppliers in terms that make sense to them. It can be really hard to understand the origins of a product if you can’t see the machinery or know its context. 

We also went to India and learned about weaving on old-school fibre looms. And we looked at different social enterprises and circular economy models to understand which ones could work for us. We also did a lot of rigorous product research, competitor research and trend research. 

It was important to understand our industry’s broader ecosystem. If you’re an ecommerce business, for example, you’re also in shipping, and you have to absorb information about that as well.

Avoid Aiming for Perfection from the Start 

Karina and Samantha developed a strong business vision before launching Seljak Brand

At some point you have to take a leap of faith and try your idea. I’m a perfectionist, so if it were up to me I would have gone down the route of “this product must have no plastics in it whatsoever; we’re going to bind everything with a virgin fibre and not a poly” – maybe indefinitely! 

But we’re just two people, and we had very little experience in the industry and very little startup capital. So eventually you just have to start where you’re at. Then, as you grow and place larger purchase orders and have customers and [media attention], you can start to improve and try new things. 

Your Existing Networks Are Your Brand Ambassadors

Making sure our friends and immediate community knew what we were doing was really important. They became brand advocates because they bought the product and backed [us]. They were a really important circle of influence, almost like the first layer of the onion.

Build Your Brand Story and Cultivate Earned Media

A strong brand story and visual identity have helped Seljak Brand flourish.

Articulating our story and creating a really attractive brand was a really important step. We sat down with a designer to nail that brand story, do our first photo shoot and turn it into a visual identity that was attractive to people and got them excited. That got the media interested in us fairly early because we had a new story to tell. And there really is nothing like organic [media coverage] as a way to get your product seen through a third party lens – and attract their audience.

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Use Your Influence for Creating Change

There are two parts to Seljak Brand: the products and the social enterprise. Over time, the second part began taking on a life of its own. We now do quite a lot of thought leadership activity, like speaking to live audiences at Design Week in Sydney or Melbourne, or at social enterprise conferences, explaining how moving away from the take-make-waste approach is possible. 

Those events are really great because they’re not a sales mission at all – it’s about speaking about what we do in its wholeness. People come up to us after the event and they might say, “I’m a student and I want to do this sort of thing too” or “I’m learning about this at school.” Those moments are so inspiring for us – to know other people are also thinking about the impact they want to make. 

Invest in Knowledge 

As an ecommerce business, Seljak Brand has an advisory board it works with to fill skill gaps.

We had to learn a lot about industrial weaving when we started – that was a learning curve. But we also had to learn how to run a business. The world evolves so much more quickly than your early training can keep up with, so we’ve both been on a constant learning journey in parallel with running Seljak Brand on the day to day. 

I did a sustainability course in Sydney, which is now taught at the Sustainable Development Institute at Monash, and Sammy did a masters in sustainability leadership. Then we did the Macquarie Group and SEFA Partnership’s Kickstarter Program in 2018, which helped us scale Seljak Brand’s impact. We got mentoring from the team at Macquarie and pitched for funding at the end of the program, receiving $30,000 that we allocated to digital advertising. 

Fill in a Skills Gap With External Help

We use a pro bono lawyer and have an accountant on our advisory board who works with us on everything from tax to sales projections. And we also have a marketing team who help us with paid ads, particularly leveraging us across Facebook and Google. Then we took on our first staff member towards the end of 2021, who started as an intern, to help with our marketing content. 

Grow, but Don’t Outgrow Your Business Vision

Our plan at the moment is to expand the blanket range and we have an eye on a supplier in Italy who can provide 100% natural products, which we’re really interested in. We’ve also got composting projects running to make sure we try to develop a product that can be literally returned to the earth. Then, in terms of the market, we’re looking at entering the US – we’ve done some small-scale trials there. That’s a longer-burn project

We’re also always looking at new products that we might want to introduce; we have a long-running project called Beyond Blankets that we’re always tinkering around with, looking at what else we want to bring to market. But we have very stringent criteria around what we want to bring into the world, and, if anything, we’re digging our heels in even more about that. 

It’s a very exciting time to be in this space but we look at other brands’ and businesses’ journeys over time, and look at who’s able to pull through tough times, such as logistics crises, and it’s definitely highlighted the benefit of doing one thing well. 

You Need the Right Tools and Tech

We use laptops because we’re often on the move. When we’re in the office we use laptop stands and a separate keyboard and mouse, which are essential for proper alignment. Same with a good work chair; if you're sitting for long periods you have to have one that looks after your back.

We use cork boards for design concepts and range planning and Sharpies for brainstorming – we often get all our ideas down on big sheets of paper so we can see our mind maps visually. We keep scrap paper for taking notes and writing lists, but use Post-Its as a way to keep things concise. And we couldn't get our product out to customers without a reliable label printer for barcoding and printing professional shipping labels efficiently.

What To Try

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This article was originally published in 2022 and has been updated.