Our Edmonton studio was born in 2017 to support the launch of our second-ever product: the Intrepid Unbelt. We discovered that, by cutting and sewing Intrepids in Edmonton, we could respond in real-time to customer demand - and grow our circularity initiatives. The YEG studio became our “belt hospital” that allowed us to introduce a lifetime warranty, and has served as our prototyping lab for upcycled Unbelts Loop products.

In 2023, we relocated our remaining sewing to our Edmonton studio, and now sew 100% of our products in Canada. You can read more about the big move here (and our nails and fails along the way here).

A woman in the driver’s seat and a team built of her ambitious neighbours, many of whom are family: we loved Ms. Ou’s story from the get-go.

We deliberately call her Zhongshan, Guangdong enterprise a studio instead of a factory because of its cozy scale - about 20 employees - and the closeness of its team. All are paid living wages and receive way-above-average vacation time. Ms. Ou comes from the same village as her team, and prioritizes time at home with extended families.

Lydia and Claire met in 2011, when Lydia was working for Unbelts’ first buckle supplier in Shanghai. Claire liked Lydia’s direct communication style and problem-solving spirit - so when Lydia set out to start her own factory a few years later, Unbelts followed.

Lydia’s flexibility with Unbelts' minimum order requirements has made it possible for us to try new buckle colours and styles with lower risk and potential waste. Lydia’s factory is, like our other component suppliers, located in Dongguan, Guangdong province, in south China.

Our Intrepid belt spent two years in development, mostly because of the difficulty we had finding an elastic supplier willing to use recycled PET yarn in their knitting machines. When we found Mr. Wang and toured his factory, we liked what we saw: employees who had been working there for years, not months; a bright canteen serving two meals a day; a clean, dust-free workspace; and a whole team devoted just to quality-checking finished elastic. We’ve worked with him ever since.

When you meet a factory owner who’s built an organic garden on his rooftop for employee use, you take a second look. Mr. Yeung and his team print our belts’ organic cotton care tags, embosses our Intrepids’ secret money pockets, and weaves our Classics’ phrase labels. Since we started working with him in 2016, he has also expanded into packaging production, and prints our Classics’ paper packaging components.