Our Ethics

At io, we’re not just committed to making awesome merino gear, we’re just as committed to doing the right thing at every step of the production process as well. Whether it’s the farms our merino wool comes from, the people who help make our garments or the environment, we’ve made every effort to ensure it’s not just the people who wear io who are better off.

From sheep to shelf

We call it ‘from sheep to shelf’ because we look at how we do things every single step of the way, from sourcing the wool where it all starts, right through to the finished product.

Ethical sourcing

When we source our wool, we have two key criteria. Obviously, we want the best possible quality wool to produce better quality garments. But we also want to make sure the sheep we take our wool from are being farmed ethically. Thankfully, it’s no coincidence the best quality wool almost always comes from the best looked after sheep. In our case, that’s 100% local Australian Merino wool and more often than not from farms we’ve dealt with for generations. Which means animal lovers will love our standards as much as our gear.

Ethical Production

Let’s be honest here, there are certain places on the planet where garments can be produced at a lower cost than others. And while that may be all well and good to keep costs and therefore prices down, sometimes that comes at a cost to the people who are making them. We’re not about to go finger pointing at any of our competitors, but let’s just say we handle our production differently to many of them. We care about the people who make our garments just as much as those who wear them. That’s why a big part of our production process happens right here in Australia. And our partners in places like Thailand and Fiji who help out with the spinning and manufacture all meet our ethical standards.

We love the environment

Most of the products we make get worn, including by ourselves, out there in the natural environment. Up mountains, in forests, down rivers... in amongst some of Mother Nature’s finest work. So it’d be pretty silly of us to do something to go and mess that up. Where would we wear our gear then, right? The good news is, Merino a totally natural fibre, so our Merino garments are already naturally better for the environment. And unlike some of those nasty synthetics, merino wool eventually breaks down to nothing when you’re done! For various performance reasons sometimes we add a non natural component to our garments (ie elastane in our compression leggings) but even then, we always add only as much as we have to and it's never to cost cut, but always to give then garment an extra performance feature. And, of course, we keep an eye our production processes along the way to make sure we keep Mother Nature as happy as our customers.

So, where do io go to make your clothes?

Well, as far as the production of our garments goes, it's a slightly involved answer.  And you can read more about our supply chain here. Our wool is sourced here in Australia, it's washed and combed in Thailand, knitted into fabric in either Australia or Thailand, then cut and sewn to our Australian design specifications in Fiji where we use fully unionized and ethical manufacturing companies. For the past couple of years, we've been involved with the Fashion Revolution's 'Who Made My Clothes' initiative which encourages people to be curious and ask clothing brands: who made my clothes? You can check out our version here, which goes into a little more detail about our supply chain. More recently we've added Sri Lanka to our list of manufacturing partners, but always only with places that continue to meet the same sort of ethical standards.