Fashion: Sustainable, Equitable, Comfortable

Cathy Paraggio, business development expert gone eco-fashion entrepreneur. With a background in building product management and product improvement teams and campaigns. Cathy brings a unique approach to the fashion industry. During this journey, she has seen how hard the textile industry is on the environment. And as a result, she charted a new path by using post consumer content, as well as offsetting carbon impact through reforestation and ocean plastic prevention. She's got a lot of ideas and experiences to share! NoNetz.com
 

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Transcript

Triple Bottom Line | Episode 22 | Cathy Paraggio |

[Upbeat theme music plays] 
Female Voice Over 
[00:03] Welcome to the Triple Bottom Line, where we reveal how today’s business leaders are reaching a new level of success with a people-planet-profit approach. And here is your host, Taylor Martin!

Taylor Martin 
[00:17] Hello. Welcome, everybody. I have Cathy Paraggio on today. She is the founder of NoNetz activewear. She has a lot of experience with business development. We are going to hear from her and her story and how she got to start her company and how she went from a career of business development into starting her own brand. Cathy, can you tell our listeners how you ended up creating this brand and what was the genesis for it?

Cathy Paraggio
[00:47] Sure. This was a total, total accident. My background is in computer science. I designed and installed global networks my entire corporate career. And then I had a persistent cancer diagnosis so it just kept coming back and coming back and I knew I had to leave corporate. So I had a lot of surgeries and treatments, and as a result, it left me without a voice for years and at home with a small child. It was at this time I realized that I was an artist and I taught myself stained glass and I started doing residential home commissions. And that was kind of interesting until a group of women who were in the neighborhood, they were like, “Oh, we hear you have business experience. Do you want to do something?” I was like, “You know what? I would like to do something,” just to keep my head active. I went from the director of Northeast to stay-at-home mom in the suburbs. I lost my identity, lost my voice. Like it was a very – it was a very tough shift for me. This was nice to think about. I wasn’t sure if it was viable.

So we stood around, and because I really couldn’t talk that much, I became a keen observer of uncomfortable people. And as a result, we stood on beaches, in water parks, golf courses, where people were vacationing, I observed that they were super uncomfortable, especially men and boys. They were so uncomfortable. And that sparked NoNetz. It was like the genesis of, okay, I can create something to solve this problem. I’m a problem solver. That’s what I did designing networks. Then with the stained-glass stuff, it was the same kind of thinking, panels of fabrics, panels of glass, what would go together. And then the technical side of things was really my strong point. NoNetz really combined all of my strengths because I was a very technical computer person. Website design, logo, digital ads, all of that really spoke to my sweet spot. So I was pretty interested in this.

Super hard, fashion, manufacturing, all of that, very, very challenging. Being an entrepreneur is very challenging in itself. It’s kind of a hero’s walk. You’re alone. But it’s very rewarding when it works, when you gain market traction, when you create something out of nothing and people are like, “I dig this. I am into you. I feel you,” that really feels good. It feels so much better than just a corporate paycheck. It’s a lot harder, but it feels better because you’re actually doing it. Then what happened with the women that I started the company with, they both had full-time jobs. They were like, “You’re doing everything anyway.” Another woman got sick. They were like, “What do you want to do?” I was like, “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” And then my son came to me. He was 16. He said, “I want to study music in college.” I thought, oh, that’s a terrible idea. [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[Laughs]

Cathy Paraggio
[04:13] What are you doing? But I instantly regretted that. That was his superpower. He could always play anything. So I bought the other women out of the company formally. I brought Chris in full-time to use NoNetz to teach him that anything could be a business. And I think the reason most creatives fail is because they don’t understand the 360 of a business around whatever you’re selling. If it’s music, if it’s swimwear, if it’s ping pong, whatever is in the middle, it’s the same business components around it. So what started off as a hobby, because this was definitely a hobby just to keep my head together so I didn’t lose my mind, but once I brought in Chris, he was super. He was a natural at the social media side, of course. And he had some natural biz dev talent as well. So between the two of us, it really took off. Like it became a serious business. And then he got accepted to NYU Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and that is – that tuition bill is breathless, let me tell you.

Taylor Martin
[Laughs]

Cathy Paraggio
[05:27] [Laughs] And without NoNetz, there was no way he would’ve graduate without a loan. So really, NoNetz was fortuitous in two separate ways, not only to teach him, but it became a real business. It taught me. We went from being mentor and student to absolute working peers. And we became super close as we realized common goals together. I was like, wow, I’m really interested in how clothes are made. And I bet we could do this better. And whatever we did at NoNetz, he used for his own development. So it was a really nice parallel. And in two weeks, he’s graduating, unbelievably, without a loan. I mean, check and check, we did it. We totally did it from nothing.

Taylor Martin
[06:19] That’s a success story right there.

Cathy Paraggio
[06:21] I mean, it was super hard, especially with COVID. We went from just on top of the world, like we’ve got this. And here’s a little check. Whenever you think you’ve totally got something, I’ve got to tell you, it’s not true. [Laughs] 

Taylor Martin
[06:39] Amen to that. I can totally agree with that.

Cathy Paraggio
[06:42] When people ask me about, I talked a lot about COVID challenges, manufacturing, supply chains. You hear about that, but until it hits you personally, you don’t really understand what that means. So the best way I can describe it, especially for women out there, it’s like when you’re wearing heels and you’re feeling super cute, you’re walking in heels and you’re on the sidewalk, and you hit the cobblestone at the south end of New York City and you do that wobble, that’s exactly what happened to NoNetz. All manufacturing shut down at once. We have facilities in LA, Massachusetts because I wanted to keep it state side as much as possible to kind of bounce things out, and Thailand. They all shut down at once. LA never reopened, lost all those raw materials. Massachusetts got highjacked to make PPP gowns and stuff. And Thailand shut for months and months. We couldn’t get anything. We ran out of inventory in June of 2021. I have inventory stuck in customs right now that I ordered over a year ago that I can’t get through customs.

Taylor Martin
[07:52] Oh, my. That’s insane.

Cathy Paraggio
[07:54] It’s insane. I have inventory on the water for six weeks now I can’t get into LA. It is unbelievable. And to make more lines, not only has the minimum order quantities gone through the roof – for example, you used to be able to do like, I don’t know, 5,000 units. Now you must do 15,000 units before you get any attention. Finding thread, very difficult, very difficult to find thread right now. And I’m super particular because I test with autistic people and very texture sensitive people. I lean really hard into that community because I noticed they’re so uncomfortable.

Taylor Martin
[08:40] Yeah. When you said – when you’re talking about uncomfortable earlier, you were talking about they’re uncomfortable in their clothing, like the clothing that they were wearing at the beach, at the golf course, at the pool, it was uncomfortable for them. Right?

Cathy Paraggio
[08:54] Yeah. And usually, and it was so funny because even conducting interviews with people, and old couples, married like 50 years, the women would turn to her husband and say, “Is that why you don’t like the beach, because you get a rash and you wouldn’t tell me?” Like men don’t really talk about this. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m going to just suck it up. I’m going to deal with it.” And you see so many crying boys because of that inner thigh rash. Then the mom never gets peace at the beach because she’s always tending to the husband or tending to the kid or getting an ointment. No one is at peace when you’re supposed to be on vacation having a good time. And again, like on the golf course, I always see guys are always pulling at their – all the time, you’re always pulling at your clothes. You’re totally uncomfortable all the time.

So the polos I designed, everything I designed has the least amount of stitches against your skin because the texture sensitives can’t handle that. I use a special kind of thread. Everything I use is super soft. Especially if you’re in the water, texture sensitives hate the cling. Nothing will cling to you. It’s water resistant. The rash guards I make from reclaimed fishing nets. They’re naturally water resistant. They hang. I put a skin safe zipper on with a rubber pull. It’s totally covered, won’t go by their skin. But they can adjust it so it doesn’t cling so they don’t get that trapped crazy feeling. It’s my observations that lead me to these kinds of designs. I have a lot more designs in mind. If supply chains were a little more less volatile, I would have some more product diversity at the moment, but I do have some more interesting designs coming, like I want to make leather jackets out of mycelium. And that is such a – mycelium, by the way, is a substrate that mushrooms grow on.

Taylor Martin
[11:05] Yeah. We just had a podcast about mushrooms a couple of weeks ago.

Cathy Paraggio
[11:10] Textiles, I found a mill that uses spider silk. Right? Or Japanese paper yarn, super interested in that. It’s led me down a path that I would love to redefine yarn, the yarn itself. I really think our clothing should do more than hide your naked body. It should solve a problem, whether I’m making it out of recycled plastic, good for the earth, solves a problem on you, nonirritating, good for you. But what if I could do something else? Like reduce the amount of times you would need to wash your clothes where nothing would stick to it or – there’s so many opportunities here because the textile industry is so hard on the environment. The more I learn, the more I’m like, oh, there’s so much room here to be better. We have to do things differently. The biggest thing about that is you can’t be afraid to fail. I fail all over the place. I mean, I’ve had so many – I took, you know that huge plastic island that’s floating around in the ocean?

Taylor Martin
[12:27] Yeah.

Cathy Paraggio
[12:28] Right? So I worked with a mill out in LA, took some of that plastic, and tried to work with that. Can I make something out of garbage while cleaning the ocean? What can I do? How big can I – how many problems can I solve? This is my line of thought. I had a sweatsuit in mind. I have a relationship with a company and I can weave in a temperature management thread, but if I can make it out of garbage and then manage your temperature in two directions and have it be a sweatsuit, for me, that’s a nice karmic circle. I failed at this three times now. I have three prototypes. They fail every time. The plastic is so unstable that the material peels instantly. You rub your arm together – once the supply chains settle out, I’m going to tackle that again in a different way. But I think that’s what experience is. Right? You fail all the time and you just get back up and you try it again.

Taylor Martin
[13:31] You fail forward.

Cathy Paraggio
[13:33] Yeah. And really, on my face. I feel like I should wear a cane on the daily. [Laughs] I feel like I should walk around with a cane.

Taylor Martin
[13:42] Go for it.

Cathy Paraggio
[Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[13:45] You said something earlier that I want to come back to because I really resonate with it. When you talk about having people try out the products that are skin sensitive, people that might have some sort of condition. We design for people with disabilities. The thing I find so universal is that when you solve problems for them, it exponentially helps everybody else out.

Cathy Paraggio
[14:14] Correct.

Taylor Martin
[14:15] And that’s exactly what you just said. I was like that’s what I’ve been trying to tell people for years. When you make a website, for instance, accessible, it improves the user engagement across the board, everybody.

Cathy Paraggio
[14:27] But what’s also – we’re going to wander into the weeds a little bit here, in case you want to pull me back in. But what I also find super interesting about people with these kinds of disabilities, a lot of these kids, they have superpowers. Even though they are very, very sensitive, a lot of times, they are myopically bright in one area that is just mind-blowing. And although the rest of society discounts them and dismisses them, and they have a tough time, they are a weird puzzle piece fitting in, they have a ton to offer. We have to change. We definitely have to change how we look at people with disabilities, because wow, these kids are off the hook, off the hook.

Taylor Martin
[15:20] Yeah. And it’s like the problem, we’re solving problems, like you said. I always make the joke of Velcro. Why do we have Velcro? Because we tried to send a man to the moon. And in so doing, Velcro was needed. That was the problem and the solution was Velcro and now we all have Velcro.

Cathy Paraggio
[15:37] Right. And even talking with, like a lot of times, before COVID, I would test with nonverbal autistics. If they want to sleep in what I’ve designed, everyone wins. Right?

Taylor Martin
[15:51] Yeah.

Cathy Paraggio 
[15:52] But a lot of times, if you really observe these kids, one kid just wanted to play with the leaves, loved the feel of leaves. Right? Turns out he was an amazing gardener. He was an amazing gardener. He intuitively knew what would grow better together just by feeling plants. I mean, I think these kids are super interesting.

Taylor Martin
[16:16] Hm, wow.

Cathy Paraggio 
[16:18] I think if we take a step back and just reimagine what we think is normal or acceptable in new creative ways, I think we’ll all be better together. Instead of me and mine, more of us and ours.

Taylor Martin
[16:39] Amen. I completely align with that. When you were trying to find sustainable means to produce your fashionable items, how difficult was that to – I mean, was there a lot of options out there, like overwhelming? Or did you have to really sit there and make a lot of phone calls and emails? How’d that work out?

Cathy Paraggio
[16:57] It is super difficult. A lot of people greenwashing, if you’ve ever heard of that term.

Taylor Martin
[17:04] Oh, yeah.

Cathy Paraggio
[17:05] They’re like, oh, we’re green and then you lean into it and be like, do you have any certifications? Are you using child labor? Like really, if you really think about what you’re purchasing, you see all these ads running. I hate to single out brands, but like Old Navy and The Gap, if you’re buying something for $5, odds are a kid made that. There’s no way that supply chain is sustainable or fair, no way. It’s got to be you pay for it somewhere down the line. Bad dying practices, lack of environmental laws, we’re on the same planet. It all washes around. We’re all connected.

Taylor Martin
[17:43] Exactly. We’re all connected.

Cathy Paraggio
[17:45] Where you spend your money, even though I know that when you’re in survival mode, you can’t think about anything else outside of you. I get that. I’ve been there, done that. But when you can look up and you see that all of this has an impact, however you spend your money reinforces those practices. So when I was looking for, okay, who makes fabric out of recycled plastic, not who says they does but who can actually show me that the water bottles, the plastic, it’s being sorted, who can show me the supply chain, their supply chain of garbage? What is the certifications behind that? Are you OEKO-TEX certified? Are you Bluesign certified? These are real certifications. That’s why I really don’t do business with China at all. I can’t verify anything. I’m sure there are Bluesigned and reputable places in China. I’m not saying that. I haven’t found them, super difficult.

Taylor Martin
[18:52] Wow. How many different certifications are out there in the fashion industry? I really don’t know.

Cathy Paraggio
[18:59] I really don’t know either. Those are my – OEKO-TEX and Bluesign, those are the top. That’s what I go for. Then you have to – you have to prove to me that you’re not using kids. That everybody is getting a fair paycheck for that region. In the US, it’s a little easier, but I’ve got to say, the US is a fortune to make it in. If I make my line, my boys’ line, they just raised their rates in Massachusetts again, that’s going to cost me – that will cost me $30 a unit to make for a boy’s bathing suit.

Taylor Martin
[19:34] Wow.

Cathy Paraggio
[19:35] That’s no margin for me at all. I always like to entertain the discussion of made in the USA. I believe in it strongly.

Taylor Martin
[19:45] I do too.

Cathy Paraggio
[19:46] But there has to be a balance. Is there – made in the USA to an investor makes me look like a bad business person, like I don’t understand my numbers. Right? Because no one is going to – very little of our population is going to pay $90 for a boy’s bathing suit that’s going to last one season because they’re going to grow. But that’s what I need to pay people, to store it. That’s what I need to run my business. So if there was like an other side of this, if there was a tax credit, if there is something I could hang my hat on so it wouldn’t look so bad on the numbers. If I sold it for $40, which is what I sell my swimwear for boys, and made $10, I lose money. There’s no way I can run the business. So there has to be some kind of balance there. I don’t have an answer for that. Just wanted to raise the point. I’m always thinking about it, because again, my carbon footprint. I’m putting these in a container. I’m shipping it halfway across the world. That can’t be good either. But it’s cheaper for me to do that than make it here. That’s ridiculous.

Taylor Martin
[20:59] I agree. I always feel that that’s ridiculous. If you can’t make it within 500 miles of where you live, there’s something wrong with our system.

Cathy Paraggio
[21:08] There’s something wrong. I don’t know how to fix it, though. Really, I think about I keep moving this one square piece around in a circle. [Laughs] I can’t make the numbers work. I don’t know. If you have any ideas, let me know. Because it is very, very difficult. Plus my pattern is very complicated. It’s not – the waistband is lined. Manufacturers call it the origami of patterns because it’s a fold. It’s tricky. I use the least amount of stitching against your skin as each stitch is a point of potential irritation. So yeah. It’s hard. It’s expensive. I make it here, it’s three times as expensive.

Taylor Martin
[21:53] I think people should pay for it. I know you’re trying to make a certain cost margin there.

Cathy Paraggio
[22:01] It’s super hard, especially what is oil now, $6, over $6 a gallon of gas? I mean, people are feeling it. Food is super expensive. I’m very sensitive to all of that. I’m trying my best to balance it. I have to say, here’s my pet peeve, small business. We are a small business. People are like, “I’d like free shipping.” There’s a cost with that. Or, “I would like a discount code.” I would too. I would love a discount for my manufacturing. Every time a customer asks us for something, we have to make a decision. We have to really – all right. What are we going to cut? Do we cut like – maybe we don’t go forward with our help desk package. We always have to keep our cost low. And every time someone asks us for something free, it costs us. And we don’t grow. We stay like this. So if you really want to support small business, don’t ask us for anything. We’re doing the best we can.

Taylor Martin
[23:12] I totally agree with that. I mean, your dollars are your voting tickets. I vote with my dollars. And when I know a small business like yours, for instance, like I was checking out those men’s swim trunks, I’m like, “I want a pair of those.” I don’t mind paying more for it knowing the story that, which you just told me is on your website, because I have to try it out. Because I do have like four or five pairs of swim trunks. And I’m not crazy about any of them, to be quite honest, especially that inner knit men have.

Cathy Paraggio
[23:45] Right? Exactly. I know. But as a woman, I didn’t really understand what the problem was until I saw all of these really crabby men, like little straight-lined faces, and all these crying children. I have a bunch more designs just based on observations.

Taylor Martin
[24:15] Observation seems like a big thing. We’ve talked about that many times on this podcast. We had a business anthropologist come in and that’s all she does is observe and take notes for hours on end in different areas of all different types of businesses and market segments. And her observations are what lead to huge, huge profitable solutions or cost savings or things of that nature. I don’t know. I’ve had other people on the podcast that keep coming back to observations. We really looked at the market and just observed and watched and saw and learned and then here you are.

Cathy Paraggio
[24:55] Well and that was really – because my whole career I was always managing, building, talking, teaching. Right? Not so much listening. I was always about, okay, we have to take that hill, we’re going to – and as soon as I couldn’t speak, that was some super contemplative time there. Very tough with a small child, very tough.

Taylor Martin
[25:23] Oh, I can’t even imagine.

Cathy Paraggio
[25:25] But even to this day, I can look at Chris and we absolutely – we communicate.

Taylor Martin
[25:32] Yeah. That’s your superpower with each other. [Laughs]

Cathy Paraggio
[25:34] Yeah. Yeah. Totally. [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[25:37] Hey, I noticed on your website you have cleaning oceans and planting trees section.

Cathy Paraggio
[25:43] I feel very strongly about that.

Taylor Martin
[25:45] I do too. Can you walk us through that?

Cathy Paraggio
[25:48] So as I was researching, especially when all of the manufacturing was shutdown and I’m trying to find different mills, not only different mills that will work with me, but I have to say as a woman, North Carolina mills not very friendly to women, very male-centric. So I would have Chris call. But when you’re trying to find mills to work with, you are understanding like really how damaging textiles are. So then I researched how does this happen? How does all the plastic wind up in the ocean? Why aren’t – are people just like willy-nilly throwing their bottles around? [Laughs] How does this happen? In southeast Asia, they don’t have adequate infrastructure, waste management infrastructure. So I don’t know, 80%, 90%, some large number of plastic enters the ocean there. So I found a group that would bridge me over to organizations and let me pick from companies, I wanted a woman company, especially in India.

Taylor Martin
[26:58] Good for you.

Cathy Paraggio
[26:59] To give impoverished women an opportunity to have their own employment and to be financially independent. So that’s what I did. I contacted with Green Worms they’re called and they employ women. They go house to house. They go on the beaches. They prevent plastic from going into the ocean. And they bring it to a sorting facility. And that sorting facility is sourced and different mills source from that facility. So again, a nice karmic circle for me, employing impoverished women, the fabric, plastic, it’s not in the ocean.

Taylor Martin
[27:35] Karmic circle, I love that.

Cathy Paraggio
[27:36] I’m always about doing more with the obvious. Right? How many times do you go on a website and they’re like, give me your email, 10% off, blah, blah, blah? I don’t know. I kind of feel like that’s just so intrusive. We’re consumers. We’re so fatigued. Like the world is like a little heavy right now. We’re getting tired of holding on to this load. And again, I’m always thinking like, okay, let’s turn this around. What can I do to capture an email to make it useful for good? So I contracted with a group of people, Indonesia, for forest reclamation. My goal is to have a NoNetz forest and to go visit that one day. But to plant mangroves because they capture the most carbon from the atmosphere. And for every email, I’ll plant one mangrove tree. And for every order, I take a portion of the profit of that order and I pay those Green Worms women to collect the plastic. I’m trying to keep it totally – every aspect, can I do it better? Can I do something positive? And can I do something to reduce? I’m a tiny company, but what can I do from my tiny vantage point to reduce my footprint to make the world a better place to make it more sustainable. So everything I do, I have been accused of overthinking everything, but what can I do to make it as positive as possible and to approach it from a new vantage?

Taylor Martin
[29:27] I completely align with that. My company’s name is Design Positive because we want to work with organizations that are doing something positive in the world, their community, or whatever. Wow. That’s really commendable. I personally buy a lot of trees wherever I can in different organizations that reach out to me. We just had a podcast on Haiti Tree Project. And it’s only been around for about eight years. They’re working to reforest Haiti because of natural disasters as well as manmade disasters that they’re cutting down too many of their trees. So I think we all – like you say you’re a small business, but I think we all need to just keep focusing, like what you’re doing, every little thing you do adds up because somebody else like you is out there like me and we’re all doing that little bit we can. And that’s how change really happens.

Cathy Paraggio
[30:18] Well and the more people not only talk about it but actually do it – there’s a large disconnect. Right? You could talk about it online. Yeah. It’s a huge problem. The west is burning down. We always have these 100-year storms every other month. I’m in the northeast. We got hit by a tornado. I mean, that never happens. The climate is changing. That’s super clear. The oceans, the coral reefs, we have to do something. We have to do everything differently. To do things differently, you have to take a risk. It can’t be all about making money. It can’t be. This gross capitalism has really had some devastating impacts. How much do you need? Really, how much do we need? So just manage your capitalistic instinct. Yeah. As a business, I have to make a profit. Do I have to make $1 billion? Is that my goal? absolutely not. I just want to make a fair living.

Taylor Martin
[31:26] Right.

Cathy Paraggio
[31:27] And along the way, how many other people can I bring? Together we stand. There are strength in numbers. Divided we fall. The 1% who has, whatever, all of the money of the world, whatever, that’s not cool. That’s just not cool. That’s not the way to go forward and bring the rest of the world forward. It’s not. It’s not the way.

Taylor Martin
[31:48] Yeah. We’ve been taking from the cookie jar for too long and not giving back, not putting cookies back in. People talk about, oh, we’re net neutral. I say great. That’s excellent. Now what are you doing to be net positive?

Cathy Paraggio
[32:00] What does that mean? [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[32:02] Well it means that they have a circular economy built into their own market and that they’re able to not infringe on the environment or to equal out, level out…

Cathy Paraggio
[32:13] Okay. That’s good. But now you have to take it one step further.

Taylor Martin
[32:18] Exactly. That’s my point. We are beyond the Rubicon here. We have to – we all need to do something beyond that. We have to bring that positive. We have to do that and more because we’re already in a deficit and we have to fill that hole.

Cathy Paraggio
[32:32] Right. And we have to hustle.

Taylor Martin
[32:34] Yeah. Exactly.

Cathy Paraggio
[32:36] We really have to hustle here. So, many times, I feel like – I belong to a lot of startup communities and I have mentors. I will listen to anybody, anybody who has more experience. And a lot of times, I feel like I’m just spitting in the wind. Everybody is like, oh, good for you. What do you have? Do you want to work? Do you want to collab on anything? I have some organizations. We could pull together. Not a lot of buy-in. I don’t know how much more that will take.

Taylor Martin
[33:14] Yeah.

Cathy Paraggio
[33:15] Sometimes it’s a lonely road. And that’s another thing about being an entrepreneur. It’s super lonely, especially when you go your own way. It’s super lonely.

Taylor Martin
[33:24] Yeah. I’ve got to tell you, though. The more the climate changes and the more our attention is forced to deal with it, the more we’re going to have to follow leads like yours and your company, like the people in the fashion. I know the fashion industry, I mean, every time I look into it, read articles, there’s so many people that are focused on sustainability for fashion but it’s not an easy solution. It’s a complicated problem. Just from your story alone just talks about how hard it is just to make swimwear.

Cathy Paraggio
[33:57] Well even like, okay, you think something as simple as T-shirts. Right? Because people are like, oh, you should do T-shirts and hats and blah, blah, blah. I was like, all right. Let me look into it. To grow the cotton for one cotton T-shirt is 713 gallons of water. That’s not sustainable. Again, I could be overthinking it, but I went down a path and then I do just bamboo shirts, the least amount of water, very, very sustainable, grows back quickly.

Taylor Martin
[34:33] Soft.

Cathy Paraggio
[34:34] Soft, super soft, lasts a long time, doesn’t peel, but again, everybody is like, oh, cotton. We have to change our relationship with cotton, although it is a staple, but it’s really hard on the – Lake Mead, come on. Like, Lake Mead is just about done.

Taylor Martin
[34:54] Yeah. I know.

Cathy Paraggio
[34:55] Right? So we have to change our agriculture practice, our dependance on cotton. We’ve got to do something different. And this is the time for creative solutions. I would love to brainstorm with people about creative solutions for redefining thread. I have a ton of ideas. They could be like pie in the sky. I really want to talk to people about it, though.

Taylor Martin
[35:17] That’s great. Redefining thread, I love that. I would love to do a podcast just on that alone. Because you’re talking about the nucleus of so many things.

Cathy Paraggio
[35:29] Right? The biggest change comes from the smallest pieces. Like the atom bomb, we split an atom, kaboom. Right? If you redefine thread, for example, so these are my ideas. I don’t care who takes them. These are like – we have to do something. We have to change the way we wash our clothes. It’s so expensive. Why do we need detergents, those pods, those microplastics? We devoted a room for laundry. What if we didn’t have to do that? What if we had threads that were just naturally repellent? I know blood and grass stain is super hard to get out. Okay. Maybe we wash our clothes a lot less. But maybe we study forms in nature that do this inherently and we apply it to thread.

Taylor Martin
[36:19] I was thinking about the peach. You know those pans that came out like 15 years ago, they basically researched a peach. In the skin of the peach, when the water hits it, it just piles up and just rolls right off. And they were able to take that same organic technology and put it into the outside of their khaki pants and water hits it and rolls right off.

Cathy Paraggio
[36:41] Exactly. Or what if because dying – a lot of people – we get a lot of customer contacts saying, “How come you don’t have like patterns, brighter patterns?” It’s supper hard on the environment, all of that dying, all that color. Just the jean, the blue color for jeans, there are rivers in China that will run blue forever. What if we could use, like, how does an octopus or a chameleon change its color? What if we had transparent thread and we could just change the color ourselves and eliminate dying? These are the topics I want to talk about, just using…

Taylor Martin
[37:28] These are the topics I want to call you back in a year and have another conversation about because I want to see where you’re at now because I love these conversations.

Cathy Paraggio
[37:36] Yeah. I’m a big hiker. I’m a big gardener. I’m always just observing now. And really, we need to do it differently. And we can. We’re doing very cool things. I mean, look at the Cadillac that Tesla sent into space. Oh, my goodness, compare it to Apollo 11. We are doing amazing things. We are totally capable of solving these problems. We just need the motivation. I don’t know what more about having the world on fire or earthquakes or floods, I don’t know what more we need, but we need the capitalistic motivation to get behind initiatives like this and not be afraid to fail and lose money. We’ve got to take some swings at this. It’s going to – we’re going to fail, definitely, but we might win on one. And isn’t it worth it?

Taylor Martin
[38:30] Yeah. Exactly. I think the human condition just – we always go right up to the very edge and then we look over and we’re like, okay, we’re not doing that. We’re not going there. We’ve got to make changes. We’re not going this – this is bad direction, bad direction.

Cathy Paraggio
[38:41] Wait, I have an idea, all of a sudden at the last minute. You know what I mean?

Taylor Martin
[38:45] [Laughs] Yeah. Exactly.

Cathy Paraggio
[38:48] That’s where I want to focus. Really, if you look at nonetz.com now, my swim shorts are stuck in customs for three weeks now. It’s so hard. But I have the polos in stock and I have the rash guards in stock. Once the supply chains even out, I would like to either go for VC funding, find likeminded groups of people and take a disruptive step up and start redefining what we think is normal. That’s my goal.

Taylor Martin
[39:21] I think with your story and keeping that front and center on your marketing material, because swim trunks is a commodity. It’s ubiquitous. Everybody just sees it as the same. But your story about the sustainability aspect of it and then being a sustainable company, but then what you learned about people with disabilities and solving problems that are going to make it better for you, I mean, that’s way above and beyond whatever I’ve seen online when I go to buy swim trunks or something like that. That’s a whole other world I’ve never seen before. And that’s why I wanted to interview you today because I really resonate with that.

Cathy Paraggio
[40:04] It’s a hard story to tell on a website. And a lot of people don’t have the attention span for it. They’ve got too much going on. I’m always thinking. This is like Horton Hears a Who. I’m always like, hello? Excuse me? [Laughs] Is anyone listening? It’s the right – I know it’s the right thing to do.

Taylor Martin
[40:27] I say keep going forward, failing forward, doing everything you’re doing. Just keep doing everything that you’re doing, trying different things. And lo and behold, someone is going to come by your path, a VC or somebody, and I think it’s going to take off. I know you guys are already doing successful business, but I could see it being much larger. I mean, just looking through your website right now and looking at some of these products, I think they’re cool looking, I like the colors. That rash guard thing for the men’s swim trunks is something I’m really wanting to have [Laughs] because I’m going to want it for this summer.

Cathy Paraggio
[41:02] Guys are wearing them as shorts, too, just because they’re very versatile. They’re super comfortable. They go to the gym. They go for a swim. It’s just like they’re not like screaming swim trunks. They’re like shorts that happen to be swim trunks, but that are super comfortable. I always want people to know that I’ve got you. I’m always thinking about it. And you’re going to be super comfortable. Soft on you, soft on the earth.

Taylor Martin
[41:32] Every time when I go on a vacation, and it’s usually some place where there’s water and we go swimming, it’s like men have to take an extra pair of shorts or pants and switch out into something else and find a restroom. Whereas I end up just biting it and just saying, “Screw it. I’m just going to wear my swim trunks to the café,” or wherever we’re going, the restaurant. And it gets a little uncomfortable after a while sitting in those swim trunks. So you’re solving my problem. [Laughs]

Cathy Paraggio
[41:58] Glad to hear it. [Laughs]

Taylor Martin
[42:02] Well thank you so much for being on today’s podcast, Cathy. 

Cathy Paraggio
[42:04] Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Taylor Martin
[42:08] This has been a great conversation. Can people follow your story? I mean, I know they can go to nonetz.com, which is N-O-N-E-T-Z.com, but do you guys have any other social channels or anything like that where people can follow you?

Cathy Paraggio
[42:24] Instagram, that’s where we just post there. We’re pretty quiet as we, again, are super small and we work with our manufacturing and supply chain logistics issues. But whenever something happens, we post on Instagram NoNetz Suits.

Taylor Martin
[42:41] NoNetz Suits, got it, Instagram, I see it right here. Excellent. I like the photography, too, by the way. It looks real and it looks clean and nicely cropped and everything. My eyeballs can’t help but judge photos when I see them all the time. Cathy, thank you again for being on today’s show. I wish you all the best in the world for your business and your success. And thank you for sharing your story with us. I look forward to connecting with you again, and of course, trying your swim trunks this summer. Just really happy to have you on today’s show.

Cathy Paraggio
[43:13] Thanks very much.

Taylor Martin
[43:15] All right. Over and out, everybody.

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[43:16] Thanks for tuning into the Triple Bottom Line. Your host, Taylor Martin, is founder and Chief Creative of Design Positive, a strategic branding and accessibility agency. Interested in being interviewed on our podcast? Then visit designpositive.co and fill out our contact form. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, we would appreciate a review on Apple podcasts or whatever provider you are logging in from. This podcast is prepared by Design Positive and is not associated with any other entity. We look forward to having you back for another installment of the Triple Bottom Line.

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