Behno: On a mission to change manufacturing in fashion

In this episode of the 'Sex Soap and Alcohol' podcast, host Professor Myriam Sidibé sits down with Shivam Punjya, Founder of the ethical luxury brand Behno. They discuss the transformative journey Shivam undertook to create a sustainable and ethical fashion supply chain in response to the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse. By focusing on values like worker dignity, transparency, and women's rights, Behno has successfully merged purpose with profit. Shivam shares insights from his work in India, including initiatives in worker health and women's empowerment, and delves into the unique challenges and successes of revolutionizing an industry steeped in exploitation. The conversation provides a masterclass in ethical leadership and sustainable business practices.  

Transcript

Introduction to Ethical Fashion

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 0:06

Today's episode actually explores what it means to refread the fabric of fashion from the inside out. And I sit down with Shivam Pungia, founder of the ethical luxury brand Behno, who has built an alternative to the exploitative fashion system by redesigning what's the very foundation of it, the supply chain. Through the creation of the Behno standards, Shivam has not only championed worker dignity in garment factories, but done so with business growth in mind, proving that care, accountability, and economic success can coexist. So, what we're gonna do is talk about the shadows of the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, the radical transparency required for the ethical fashion, and how investing in workers' health, reproductive rights, and family planning has been core to his model of reform. Shivam shares how one event within the garment industry inspired him to reimagine fashion with purpose, placing the well-being of women at the center of production. This episode is a masterclass in leading with integrity, not just in front of the camera, but behind the scenes. Welcome, Shivam, to the Sex, Soap and Alcohol Podcast.

Shivam punjya 1:27

Thank you, Professor. I'm so excited to be here.

Meet Shivam Punjya: From Health to Fashion

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 1:30

I am so excited to have you here today. I know you've trained in global health, and um, and I I was listening to some of the research you were doing on folic acid for garment workers. And how do you go from trying to make sure that women are getting the iron that they need and all of a sudden to, you know, getting you to think about fashion as the space to really make change?

The Rana Plaza Collapse: A Turning Point

Shivam punjya 1:55

Uh yeah, absolutely. So I was working with the Indian Institute of Public Health in Hyderabad, and I was working on a project in Jaipur as well. And a lot of our study participants were textile readers. And at the time I didn't make much of their day-to-day livelihood. I was so focused on collecting data for my thesis. But then I came back to North Carolina. I went to Duke for grad school, I went back to North Carolina to write my thesis, and I opened the newspaper in April, and on the front page was this very startling news about a factory collapse in Bangladesh, the Rana Plaza collapse, where over 1,100 government workers were murdered by negligence of larger brands and infrastructural negligence. And for me, that was a very emotional moment, and it kind of struck a nerve because just a few months before that, I was in the field working with a community that is not the same, but bald in the same sort of um community in the fashion supply chain. So for me it was a very emotional moment.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 3:04

Do we understand why this moment hit so hard for Shiva? It helps to remember the scale and stakes of the industry. The global garment sectors employs tens of millions of people, most of them women, who often work close to the poverty line and in many contexts still earn less than men for the same role. Talk about gender equality right there. In 2013, what we've seen is the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,100 workers and injured thousands more, exposing how fragile and how human the supply chain really is. Behno was created as a direct response to prove that a different kind of production is possible.

Founding Behno: A New Approach to Fashion

Shivam punjya 4:11

But decided to go a different way, much to the dismay of my family. Um I wanted to see how do you maybe build a factory from scratch that completely dismantles the existing fashion supply chain. And for us, that was about looking at things bottom-up, not top-down. And the fashion industry is very patriarchal, it's been very traditional. Um, and there's, I mean, even today, there's still so much to be done. But at the time, 10 years ago, um, it was just like mind-boggling to me that something of this magnitude could have happened in Bangladesh.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 4:47

What is it that you felt that you could add to this conversation, right? Because I think it always goes back to not only fixing what was broken, but to really set out to build something entirely new and from scratch. And I think there is something about that as a bold move in itself, right?

Implementing the Behno Standards

Shivam punjya 5:05

We will say that the brand was a byproduct of our initial goal, which was to build a factory and look at manufacturing differently. So we built a factory, it was a ready-to-wear factory, and we were trying to recruit people to potentially manufacture in the factory. And our goal was to focus on something we called the Behno Standard, which is our sort of northern light in terms of how we approach manufacturing.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 5:35

Now, the overwhelming majority of garment workers are women, often supporting entire households and very often single-headed households. When Behno set out its approach, it started that lived reality rather than bold ethics at the end. The team built what they called a six-pillar standard into day-to-day operations. Health, family planning and women's rights, fair pay, social mobility, and eco-conscious practices developed with local partners and workers, bottom up. The idea is simple. A company thrives when the people who power it do.

Challenges and Ethical Decisions

Shivam punjya 6:22

But at the time, nobody knew what a quality standard looked like. Nobody could trust us to make any product in our factory. So we decided to make a small papro collection to kind of showcase what MSA Ethos, the factory, was capable of making. And the first collection that we designed got picked up by Harvey Nichols. So that's kind of how the brand kind of grew. And then we said, we decided maybe there's something here. I'm not a designer. I didn't go to design school. I um was very lucky and privileged to meet my um colleague, Ashley Austin, who became my biggest teacher in the design world. Obviously, I grew up with a lot of fashion influence in my family. My grandfather had a department store in Zambia that he was um selling neckties out of and grew up um with his influence. So we grew up in the fashion space, but not ever thinking I would work in it. But at the time, I kind of felt like there had to be a better way to work in a very traditional industry.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 7:26

I completely get that. A lot of my career has also been those moments where you meet and you say, we need to rethink the system, right? It's just not enough to just go and then make it somehow better. It's about, you know, turning on its head upside down and really thinking about how you create it from scratch. But talk to me about the standards, because you, you know, I mean, the Behno standards is something that I find absolutely fascinating. But how does that translate on the day-to-day of the company? Because there's a difference between obviously putting values down, but then translating that into something that actually drives the business model for you and that um makes it uh, you know, and how does that drive the business model?

Shivam punjya 8:06

Yeah, so the vendor standard is completely formulated bottom-up. And we wanted to see how do we involve the communities or how do we learn about how do we interact with the communities that we are trying to work with? And how do we make that table bigger and make a seat for communities that historically have never had a chance to be a part of that table. Um, so I spent a lot of time in the beginning just doing research in I'm an academic at HUB, spent a lot of time doing research on like what was going on in Turkey, China, other countries in Southeast Asia that have been large manufacturing hub for the fashion base, and then eventually moved to South of India in Durpur and was working in um factories that were making tissues and just wanted to learn more about what the reality looked like. I do fully believe that as an outsider, it's imperative to make sure that we soak in and we continue to soak in lessons and the reality, the lived reality of artisans in our space. Um, so how do we implement this? So the Behno Standard was created with focus groups, with government workers. We worked with a nonprofit called MSA, Muniseva Astram is a long form, and we started asking questions and we got key informants in the uh communities. Uh, we wanted to make sure that we were conscious of the folks that were also interacting with the artisans that we were speaking with. And we started to bucket our learnings into six main categories, ranging from eco-consciousness uh to women's rights, as we mentioned earlier, to um garment worker social mobility. And it was about making the standards that could serve as a northern light for us, where we know that not every factory has all of these things in place. We I also don't believe that as a brand, we want to work with perfect factories from the get-go all the time. Because for us, theories of change are collaborations that create that change. If a factory is perfect, I think that's wonderful. But for us, it's about how do we work with more factories that want to do better, but maybe don't have the knowledge or maybe don't have the, you know, the resources and partnerships to allow for that. So we started to work with factories that were created by um that were founded by folks from the baby boomer generation. And now they're family businesses, the children are taking over, the millennials, I'm a millennial as well. And they and they're they're seeing purpose over profit. They also want to do something different within the family businesses that they have been born into. Um so we found people that wanted to better themselves as a fundamental factory model. Um, so that's how we started implementing it at a grassroots level.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 11:17

The first, very first factory partner that wanted to take the leap with you, like how did you convince them?

Shivam punjya 11:24

Yeah, Professor. So the first person that we ever worked with, his name is Mr. Mukesh Kotari, and he was actually living in Germany and was working with Adidas, and he lost his wife at a young age. And his wife's goal was to work with marginalized communities back in India. So I think there was that sort of um, and I can't speak for him, uh, but that was a story that I was told, and he also wanted to kind of live out his late wife's um dream. So I think there was that sort of mindset that he was coming in with. We kind of saw eye to eye with what we wanted to do. We had this nonprofit um MSA. So together, three different stakeholders came together to kind of see what could be.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 12:13

Did that shape a bit your growth and partnership? Can you can you go back now and saying the growth has actually um it it it happened because of this ethical model that we put in place?

Shivam punjya 12:25

I think there is this misconception that being conscious in manufacturing or having a value-based business is less profitable. And I think that is a myth. Because I think there are ways to strategically um align business models and that it's a personal decision, too. Uh I mean, we're not here to pinch every last nickel out of our profit margins. I mean, we do believe that there's a way to grow responsibly, and there is a way to grow enough.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 13:01

Absolutely. It's been always the philosophy at brands on a mission for sure. You know, and what did you learn from going against the grain and saying, look, this is what, this is how I'm gonna grow? Like, this is even the limitations in terms of the growth revenue because I do not want to compromise the values that we've set out.

Shivam punjya 13:20

Yeah, so I mean, to answer that question, there's been so many times when we maybe wanted to do something because it was uh easier on the supply chain to kind of get things done. Um, it was also cheaper from a raw material standpoint, perhaps. Um, yeah, those things come up on a daily, if we still deal with it. Um we're all we know we're trying to make our products even more accessible from a price point perspective. Um, and we're looking at how do we do that? And we know that we have our framework, we have the box that we know we're we are committed to working within. And there are certain things we just have to say no to. For example, we have taken um internal pledge to not working with uh textiles, faux leather as a brand. And I think for us, just very much a decision on when you use a textile using virgin petroleum, PU, PVC, um, it means a debate. Is it actually better for the environment to use uh alternative leather textiles? Uh and I think that debate becomes personal very quickly. Um, but that's something that you know would allow us to make a product that's more price point competitive. Uh but that said, we have taken that stance that it's not necessarily the most eco-friendly way for us to move forward. So, I mean, that's like one example that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, even today.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 14:51

On the factory floor, it shows up in very different practical ways. So, first of all, let's look at access to the on-site and referral health services, clean drinking water, basic nutrition support, work of voice and mobility pathways and environmental practices that can reduce arms. Sexual and reproductive health and rights are part of the picture. Though trusted partners will provide information and services so that women can make informed choices without losing income and dignity, but they sit alongside fair compensation, safety, and growth opportunity. That's workplace that are delivering health and stability, not just demanding output. So, for you, in terms of beyond profit, of course, how do you measure success? Because, like I said, I'd like to go back to those values that you put forward.

Shivam punjya 15:50

Yeah, so I think for us, success is it's it's a few different things. So I think one is the original vision statement that we started off with. Um, are we still sticking to that vision statement? Because I think as the company grows, more people get involved. Um, there's always room to be swayed. Uh for us, that's one metric of success is are we still on that path? Obviously, we evolve. Obviously, we find better ways to do things over the years. Um, so that's one big metric for us. Another metric is have we been open enough and made ourselves accessible enough to our manufacturing partners? Um, because I think that one thing I have learned is that brands are often so disconnected from their supply chains. And for me, that's a success. Um, that our teams are able to talk to our manufacturing partners and want to talk to our manufacturing partners on a day-to-day basis. Um, I think that's really important to me personally. Um, our design team is liaison with our manufacturing partners to make sure things are running smoothly and hearing their problems. For us, it's about being also open-minded as a brand that we are here to partner, collaborate with.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 17:06

Yeah, and I think this is what you've managed to do, which is absolutely fabulous. And you know, to be able to show that values and value can coexist, right? So that it becomes something that you live by. How do we make this normal practice and not just an exception? Because I was listening to you on a podcast um yesterday and about saying that you believe fundamentally that the real talent lies in India. And this resonated so much with me, because saying you don't need to go abroad to go necessarily study, you don't need to go anywhere, that you can find a way to breed that in and then still drive change in your communities. And I thought that's really, really interesting because you know, so much of um what we believe is that the work happens there, but then the branding and the fashionable has to happen elsewhere. If you were to give me two um pieces of advice or three pieces of advice on what we can do to make sure that it works exactly how it's supposed to work between global south and global north, and coming up with brands that can be truly global as far as I'm concerned.

Shivam punjya 18:12

Yeah, so I think, especially in today's landscape, I think that's a very interesting question. Because, first of all, what is the global south and what is the global north in terms of design and manufacturing? I think we've been conditioned so heavily over the years that the global south operates a certain way. Um, but now we look at the identity politics of made in Italy. And I think that's maybe the most like that's the example that comes to mind. Um you see a lot of luxury brands that have been scrutinized in recent months because you have migrant populations in the West manufacturing product in countries like Italy, but it's not, it's a very, it's a it's a very um convoluted discussion. Exactly what does made in Italy even mean anymore? Um, and what does made in the global north mean? Uh when the world is shrinking, you have, like I said, migrant population. So I think it's the identity politics is kind of making me decolonize the frameworks of manufacturing. Um and I think, and I don't know what the I don't know what the right way to look at it is, but I do think it's a question worth asking. Uh, because I think it kind of goes back to what you're prompt prompting. It's like, is it working? I d I don't know.

Gender Dynamics in the Fashion Industry

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 19:41

Let's talk about gender in in the fashion industry. Labor, power, I mean, all this show up very visibly in in fashion. And one of the things that we've been working on on this podcast and brands on the mission as a company anyway is obviously addressing toxic masculinity or reframing what masculinity is. And I mean, in the fashion industry per se, I mean, you know, most of the government's workers are obviously females. Um, how do you shift this whole power dynamics around gender? And where do you think the role of the fashion industry can be to be able to make sure that we come up with more equitable relationships between genders?

Shivam punjya 20:22

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that there's a lack of understanding of intersectional labor justice when it comes to women's rights, especially in the fashion space. Um, also, I'm not sure if I should even be commenting on this. I mean, I'm a man working in this space. Um, I have a lot of learning to do, continued learning. Um, but one thing I have noticed is when you look at the hierarchy of how a factory, a traditional factory operates, is that line leaders tend to be men. Um, you obviously have um a lot of women who should be in those roles. And I think that because the manufacturing space had been so patriarchal, um, it trickles down to even hiring practices in factories. So when we built our first factory, we were very conscious of that. And the factory partners that we had, so all of our line leaders um were women. And it was, it was such a simple thing that we just learned. Output didn't change. And I think it's it's such a um, it seems so dismissive for me to even point that out. But I think it's these sort of examples that people need to hear in this community or in this industry to kind of realize that there's a lot of awakening to do. So I think that's like one example. And then the other thing is like when we look at women in India, for example, which is where obviously we manufacture, different parts of the country operate very differently. And I thought that the Behno

Shivam punjya 21:58

standard could become a Cookie cutter sort of standard. But then very quickly we learned that in North India, you have a lot more men in factories. In South India, you have a lot more women in factories. So you realize that the gender dynamics are very varied and that we need local partners to be able to help us understand what sort of programming might be more effective. And I think the other thing is how do we really understand the lived reality versus theory? Because I think, you know, as an academic, we studied all these things, but when you go into the field, I think that sometimes it forces us to take a step back and relearn and unlearn a lot a little bit. So I think that's been challenging. And it's been a learning curve.

Leadership and Learning in Ethical Fashion

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 22:48

I mean, as you are, you know, you're clearly building more than just a brand. You're shaping a blueprint for what fashion should actually be. And I think, and you know, what kind of the next couple of decades of fashion should look like. But, you know, can we talk a little bit about what that has actually required of you as a leader? Because that's something that people don't fully get. I think you touched on it very briefly about I'm a man, and I don't know if I should be commenting on this in terms of, you know, like what's what's going on in the dynamics there. But I feel like, you know, we all have a role to obviously taking on. And you are you're doing that, you're shaping, you're setting up standards. So talk to me a little about you and as a leader, how not only do you come in shaping, but the reality is that the work shapes you, right? Because obviously it's a it's it's very much a two-way process.

Shivam punjya 23:42

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest thing I learned is okay, I'm gonna take a step back. The biggest thing I unlearned is what I knew, what I thought manufacturing was going to look like when working in this space, actually. What that forced me to do is relearn a few things and kind of really challenged the way I looked at manufacturing. And I have two different stories I tell. One is about Maison de Behno

Shivam punjya 24:08

, and then one is about my initial learning, which was instead of viewing artisans as cheap, invisible labor, which is what the industry had done for generations, how do we translate that conversation where they're actually knowledge holders? They are cultural labor. And it's not just about economic output, but it's about preservation of culture and looking at artisans as knowledge holders. So I think when we start to humanize that process, I think the feminist aspect of manufacturing becomes a little bit more in your face where you have to address it. Um, so I think that's one element that I kind of realize. And then the other thing is in the global West, factories are looked down upon, but then maisons are looked very highly upon. So we actually realize that in today's world where everything is hypersensitized, word changes and words hold so much meaning where instead of us referring to our garment workers as garment workers now, we made a small shift of calling them artisans. And I think it's about dignity. It's about instead of calling our manufacturing partners as factories, we now refer to them as maison de benows. So like houses that are manufacturing. And I think small things like this bring that human element. Because I think we think that garment workers, artisans are machines, they're not.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 25:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Because I think for me, it's about building dignity from the way you even articulate it, how you label the people that you're working with, but then how do you work with them? And I think that's really important. I love that shift. And that's the reality because automatically it moves you into a you are designing the future of fashion and you are thinking, and these people are not just machines, and they play a role in what the future of fashion could actually look like. And I think that's really, really important. How do you build back the knowledge that's accumulated in your maisons and within your artisans back into your supply chain? Is there something about how you are getting insights from the conversations and the discussions on how that actually the artisan is operating within your maisons?

Shivam punjya 26:38

Yeah, the first thing is we shut them out, take a step back and listen. Um, I think that's one thing that folks don't always do. We try our best to do that. Uh, and I think we touched on this earlier is like, how do we actually create space on the table, um, giving people a voice? Yeah. It's such a simple thing to do, but in this vast, convoluted supply chain, we forget perhaps, or we don't prioritize it. So that's one thing. Another thing is the collaborative communication piece. Um, for example, two members of our team are currently in two of our maisons working with artisans trying to troubleshoot quality control, troubleshoot manufacturing. Um, we spend a lot of time on the factory floor. And I think for us, that is the only way we're able to retain, understand um what the reality on the ground looks like. Because I also will say um that a lot of manufacturing partners in South Asia, um, when they know you're coming, this reality can look very different. But on a day-to-day, it may be very different. So for us, is we don't always believe that we only go to the factories when we absolutely have to. It's also important for us to build capacity by making more frequent trips. Um, looking at obviously we have to be mindful, we're a small brand, we don't have unlimited travel budgets, but we try to make that a part of how we operate. Is we go there, we stay there for a while, we work with the artisan and the factory owners and kind of see how we can be a better partner as well.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 28:30

I love the fact that you're also thinking about how do I become a better partner, right? But if you were to, for example, give a masterclass and say someone comes to you and say, I want to build an ethical supply chain from day one, what's the one thing they should begin with?

Shivam punjya 28:45

I do think we have to unlearn and relearn. Because I think that I think ethics change on a day-to-day. And I think ethics change from region to region because there is no cookie cutter. I would be surprised if somebody had a formula. But at the end of the day, we have to have conversations. We have to understand the reality of different manufacturing partners. We have to understand if what the gender dynamics are like. Um, I mean, I'll give you uh an example at one of our factories. Um, we were hiring, and there was a young woman who wanted to work at our factory as an artisan, a garment worker. And after a while, she came to us and said, I can't do this job anymore. And we were just quest asking, like, why not? And she said, My mother-in-law doesn't think that it's a suitable job for me to come to the factory. So then we were like, okay, how do we destigmatize a woman's role in a factory? So we invited her mother-in-law to come see the space because I think in South Asia, these relationships are very, very important, very, very intimately tied. And um, the mother-in-law joined the factory as well. But in turn, we realized that set another set of issues, where now all of a sudden the young woman felt like there was a panopticon on her all the time. She was under her mother-in-law's view all the time. So I think, you know, trial and error, but we learned this through communication. We learned this through working with our partners to see how do we make it, how do we address some of the issues that garment workers face on a day-to-day? And I don't think we have an answer, but I think there is a way to bring that human element, and that comes through conversation, taking a step back, listening, learning, adapting.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 30:39

Oh wow. I think that's really, really important. And just as a closing insight for me, what's the one value you've refused to compromise, even if it was hard?

Shivam punjya 30:50

Oh, there's so many things I've learned. The one thing I think I would never compromise on is the ability for us to talk about who makes our product. Um, I think if somebody asks me, where is your product made? I'm very, very proud to say that it is made in India. And I'm very, very proud to talk about where it's made. And I think I don't know, there's a responsibility to bring attention and clap where the credit is due. I mean, it's not the we are as a brand, we are not making product. You know, I think someone we are working with communities to make products. But that's the one thing I'm never gonna compromise is how do we shed light where the credit is actually due.

Prof. Myriam Sidibe 31:44

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I'm really hoping to get a chance to visit um in person. But I wanna thank you, Shivam, for your time and for all the insights you've given me. This has been super enlightening and learned so much um on what it actually takes to build a brand on a mission. So when I think about everything we've heard from Shivam, I'm reminded that fashion is more than a fabric, it's a reflection of who we are and what we value. Over the past decade, we've seen the industry begin to stitch a new pattern, one made of care, accountability, and courage, from women-led ateliers and community cooperatives across the global south, to global movements demanding transparency and fair pay. Fashion is slowly learning to turn empathy into infrastructure and a profitable one. Systems change doesn't happen overnight. It takes constant unlearning and relearning. Asking not just how we produce, but why and for whom. And if we can transform one of the most complex globalized industries into one that protects the hands that create, then maybe it's a proof that no system is beyond reform. Fashion has always shaped culture. Now it has the chance to shape justice. And that to me is the real luxury. If you've enjoyed this episode, um be sure to follow us on your chosen listening platform. And when you're there, please give us a five-star rating and share the podcast with friends and colleagues. Um, we really appreciate your support. Um, again, Professor Myriam Sidibe, and this podcast is brought to you by Brands on the Mission, helping brands achieve social impact and business growth for purpose. Head over to brandsonemission.com to find out more about your work. Thank you so much again, Shivam, for all your amazing insights and time.