8. CUTTING & SEWING

PICO pants are made by the team at MILA, a small fair trade factory in southern India. MILA prides itself on helping small companies such as ours to produce organic cotton garments with a transparent supply chain.  The factory is located within a 40km radius of the spinning, knitting and dyeing units, so the production process is kept local, with little distance travelled after the cotton is delivered from the farmers’ cooperatives.  Girish, the manager at MILA, is a friendly and dedicated person, and spent a day with us taking us to all these different units. As a result, we learnt a lot more about how all these processes work and the people and machines behind the scenes making it all happen.

MILA is both fairtrade and GOTS certified and is made up of a very small team of sewing machinists, screen printers, technicians, pressers and a pattern cutter. Most of the team have been working together since MILA was founded in 2012. Biju, Kamal, Murugan, Murugesh, Murukesh and Selvi have all been part of producing PICO’s underwear.