Opportunity Grows for the Organic Cotton Market

In 1993 La Rhea and husband Terry helped found the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC), which now includes 54 family-owned and -operated farms with more than 10,000 acres of land in organic production of cotton and other crops. By 2000, TOCMC was producing one-third of the organic cotton grown in the U.S., according to Pepper, who is the group's market-development coordinator.

When co-op members learned of rising consumer demand for organic feminine products, they founded Organic Essentials Inc. in 1996. After developing a line of tampons, cotton balls, swabs and cosmetic rounds for its product mix, the company reaped FY01 sales of $1 million, up 50 percent from FY00 sales, which had grown 41 percent from FY99.

Pepper, who also serves as president of Organic Essentials, attributes the growth of the company and the organic cotton market in general to “consumers becoming aware that organic is more than food.” She estimates that the U.S. organic cotton industry generates $125 million in revenues annually.

According to the Greenfield, Mass.-based Organic Trade Association (OTA), 13,460 acres of certified organic and transitional cotton were planted in the U.S. in 2000, a 15-fold increase since 1990. While the amount of organic cotton produced is growing—67,765 bales worldwide in 1999—the conventional cotton harvest easily dwarfs its up-and-coming sibling, turning out 87.3 million bales globally during the 1999/2000 year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Concerns over the health effects of conventional cotton led Natracare LLC, developer of the first modern-day cotton tampon, to switch to certified-organic cotton in 1997. “When you're a company that has developed a 100-percent cotton tampon for health and environmental reasons, the switch to organic cotton is the next step, for all the reasons that make organic a better choice in other things, such as food,” says Susan Carskadon, who heads the Denver-based company's North American operations. Since switching to organic cotton, Natracare has had annual revenue growth rates ranging between 50 and 65 percent, growth that Carskadon attributes to a rising awareness among women that certified-organic cotton tampons are a healthy choice.

Sandra Marquardt, coordinator of OTA's Fiber Council, says women are the primary buyers of organic cotton products in general, and notes, “Food could be acting as an organic gateway to these buyers.”

That was the case with at least one manufacturer as well. Maggie's Organics was in the chip and salsa business in 1992 when one of its growers announced that he had a crop of organic cotton that he needed help selling. “We began to research cotton and found out that it is the second-most pesticide-laden crop in the entire world, and that it uses 25 percent of all pesticides on the planet,” says Bená Burda, company president and owner. Ruminating that people spend a third of their lives sleeping on cotton sheets, and much of the rest of the time in cotton clothes, Burda and her associates developed a product line that includes socks, T-shirts, camisoles, underwear, bedding and Oxford shirts. And annual sales have been increasing at a 50 percent rate. “It's a consumer pull-through that's happening,” she explains. “We used to have to browbeat distributors and retailers into carrying our products. Now customers come find us. The tide turned about a year ago”—a turning point Burda attributes to the health and sustainability movement.

Stepping up to help meet that demand are well-established players in the healthy lifestyles sector, like Broomfield, Colo.-based Gaiam Inc. and Green Babies, of Tarrytown, N.Y. Both companies seem of the same mind as OTA's Marquardt, who sees the organic cotton market being driven by demand for children's clothing and adult activewear.

Gaiam expanded its organic cotton offerings with last year's launch of Gaiam Organix, a division focused on performance wear, casual clothing and infant togs, as well as towels and bedding. Gaiam Organix targets consumers who are looking for quality fabric goods, positioning its products in the midrange of the price spectrum and selling their organic origins as a bonus value. “We want our items to have the same style, quality and price as conventional products, with the added value of organic,” says Lynn Powers, president of Gaiam. “Given that choice, we believe consumers will choose organic.”

Gaiam is augmenting its catalog and online channels by expanding the number of retail outlets offering its Organix line, taking its “functional wear”—clothes that have a reason to be worn beyond fashion, such as yoga togs or bathrobes—into mainstream sporting goods stores and department stores. “We're seeing growth in our direct consumer base, and we believe we'll see the same on the retail side,” Powers says.

Green Babies, a maker of organic clothing for children as well as organic sheets and diapers, has experienced 50 percent growth over the past two years, with current annual sales of around $2 million. Lynda Fassa, who in 1994 founded the company with her husband, Hossein, says Green Babies products appeal to both organic and crossover shoppers who are fashion-conscious but also want to do something good environmentally. “I'm selling the idea that [organic baby clothes] are a nice thing to do and a nicer way to do it,” she says.

When it comes to activewear, there's no bigger player than Beaverton, Ore.-based Nike, the largest domestic buyer of organic cotton. In 2000, $182 million, or 20.9 percent, of Nike's FY00 U.S. net revenues of $868 million were generated by sales of organic cotton-blended products. This year Nike plans to spin 1.2 million pounds of organic cotton into T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleece products made and sold in the U.S. Those products will be 5.7 percent organic cotton, according to Heidi Holt, global environmental director for Nike's apparel division. The company has a goal of a minimum of 3 percent organic cotton in all of its cotton apparel by 2010 and next year plans to launch a 100 percent organic cotton women's line in the U.S.

However, Nike's ambitions to grow the amount of organic cotton in its products are subject to a tangle of factors that plague the industry as a whole. Along with higher cost and limited supplies of organic cotton, the industry is challenged by a continuing trend of U.S. textile mills moving overseas, high production minimums from contract manufacturers that work against the lower milling and weaving volumes typical of organic cotton runs, and increased production overhead due to required equipment cleaning between runs of conventional and organic cotton in order to maintain product purity.

Such problems caused Adidas-Salomon, headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, to abandon the use of organic cotton in its apparel and footwear products after a couple of years.
Those challenges didn't deter outdoor gear and apparel maker Patagonia, which devoted a year to the process of educating employees about organic cotton and modifying operational procedures in order to switch completely to organic in 1996. (See “Patagonia's Journey to Sustainability,” LOHAS Journal July/August 2001.) “It made many jobs a lot harder,” recalls Jil Zilligen, the company's VP for environmental initiatives. “We had to go back through all the manufacturing and design processes to get them to conform to using organic cotton.”

But the ordeal has paid dividends both financially and in terms of public relations, according to Lu Setnicka, Patagonia's public affairs director. “It's made us a more successful company and it's been a great story for us to tell,” she says, adding that the company is encouraging the use of organic cotton among its suppliers. “We're using leverage we have as a business to grow the market for organic cotton,” she says.

Nike, which typically buys T-shirts already made, is developing long-term relationships with organic farmers, including the Peppers, to stabilize its supply of organic cotton. “Not only is this a more sustainable relationship with the farmer, but it brings the price down significantly,” Holt says.

And industry insiders expect the organic cotton market to produce a growing crop of healthy profits. As more and more consumers “see the connection between organic and health, we see growth continuing in an exponential manner,” says Ellen Feeney, Gaiam's director of marketing communications.