It’s all Love
HUCK talks to Seppi Scholler and Pizzi Petrovsky from Love Distribution, an ethical skate, snowboard and clothing company from Vienna, Austria.
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Seppi, you started off as a pro snowboarder right?
Seppi Scholler: Yeah, I've been a pro snowboard for the last six or seven years - I'm currently sponsored by Scott and Billabong. I was always thinking I want to do something besides snowboarding. I was also really worried that I would never find my way in life after snowboarding was done. Then after seven years, I really got into motion graphics, design and digital and analogue art. I started freelancing at for every type of advertising agency and magazine. Then it came to the point, where we were like 'I want to do something completely ourselves'.
What's the story behind Love?
Seppi Scholler: We founded the whole thing nearly two years ago. If you look at many other companies they normally work by making a product then they start to make some kind of image and philosophy around it. With us, it was the opposite way round. We started with the philosophy and everything behind it, and then made the products. We really wanted to make something different in the products we designed as well. One thing that I thought was very important to start people thinking in a positive way.
"We'd rather earn less money and make sure that our products are made under good working conditions and support something positive."
You have sponsored a young South African skater called Talent Biyala, how did it come about?
Pizzi: From the beginning, that we wanted to be involved in social projects. There was so much we wanted to do but just started with what came to us.
Seppi: It's just changing the world in a small way. I don't really believe in the super-huge charities where you donate money and in a hundred years, they will provide be some water to somewhere in Africa. You never know what happens with the money. We were in South Africa on a skate trip and we met Talent in the skate park and then we heard this whole story about him being orphaned and was living under the mini-ramp. I was shocked so we said we really want to help in anyway we could. Actually I went down this summer again to South Africa to see how things are working out for him. It's not so easy. I bought quite a lot of shoes and other stuff for him. I had left them with two people so he can always get the things when he needs it. But the problem is trying to get the money to him that we raised for him to go to school. So he's now he's staying with a woman and her son who help with this.
Pizzi: It's difficult because he is always skating the ramp but he cannot afford to pay for himself with shoes or skateboards. We will continue and see how things are going. It's easier now because he lives with the woman and we will try and figure new things out for him.
When it comes to manufacturing the products, how do you go about it?
Seppi: This is something we really wanted to make a point of. One of our philosophies is you can't be a company called Love and fund social projects then go and get your products made in sweatshops in China, Bangladesh or wherever.
Pizzi: We don't want to support any system that doesn't care about human rights or the environment.
Seppi: We had offers from factories in China where the price and the product was really good. But we'd rather earn less money and make sure that our products are made under good working conditions and support something positive. All our clothes get produced in Poland, our snowboards are made in Austria and our skateboards come from Canada.
What impact does that have on price?
Seppi: It's not too bad. The snowboards go for 399Euros, and that's a really good price, and all the clothes are still reasonable too.
Pizzi: We also calculated the price for the shop and for customer and try to calculate that the customers can afford to buy our stuff. Not getting crazy prices, you know but that if they like it, they can still afford to pay for it.
It must be difficult to balance that when you still need to grow as a company?
Seppi: Yeah, but we would still rather believe in what we do than earning the crazy millions.
Pizzi: To be honest, we do want to get something out of it. We put a lot of energy into it and we have a lot of projects, our new collection and we have to realise all the ideas. We need money for this. But we don't make a living from this. Seppi is a pro snowboarder and I study psychotherapy so it gives us freedom to keep to the philosophy of Love.
Do you have plans to get a lot bigger or are you happy?
Seppi: That would definitely be cool, but even now after just over a year and a half, we are already selling almost all over Europe. I really like the fact that it's growing but not just from the money aspect, I think it's just cool to see somebody in, say, Spain wearing your product, it's pretty amazing!
Pizzi: It's the thing that makes us most happy. Sometimes someone will call me and say 'Hey, I've just seen somebody wearing your product'. You feel a really strong connection to it.
What would you do if a massive company offered you loads of money for Love?
Seppi: We would sell it. Joke. No, we wouldn't
Pizzi: ... and also I want it to be honest and this is why I really believe this company, the things we make and the spirit of it works at the moment because we keep it authentic. The product can only sell if it's authentic. We want people to buy it and have the feelings and the heart that we do. All the people we work with understand what we're doing. It's the only way it can work. If we sold it, the company would no longer exist.
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It’s all Love (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (4)
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Yur hoodies are awesome! xxx