Buying kids’ clothing is a pain: When the little ones are growing so fast, it can seem like parents have to buy something new every other week. That’s why the internet has been a huge boon to both working and stay-at-home parents, allowing them to shop right from home rather than trek out to the mall every time little Billy’s pants become high-waters.
However, not all online stores are created equal. While parents are sometimes undoubtedly looking for the cheapest bulk order of white sports socks, other times in a child’s life require a little more attention to style and class.
And that’s where Oscar & Olivia comes in.
Oscar & Olivia is a UK-based but globally focused online store that sells ethically sourced and very cute children’s clothing. The founders personally seek out independent designers that they love, review their products, share their stories on the site, and rate each designer using their own custom “Awesomeness Scale.” The Awesomeness Scale, by the way, includes requirements like the item being handcrafted, the quality of the design, made locally, whether it’s made from organic cotton, that the factory it was produced in is regulated, and that it was produced in the EU.
No sweatshop labor here!
In addition to providing well-crafted clothing for kids, Oscar & Olivia is committed to combatting the “throwaway culture” that is a kind of natural (if not always welcome) byproduct of a system that has the ability to rapidly produce poorly made clothing for quickly growing kids. Run by two moms who have four sons between them, the brand was started as a way to provide other parents with high quality kids clothing that didn’t have such a high environmental and social impact.
In addition to their experience as moms, founders Shamanth Pereira and Su Ritter both have a background in banking and can claim at least one MBA. They’re the perfect combination to run a company like this, coming at it from both the mom and the business perspective – and it shows.
The website of Oscar and Olivia is clean and professional, with just the right amount of cute to be appropriate for a kid’s brand without being saccharine. The clothing itself is also adorable without being froofy; the kind of stuff that you could easily have your next child wear or that a new mom would be more than psyched to take as a hand-me-down.
And finally, speaking of hand-me-downs, Oscar & Olivia has an upcoming section of their site called Pre-Loved. It’s not live yet but in keeping with their environmental focus, the site will be offering trade-ins of previous Oscar & Olivia items for a discount on new ones. That means that parents can not only feel good about buying their kid’s clothing from awesome, indie designers but also that they’ll be able to afford to keep doing so.
