What's up, cotton?

Dear Reader,

(Warning: the following goes a bit deeper into our qualities than you are probably used to, it has a purpose though...)

Coming from fashion, cotton felt like a natural choice at the start of Four Leaves. And as we wanted to make the least impact on the environment, we opted for 100% organic cotton with the GOTS certificate.

In addition, we asked our production partners to only work with high-quality cotton from India; there, due to the monsoons, less water is needed to irrigate the soil. We even developed fabrics from scratch with the local bed linen weaving mills!

 Cotton is a commodity
Worldwide, cotton and organic cotton are seen as important commodities. Prices are based on supply and demand. In addition, cotton is a crop whose harvest is dependent on a large number of factors. As a result, price fluctuations are extreme.
These characteristics combined with higher demand, have led to a price increase of more than 40% in the past 6 months. Organic cotton had to cope with an even larger increase - up to 60% - partly because the GOTS quality mark has tightened its standards since March 2020. In principle, we welcome this, but the result is that organic cotton is limited or not available to smaller players such as Four Leaves.

Never waste a good crisis

(You are almost there... stay with me;-)

Motivated by to the changes happening with organic cotton, we would also like to look further into the evolution of Four Leaves in the coming months. Today there are beautiful alternatives to organic cotton with very pleasant properties, especially for bed linen and towels. In addition, the production of these alternatives has even less impact on the environment in general.

The costs are higher than that of cotton though; we estimate organic bamboo to be 15-25% higher, lyocell 30-40% higher and organic linen will cost 80-100% more compared to organic cotton.

We would prefer to expand our range in one go and give you every choice, but we also believe in focus. And we are curious about your feeling about organic cotton and the alternatives available. Please share this via the poll at the bottom of our Dutch newsletter, the mini survey is in English though.

Please do not hesitate to send us an e-mail when you have questions about our qualities or production. We are happy to share everything about our way of working! 

Thanks for your support,

Shiran en Four Leaves team. 

(All photos by Ruben van Nimwegen)