Our Values
At Offbeat Sweetie, we believe that we should all do what we can to leave the world better than how we found it, and these values guide the decisions we make and the way we run our business. As a small family business, our resources and choices are admittedly limited compared to bigger businesses, but we believe that everyone has a responsibility to make the most ethical choices they can with the resources they have.
Here is our approach:
🌈 As part of our commitment to sustainability, we minimise textile waste by making our products on demand instead of following the traditional retail model of mass-producing products. By only producing our items after they have been purchased, we avoid the common retail problem of unsold items ending up in landfill.
🌈 We are an LGBTIQ+ friendly business and are involved in the community through volunteering at Pride events. We promote equality by not adhering to gender stereotypes with our colours and designs, and make them available across our entire size range. We do list our products under “women’s” and “men’s” sizes due to feedback from customers saying that having solely unisex sizes was confusing, but please know that our footwear is intended to be non-gendered. Our products are intended to be worn by anybody who likes them!
🌈 We give back to our community by donating items to people who are going through tough times.
🌈 Like many footwear businesses, our products are made in China, the footwear manufacturing capital of the world. But we challenge the "Made In China" stigma by working with experts who produce beautifully crafted products using ethical practices. The Canadian owner of the company that makes most of our products spent over a year in China, working closely with the factories to ensure that everything produced is high quality and that everything within the factories is above board. We will never work with anyone who is known to use child labour, sweatshops or other exploitative practices that are in breach of the Labour Law of the People's Republic of China.