Update of 27 April 2020 ‍

We’re back in business: now that our warehouse and La Poste (the French postal service) are running more or less normally again, we’ve decided to start delivering orders again. Delivery may well take a little longer than usual because of the health precautions in place at the warehouse and at La Poste. Please note too that delivery to pickup points isn’t possible for now: most shops are still closed and post offices no longer offer the service. So we’re only shipping by Colissimo to your home (with no signature required, of course). As for returns, we’re accepting them up to 90 days after delivery to give you more time. Rather than taking your return parcel to the post office, we’d encourage you, where possible, to leave it in your letterbox for the postman to collect (this is explained on the return labels we’ll send you if you need one). As for orders placed since mid-March that were due to be delivered "after lockdown", they’ll be shipped in the next few days.

‍Article updated on 31 March 2020 at 5pm

‍These are strange times, and we can’t pretend everything is fine. In case you were wondering, here’s an honest account of what’s going on at Loom.

Can you still buy clothes from Loom?

Yes, you can still order our clothes on the site, but we won’t be able to deliver them until lockdown is over. Our warehouse in Troyes (east of Paris) has scaled back its activity sharply to protect its staff, and in any case Colissimo has stopped delivering to several towns in the Île-de-France (the Paris region).

What about exchanges and refunds?

All exchanges and refunds are on hold until further notice: our warehouse is running at reduced capacity and can no longer receive parcels. Every request will be dealt with once it’s back up and running.

Is everyone OK?

Yes, everyone’s fine: for now, neither we nor our loved ones have any symptoms of coronavirus. Since Friday we’ve been in lockdown at home, working remotely, and morale is holding up pretty well.

Will Loom survive?

Since we’re selling very few clothes and still have certain costs to pay (such as salaries), our cash reserves (in other words, the money in our bank account) are going to shrink too, which puts the financial health of the company at risk. So we’ve tried to act fast to cut our costs as much as we can (see our LinkedIn post from Friday 13 March). For example, we’ve cut our salaries, moved out of our incubator, Station F (the Paris start-up campus), so we no longer pay rent, and, after making sure it wouldn’t put them in financial difficulty, we’ve cancelled some of our orders with our factories. The support measures for businesses announced by the government should also help a lot. Under these conditions, unless there’s a full lockdown for a whole year, Loom will survive.

What are we going to do until things get back to normal?

It doesn’t feel like quite the right moment to talk to you about new clothes, so we’re postponing the launches we had planned. Instead, we’re going to focus on long-term projects. First, we’re going to work on our clothes. Even though our factories are running at a slower pace and prototypes will take longer to make, we’ll keep improving the durability of our clothes and developing new ones. In particular, we’re going to focus on womenswear. Next, we’re going to write articles, more than ever. The coronavirus crisis exposes some of the limits of today’s model of endless corporate growth, and we’d like to shine a light on them. In fact, we’ve just finished this article. Finally, we’d like to create a textile “wiki”. For almost two years now, we’ve been writing down everything we learn about making clothes that last in a single document. Several brands have asked us to share it with them, and we think that’s a great idea. We’ve realised that our blog posts sometimes change the way people shop, and that this may have more impact than making and selling our own clothes. If we want to change the textile industry, helping other brands make their clothes more durable is far more effective than keeping this knowledge to ourselves (even if it means giving up a "competitive advantage"). In fact, we think this is exactly the kind of knowledge that should be open to everyone and improved collectively by every brand.

What can we do for you?

We’re just a clothing brand. We’re well aware, right now, that making t-shirts and trousers isn’t exactly essential. But if there’s anything we can do for you, topics you’d like us to cover, information you’d like to have, or news of how this little kitten is growing up, _{let us know}. Or if, on the contrary, you think it would be better for us to keep quiet for a while, let us know that too. Good luck to you all.

Take care of yourselves.

Cécile, Claire, Clément, Guillaume and Julia