LIVSN 2024 Wrapped

Kelsey, @livsndesigns marketing director here. Welcome and congrats to all of us for completing another year on this precious, one-of-a-kind Earth.

The last few days of 2024 are quickly sliding off the calendar - but before we welcome a new cycle around the sun, I’d like to take some time to look back on how this year treated us (and you!)

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2024 was what I'd like to call “The Year of the Compass.” A more tumultuous and challenging year for most folks in the outdoor industry, a shifting outer landscape required us to define our inner True North. I am so proud of how we met the challenge.

From the official launch of our full body clothing line to the launch and delivery of our first fully collaborative Kickstarter, measuring the impact our clothing and reaching major sustainability milestones, our journey to become a Public Benefit Corporation, navigating inventory challenges and moving warehouses, and our most successful nonprofit fundraiser to date, it’s been a year of measured growth amidst headwinds. Whether you're a longtime fan or just found us recently, I’d like to thank you all for sticking with us during our most challenging, ambitious, and successful year to date.

Here are just a few highlights of what the LIVSN team and steadfast supporters accomplished together:

We started with pants. Then we designed jackets. Now, we make a select few tops that pair extremely well with our jackets and our pants.
 

After the initial success of The Forager Jacket launch in 2023, we expanded our top-of-body lineup this year to include 5 new premium tops and outerwear pieces:

Highlands Sweater

Highlands Full Zip

Keystone Long Sleeve

Benchmark Field Flannel

and the Women's Forager Jacket (that one's become my all-time favorite piece).

We also released our high-end natural fabric technical jacket, the Century Jacket, for direct sale.

For our final Kickstarter, we went out with a bang. We teamed up with Colorado-based women's outdoor apparel brand Gnara to co-launch the Ecotrek Overalls, a new technical overall based on the best-selling Flex Canvas Overall. The men's version features the same silhouette as the Flex Canvas, and a brand new women's version features Gnara's trademarked GoFly fully functional pee zipper -- a gamechanging innovation that lets everyone pee outside discreetly. 

We raised $168,109 in 30 days to bring the Ecotrek Overall to life. It's currently shipping to our Kickstarter backers and will be available for direct sale in January.

We're working hard to become a Certified B Corporation. We crossed a major milestone in our journey this year when we earned Public Benefit Corporation status.

A Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) is a legal entity with a higher level of transparency, accountability, and purpose than a traditional corporation. Essentially, a PBC is legally required to consider shareholders and stakeholders (those materially affected by our conduct) when making decisions.

A Certified B Corporation is a company that is certified by the nonprofit B Lab, meaning the company (1) meets the standards of verified social and environmental performances through the B Impact Assessment, (2) satisfies transparency requirements, and (3) makes a legal commitment to consider all stakeholders.

We'll keep you updated as we work diligently toward Certified B Corp status.

We published our Supplier Code of Conduct, an important agreement between us and our suppliers that outlines our expectations. These expectations include wages, workers' rights, working conditions, chemical usage, and environmental reporting and responsibility. Although many of these requirements are not new to us, they are newly codified, allowing us to more effectively open up conversations with new and existing suppliers. This is a foundational document that we'll continue to expand on as we partner with suppliers to continually make products and systems that maximize function and minimize harm to people and planet.

We also published our current Product Impact Data, which reports on the upstream and downstream impacts of our products. This is an evolving dataset that we'll continue to track and report as we actively continue the work to reduce our impact. 

Understanding how products are made helps us implement the True Cost Equation - or in other words - determine whether a product's function outweighs its impact and by how much. This is ongoing research for the LIVSN team, particularly for our Director of Product and Sustainability, and we look forward to sharing more of it in the coming year.

From inventory woes and changing warehouses to going on sale a little more than usual, we navigated choppy waters this year with heads held high and eyes focused on what matters most. We learned a lot along the way and we're even better poised to handle our growth next year. Bring it on, friends -- we've got you.

Both our oldest and newest employee, our go-to blog writer Brian joined the full time crew this year to further engage our community's hearts, minds, and spirits with compelling stories, important product information, mental musings, and most importantly, to help spread the word about LIVSN. We wouldn't be half as interesting without Brian here and for that, I'm thankful.

We welcomed a new creative wizard, Zeb, to the LIVSN content crew this year. Zeb's eye is unmatched and we can't wait to tell more stories that matter. If you're curious for a sneak peek, here's a small sampling:

Our Black Friday annual fundraiser was one to remember this year. Not only did we sell a record amount of pants and tops to well-deserving citizens all over the country, but we also raised a record amount for our selected group, the Arkansas Climbers Coalition - a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and maintaining critical climbing areas in The Natural State. 

Speaking of which, if you know of a well-deserving nonprofit or organization who could use a little boost, send them our way. We just might be able to help.

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If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading. I appreciate your time, and I know how valuable it is. Thank you for supporting and investing in our journey and we hope to keep making you proud. Soon, we'll share with you what's in store for 2025 ;)

All my best, 

Kelsey