Some Additional Thoughts
In addition to the outpouring of love for Hello Rewind have come the tough questions. We welcome the questions because it makes our product that much better and our business model more transparent.
Hello Rewind began as an idea: take old, beloved t-shirts and recycle them into something usable. "Something usable" evolved into "laptop sleeves." To us, this was a really unique idea which we hadn't yet seen on the market. However, we didn't know yet how we were going to produce our product and started trying to figure it out. The concept itself was strong enough to market, and we didn't need the additional work of trying to start a social enterprise on top of it.
But then Faith Huckel stepped in. We had known Faith since before she started Restore NYC, and we were extremely supportive of the giant step she had taken to rescue international sex trafficking survivors in New York City. She was looking for rehabilitation programs to help reintegrate the women she was working with into society and help them stand on their own feet.
Bingo. What if we could figure out a way to help the women learn job skills that could help support themselves? After all, many of them, after being rescued from sex trafficking (largely from police break-ups of the sex trafficking rings) are left on the streets and turn to prostitution, as it's the only way they know how to make money (about $30 - 60 an hour). But these women are in their 20s and 30s, and there is still hope left for something greater in their lives. And we want to show them that they can do something else, that being freed from those trafficking them is not the end. For us, Hello Rewind is not the end, but the beginning of new life for them -- they can be freed from the economic realities that force them back into prostitution.
So here's where we are with Hello Rewind. We're working with the women to train them in the skills that will help right now -- English, sewing, and basic business skills. The training programs are free in conjunction with the services Restore NYC already provides them. We do training in the same location we sew the sleeves on the same machines we bought. We tell them about Hello Rewind. We tell them again about Hello Rewind. We show them the sleeves and tell them how much they can make for each sleeve. It's not as much as they can make working at the brothel, but it's still more than what minimum wage or welfare could ever hope to provide them, and more than they could earn elsewhere. They make more than I'd ever make with Hello Rewind. Each of them decides for themselves whether they want to get involved with the program -- and for many, it's an economic incentive.
For us, the incentive has never been to make money ourselves. We don't expect to see any money. We've spent hundreds of dollars and hours on working on the product, on the model, and on how we can make this work. If it was all about money, we wouldn't be starting Hello Rewind the way it is now. For us, it's about the cause -- and the cause is something greater. We've spent months trying to figure out the model and create something that has never been done before. If the model isn't perfect, we'll perfect it over time. But we didn't spend the greater portion of the past few months working on Hello Rewind just to scam innocent women who don't know better.
Our goal is to see hope for new life for women who are only just beginning to know what life is all about. And we want to show them, life is good.
