BEAUTY — BORN FROM TEXTILE WASTE
Tine Arlt and Uli Riedel are the founding team of manaomea. She has a grand vision, he has a playful inventive spirit, and they both have a tremendous passion for their cause. What is this cause? In short: They transform textile waste into uniquely beautiful, high-quality products, improving the quality of work for as many people as possible, and are looking to see what else this miracle box that is their company can offer.
Tine and Uli, you offer pens and designer chairs in your shop, but that seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Your potential is so vast that it's hard to know where to begin! What exactly do you do?
Tine: That's a good question. Sometimes we don't really know what's happening to us either. I would simply say: We're a social business that has found a good and clean way to recycle textile waste. Time will tell what we can achieve with it. But we're really keen – not to uproot trees, but to move mountains ;)
So you've invented a material that can be used to create anything. What kind of product is that?
Uli: It consists of two components: textile waste and bio-resin. Combined, they create a material with similar properties to teak: It's particularly hard, strong, and incredibly stylish. We naturally find it much more beautiful and superior to teak, because it not only looks more interesting and unique, but above all, it has a very special intrinsic value. That's why we consider our products "beauty born from textile waste."
This means that the beauty of your product also lies in its sustainability. However, you talk comparatively little about sustainability, almost as if it were completely self-evident.
Uli: It is. We're inventors, and we love this world; so why would we invent something that's not good for it? That's a no-brainer.
Tine: Our product also looks beautiful because it's made from fabric scraps, and fabric is awesome: the colors, the patterns, how it feels, the stories it tells, and how much culture it contains – that simply never ceases to inspire us.
Can your material be used in the same way as wood?
Tine: We advise against any further processing to avoid compromising the material's integrity. Otherwise, it behaves exactly like fine wood, although it's heavier: perfect for outdoor furniture that needs to be weatherproof and not be knocked around by storms like Helene, Sabine, and the like. Our furniture certainly won't fly away in the wind.
Speaking of “flying”: You know each other from the German Aerospace Center?
Tine: Yes, we both have a scientific background, me as a materials scientist and Uli as a chemist. But we're at least as much people with our hearts as we are people with our heads, so science alone wasn't enough for us: We wanted something unique, something good, something social. Something where we could wear our brightly colored clothes and meet people with a good vibe.
Do you have a vision?
Uli: Vision is Tine's greatest strength. She has a 360° perspective and ensures that both social and business receive equal attention. And I'm the hands-on inventor. We're a great combo of vision and inventiveness.
Tine: And our big vision is to be a global movement in the right direction. We're working toward becoming a global materials brand that licenses its product, including its plant technology, to companies that share our values: Only textile waste and our bio-resin go into the plant, and all workplaces are socially fair. We love our planet and everyone who lives on it. That's why we want a holistic impact: in the material itself, socially on a local level, and overall in the spirit of the circular economy. And we want to see our fantastic product in many industries in the future.
What do you need to fulfill this vision?
Tine: We need investors, and we need partners who can process our material. In an ideal world, we would find a large investor who wants to use our product directly. And we want to bring our systems directly to the mountains of textile waste to make a difference there. We absolutely want to do this, and as soon as possible!
Uli: We're optimistic, because we've already realized that by seemingly bringing something special into the world with manaomea, we're also meeting truly special people. Ultimately, it's these incredibly powerful encounters and the knowledge that we can only achieve this together that define manaomea.
What’s next for manaomea?
Tine: Next, we're launching a beer garden chair that will capture your hearts. You'll be in love with it. A lot of other things are happening as well—stay tuned, it's going to be awesome.