Where your money goes

Are you wondering what makes up the cost of t-shirts you buy from us or where the money goes to? We believe in being open and honest about how we operate, so here's some information that you might be interested in knowing. We hope that this will be useful or eye-opening for you! Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about this, or want us to add more info into this section.

Just another charity t-shirt?

thehinitiative's t-shirts may seem to have a higher price tag than most charity t-shirts. For example, we may be compared to the Glassons Breast Cancer Research Trust t-shirts or The Warehouse World t-shirts. But, thehinitiative offers something different...

Most importantly, thehinitiative has charity and good causes at the very CORE of its function, and is much smaller than other brands/companies who are operating for a profit and doing charity projects on the side.

The sole reason we started the thehinitiative was to provide an alternate method of fundraising for charities and causes in a completely different marketplace (fashion/gifts/design). We love what we are doing and wouldn't be doing it if not for our passion for helping others. Our "stakeholders" are our charities/causes, and our goals may involve helping a kid get an education in Africa, or giving someone the support required in health situation, or lending a hand in a tough time.

Our garments are ethically produced, and we use New Zealand businesses in the design and production process wherever possible.

thehinitiative's current charity t-shirt ranges are targeted at the same level / standard as t-shirts from other awesome New Zealand companies such as Federation, Huffer, Fourfontaine and Billitees.

Crunching the numbers

If you want the nitty gritty details, the three pie charts below show a breakdown for t-shirts from our upcoming Plunket t-shirt collection.

The whole pie represents the full price (RRP) you pay if you buy from us directly. The charity's and GST percentages are fixed, the cost percentages are based on averages calculated from real bills, and thehinitiative gets the remainder.

If you buy our t-shirts from a retailer, the costs remain the same, but the charity and thehinitiative get a smaller percentage as retailers need to make a margin to upkeep their staff, stores, insurance, power, and all those other overheads that you need to think about for a brick and mortar shop. It's not easy so please continue to support our retailers!

Plunket: This is the amount we will pass onto Plunket from the t-shirt sales.

GST: Goods and Services tax paid to the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department. It is currently set at 12.5% of the price paid for the product/service.

T-shirt: High quality cotton and organic cotton American Apparel t-shirts made in sweatshop free environments in Los Angeles, USA. What you may not know (or maybe just us, as we had to learn this) is that much of the cost in making the t-shirts goes into labour and overheads, so babies/kids t-shirts cost a similar amount to make as adult t-shirts even though less material is used. Labour and overhead costs are also higher in countries like the USA. Using organic cotton and fair trade cotton is an additional cost too.

Printing: Printed locally in Wellington, New Zealand, paying fair wages to the awesome people who help make it happen!

Finishing: Labelling and tagging (we don't mean the spray can type; "tagging" is manually inserting a clothing swing tag into each t-shirt). This is also locally done in Wellington, New Zealand.

thehinitiative: The percentage we receive is meant to cover all the overheads and day-to-day costs of these t-shirt projects, like postage stamps and banking to accounting and rent (...the list is a long one), so that thehinitiative can survive and continue to make you look great, whilst doing good for others.

*Even though we try to be a lean operation, we could always use a bit of help, so, so if you know of top notch people willing to offer their services at a discount/sponsored/free for a good cause, please let us know : )