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TANAM

Tanam (Tamil for ‘to donate’) collects various pieces of clothing, has them upgraded by third parties and sells these second-hand items at a fair price.

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Half of the proceeds will be given to the designer, the rest will be donated. The designer can decide for him/herself where the money should go. What is new about our idea is that we are a "business" charity association. This means that we do not only collect money without any service in return, but the buyer of one of our garments also supports sustainability and makes him/her a donor! We act here as a meta-organization, which builds a bridge between the organizations and the buyer / donor. 

Several aspects inspired and motivated us to start this project. Therefore, on the one hand, we have had the capitalist and unecological consumer behavior in the textile sector before the eyes, which we want to counteract. People today buy clothes and as soon as they don't like them anymore, they buy new clothes from chain companies. Then the question came to us, why not buy second-hand clothes? Swiss people are buying more and more used products and it is slowly becoming a trend. However, we want to make our contribution to accelerate this process and thus many used products are in circulation.

On the other hand, it was important for us to focus not only on sustainability, but also on helping people in an innovative, altruistic way. Therefore, we came to think about how we could combine the sale of secondhand clothes, as well as the urge to help people. To make this as diverse as possible, yet with great effect, we wanted to raise funds; collect donations and encourage creativity. And so Tanam was born.

Our team consists of two people; Shathusan Thurairajah and Cindy Mühlethaler.