OceanR clears blue seas with green clothing

OceanR is not just doing good; it’s now also doing well. Headquartered in Ireland and supported by a production facility in Latvia, the company has always focused on doing good by using discarded plastic bottles and other ocean waste to produce eco-friendly clothing and products.

Describing itself as “the clothing company removing 1kg of ocean waste with every

purchase”, OceanR says one rash vest uses 12 plastic bottles and calculates that it has recovered over 1 million plastic bottles by using its Oceanbalance fabrics.

Its growing clothing collection ranges from tech polo shirts, T-shirts and sweatshirts to board shorts and other swimwear, while products include water bottles, beach towels and face masks.

Superyacht clients include the Sanlorenzo 62Steel Lemon Tree

The company is also doing well, financially, with partners including Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, Four Seasons hotels and resorts worldwide, and many superyachts including the first Sanlorenzo 62Steel Lemon Tree (formerly Cloud 9), the 77m Dutch-built Legend and the 60m Abeking & Rasmussen Scott Free.

However, OceanR didn’t always have five-star clients, admits Tom Cotter, who was only 26 when he founded the company in 2016 in his native Cork, Ireland’s second-biggest city, spending several years trying to expand the business beyond supplying clothing for local sailing clubs.

Tom Cotter (far left) helps Enaleia’s work in funding fishermen to collect ocean plastic to be recycled

Casting his net wide and far, the ambitious Irishman was trying to hook a big fish – and eventually had one on the line after approaching Virgin Limited Edition, Branson’s collection of luxury hotels and resorts.

“I received a phone call at 7 o’clock and it was the operations manager for Virgin Limited Edition. He said, ‘Hi Tom, are you in London tomorrow? I’ll be there for the day.’ Without hesitating, I said, ‘Yes, I am’,” recalls the fast-talking Cotter, whose entrepreneurial spirit rose to the occasion.

“I was straight onto Ryanair. I didn’t even have the money to pay for the flight, so I borrowed GBP100 from my parents. Anyway, I went straight to London and met him for just 20 minutes. He just wanted to meet me to make sure I was real. Three days later, he called me and said we had the staff uniform contract.

Necker Island, among the Virgin Limited Edition collection

“I’ve never met Richard Branson, but I believe he was keen to give a new start-up a chance. We went from supplying sailing clubs and local organisations to working with one of the biggest names in the hospitality industry. However, when I now look at the [PDF] presentation we sent Virgin, I’m a bit embarrassed!”

IRELAND TO GREECE TO AUSTRALIA

Hailing from Cork, Cotter says he inherited his work ethic from his father, who worked in a pharmaceutical company, while his mother encouraged his blue-sky thinking, telling him “you can be anything you want”. His passion for sustainability stems from his lifelong love of watersports and the sea, underlined by family holidays in Greece.

OceanR produces garments suitable for watersports

After working for almost a year at Tubes Boardsports in Cork, Cotter spent 19 months in Greece working for Ionion Explorer, but it was his time in Australia in his early 20s that moulded his career and business savvy.

In Melbourne, Cotter managed the Training and Development department at The Royal Yacht Club of Victoria for half a year before spending almost three years as Business Development Manager at Yachting Victoria, where he managed a team of 30 people during the busiest periods.

Rash vests and swimwear use 80-90 per cent recycled polyester and 10-20 per cent elastane

His role included marketing and managing budgets with a strong turnover, yet also revealed his leadership qualities.

“I needed to be flexible and think on my feet. If it was 30 knots out on the water, I needed to quickly come up with onshore classes for lots of expectant kids. All these experiences taught me how to be calm when everyone else is freaking out. I’m always positive.”

RASH VESTS TO MASKS

Soon after returning to Cork, Cotter set up his company, which was originally called RashR and focused on producing rash vests made from eco-friendly materials.

“You can coin whatever you want to do, so why not coin a business that will make you money and genuinely have a positive impact on the environment. And I’m genuinely interested in sustainability because I’ve spent so much time on and in the water.”

He initially targeted local sailing clubs and other watersports communities, but admits that it presented a limited pool in which to grow the business.

Looking beyond Ireland, he focused on offering international clients custom-designed, eco-friendly uniforms and apparel, with the Virgin contract finally secured in late 2019. Cotter says the payment in Q4 led him to think big, predicting GBP1 million turnover the following year. Then Covid arrived.

OceanR garments include swimwear

As it spread quickly around the world in early 2020, borders closed, international travel halted and almost all holiday resorts paused or shut. For Cotter, it was time to pivot.

As the company had been producing rash vests for PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors), whose dive-certification courses have created huge recognition around the world, Cotter came up with the idea of producing face masks. Initially agreeing to make 500 PADI-branded masks from recycled ocean plastic, the company eventually produced 150,000.

OceanR produced rash vests for PADI

“The world had shut down and we had to wear masks, so we collaborated with PADI, which has millions of people on social media. The first 500 were sold out in 15 seconds. At first, they were only allowed to order up to 1,000 more, but within a few days, they upped their order to 15,000.”

Featuring the tagline ‘Seek Adventure, Save The Ocean’, the popularity of the PADI masks made global headlines on the likes of CNN and Forbes, with OceanR producing 15,000 units every couple of weeks for about six months.

Cotter doesn’t look back on the period with fond memories, citing the stress of sourcing supplies and materials amid ever-changing restrictions, but says it helped keep the company and factory afloat.

PADI masks with the tagline ‘Seek Adventure, Save The Ocean’

“It was a strange time. I’d never want to go back to it, dealing with the stress and the supply chain, like the piping on the inside of the mask running out,” Cotter says.

“It was a weird time to make money, charging €5-6 for a reusable face mask, but we didn’t make a profit. We covered costs and kept the lights on. It kept our five Cork staff employed and the factory in Latvia open. If we didn’t make that move, we’d have been finished.”

Meanwhile, Cotter powered on, driving his sales team to keep engaging with existing contacts and approaching new ones, looking to work with resorts as soon as travel restrictions eased and tourism could restart.

Four Seasons is one of OceanR’s key clients

“By the end of 2020, we had contacted 150 luxury resorts, saying ‘One day we will work with you; we’ve done your designs, we’re ready to go.”

RASHR TO OCEANR

In the meantime, Cotter secured some significant investment and engaged a leading branding firm to change the company’s image and bin the itchy-sounding ‘RashR’. The company was relaunched as OceanR with an accompanying logo featuring “a superyacht type of font” plus new branding materials, photos and video assets.

“Don’t let anyone tell you branding doesn’t matter. It does. After we rebranded, we suddenly had resorts calling and asking us to do their clothing and merchandise.”

In mid-2021, Necker Island reopened with an increased commitment to sustainability, including a solar wind farm and three giant new wind turbines that enable the resort to run on up to 100 per cent renewable energy. It was and is a flagship client for OceanR, and the public announcement of their partnership led to further interest from hospitality companies looking for sustainable products.

OceanR produces boutique products for clients

Yet, having stopped producing clothing for well over a year following Covid, Cotter says 2021 was an up and down year financially, with some areas opening to tourism while others made only tentative steps to welcoming visitors. “We went into 2021 thinking Covid was gone, but it hadn’t, and it was a mixed year for business.”

Cotter describes 2022 as “the first full year of doing well”, with regular orders from 200 accounts, the majority of which are resorts. The collaboration with Four Seasons includes product for resorts in Orlando (Walt Disney World), Mexico and Anguilla in the Americas, Mauritius in Africa and the Maldives in Asia.

Clients include Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa

Having acquired the Latvian factory in Riga, creator of the Oceanbalance brand of 18 recycled fabrics, OceanR’s staff count scaled up to about 80 people including 15 design, sales and marketing staff in Cork.

Along with Lemon Tree, Legend and Scott Free, the portfolio of superyachts with OceanR-clothed crew has included the 47m Heesen My Secret, 63.5m Benetti Moca, 73m Feadship Lunasea, 88m Feadship Fountainhead, 110m Oceanco Kaos (former Jubilee) and the 117m Oceanco Infinity launched last year.

PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Furthermore, OceanR has conceived six sustainability pillars – one focused on people, three on products and two for the planet. ‘Our Community’ focuses on people, such as company staff and suppliers.

In Latvia, plastic bottles are cleaned, sorted then shredded into pellets

Product pillars start with ‘Eco Fabrics’, which include recycled polyester (mostly from plastic bottles), GOTS-certified organic cotton, plus innovative fabrics and trims such as pineapple leaf fibres, specifically Piñatex®, as a sustainable alternative to leather.

For ‘Traceability’, OceanR is working with BCome to record the life cycle of each product, potentially in a QR code. ‘Take It Back’ encourages clients to return product for repair or recycling.

Pellets are melted to make fibre that’s processed into fabric

To help the environment, ‘Beyond Carbon Neutral’ includes a partnership with Plant-for-the-Planet to help offset the company’s carbon footprint, while ‘A Kilo For The Planet’ represents support of Enaleia’s work in funding fishing boats for fishermen in Greece to collect ocean plastic to be recycled.

Since 2018, Enaleia has removed 500,000kg of marine plastic, while it currently increases the income of over 700 fishermen, who between them collect about 4,000kg a week.

The company produces a retail collection

Already a leading light in “doing good”, OceanR is now looking to build on “doing well”, sourcing further investment as it seeks to take the business to the next level.

“The goal isn’t just to maintain. We’re looking to fundraise again, which should give us a platform to get to quite a sizeable level, but still maintain the flexibility we’ve always had,” Cotter says. “And I’m lucky to have amazing staff, some of whom could be earning a lot more money at multinationals, but stay because they like what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

www.oceanr.co