Founded in 2020 by mother and long-time environmentalist Marianna Sachse, Jackalo is a kidswear brand focused on durable, organic, circular clothing for active children.
1. Environmental
Sustainability
Jackalo focuses on organic and other natural fibers, durability, and circular design for kids’ clothes. It uses organic cotton and organic deadstock fabrics and builds repair, resale, and take-back into its model. The brand offsets emissions across its value chain and donates 1% of annual sales through 1% for the Planet.
IMPACT AREA 01
Materials
& Sourcing
- For Jackalo, sustainability means making such clothes for kids that are durable enough for play, comfortable, and gender-neutral.
- The brand states that it chooses organic cotton as its main fabric and explains that organic cotton is grown without synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, or GMOs and supports soil health and biodiversity.
- Jackalo highlights the values of organic cotton, which uses “significantly less water” than conventional cotton and frames this as a key reason for using it.
- The brand uses organic deadstock fabrics from previous collections, overproduction, or cancelled orders, and notes that these deadstock fabrics are also organic.
- Using organic deadstock allows them to keep unused but good-quality fabric out of landfill and avoid the need to produce new material.
- Jackalo mentions using organic, deadstock, recycled, or upcycled fabric and designing apparel to last, but it does not publish a fiber breakdown or percentages by material type.
- The brand promotes the idea of “cost per wear” to encourage customers to buy fewer, better garments and re-wear them more often.
- It would be great if they also provided year-on-year progress data.
IMPACT AREA 02
Climate
& Emissions
- Jackalo keeps production geographically as close as possible, for example, by keeping farming, milling, and sewing close together in India, in order to reduce transport distances.
- The brand is aware that carbon offsets have some drawbacks, but it allows the brand to support renewable energy and conservation projects. They offset the carbon produced at different levels, from farm to factory, factory to the US, and from its door to the customer’s door.
- Jackalo partners with SimpliZero for its carbon offsetting and notes that these projects are third-party certified and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- Jackalo has joined 1% for the Planet and commits to donating 1% of its annual sales to vetted environmental organisations.
IMPACT AREA 03
Water
& Chemicals
- Jackalo does not share its own measured water footprint, water-reduction targets, or facility-level water management initiatives.
- However, Jackalo connects its lower-impact water and chemical usage to the use of organic cotton. Organic cotton avoids synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and is widely considered to use less water than conventional cotton.
IMPACT AREA 04
Circularity
& Waste
- Jackalo designs its clothes with circularity in mind, choosing natural fibers and avoiding fabric blends so that garments can be recycled or composted using current machinery.
- Jackalo runs a TradeUP buy-back program. When children outgrow their Jackalo clothes, customers can send them back in exchange for store credit. Returned items are cleaned, repaired if needed, and resold on the Jackalo site at a discount. Items that cannot be repaired are upcycled or recycled.
- Jackalo offers free repairs on all clothes within six months of purchase (customers pay to ship items to the brand; Jackalo covers the repair and return shipping in that window).
- The brand also promotes a “culture of repair and reuse,” provides repair resources such as a mending guide, and encourages families to mend at home to extend garment life.
- For packaging, they try to reduce plastic waste. That’s why Jackalo uses recycled plastic polybags and cardboard boxes, and other shipping materials (recycled tissue paper, paper tape, compostable mailer bags).
- Jackalo describes its repair and buy-back programs. But we could not find the data disclosed on the number of items repaired, bought back, or recycled per year.