Getting fit shouldn't cost the earth

Our Story

We’re Jess & Will, we live in Bristol, UK and have three daughters, we’re both keen sports people, Jess is a runner and has run for England, she now organises a women’s running club in Bristol. Will loves all sports.

The environment and our impact on it has always been a topic of conversation within our family and something that we think about in all aspects of our lives. From the cars we drive to the soap we wash our clothes with to the packaging of our food, our choices are based on their environmental impact. Something we found hard to find was functional, hard wearing sports clothing that fitted our environmental and ethical values.

For her running club Jess was sourcing T-shirts and the question came up: why don’t we try and supply sustainable, recycled products for her runners? This lead on to why don’t we create a brand? That embodies everything that we believe and strive for.

We knew one thing, our products had to be recycled and sustainable and make a positive impact on the community whilst having the smallest impact on the environment. We had very little experience in the industry and had to learn most things from scratch, luckily family members and friends were keen to help and offer advice.

Our journey had started

Coming up with our name was a long process, we wanted something to signify nature and possibly something that had a personal meaning. Why OSO, this translates from the Spanish word for bear.
Emblematic of strength, spirit, fearlessness and intelligence. An animal that
is completely at one with nature and looks after their own community. Bears are
often playful and social animals, often forming friendships with others.

We converted our garage into an office and storage area and set about sourcing suppliers and designing our products.

One of our goals is to provide responsibly sourced and ethically made products at an affordable price so as many people as possible can be engaged in positive climate change. Since labour costs are lower in China we are able to provide products to our customers at similar prices as our competitors. To minimise our environmental impact we use carbon neutral shipping partners.

The idea of planting trees came from one of our children who asked if she could plant trees in and around our local community, so we decided to incorporate this into our brand. We’ve partnered with More:Trees, who work with local communities to restore healthy forests and reduce extreme poverty. Planting trees not only absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere but provides farms with work to support the local community and gives someone a skill to feed their family. Tree planting has other benefits such as water filtration, shelter, food sources, poverty alleviation and biodiversity.

The final piece in our start up puzzle was understanding how we can deliver our customers products to their door in perfect condition as environmentally friendly as possible. The cheapest solution is biodegradable or compostable poly bags once you receive your delivery you can simply pop your bag in your food waste bin where it will disintegrate within 12 weeks and then fully biodegrade within 6 months. Whilst this solution is good it is not ideal for all products and still requires energy in the manufacturing process. Another solution is to use reusable packaging, RePack provides tough , waterproof, recycled and reusable packaging, which is the complete opposite to single use packaging. According to Repack some of their packaging has been reused at least 50 times. The only problem with Repack is that it costs £4 per use, this is why we have provided this option as a delivery service at checkout, giving the customer the choice.

All OSO products are made with recycled or sustainably sourced materials and for every item purchased we will plant a tree in your name.

Together let’s achieve positive climate change for the benefit of generations to come