We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenny Silbert. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenny below.

Jenny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?

Our entire business is working with trash, and we completely flip the design process on its head. In my past life in architecture, and in many design fields, people typically design first and then find materials to fit. We start with materials – sourced from the trash – and from those materials we figure out the best, most long-lasting designs. Our goal is to keep valuable material out of the landfill for as long as possible. Really everything about Rewilder flips our typical production and consumption model. We call it Reverse Materialism — a movement where every thing you buy means one less thing in the landfill.

Jenny, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Rewilder is a women-owned sustainable design company on a mission to find the wealth in waste. As a design lab, we save materials from the landfill and upcycle them into rad new products, giving them a second life.

I founded Rewilder in 2014 with Lisa Siedlecki. We had $30K and big design skills. My background is in architecture, specifically material development and complex architectural problem solving. Lisa was working in fashion / handbag design. Together we dreamed of a company that could use great design to tackle the massive waste we were seeing in both our industries. We were joined by Stephanie Choi in 2019, who’s focus on science and story has really taken our work to the next level. We now work to quantify the impact of all our projects, and education and sustainable storytelling is paramount to our work.

I’ve always loved trash, and I’ve always been a dumpster diver. When I was a kid I’d ride my bike to the local tile shop and dig through their trash, and now we do the same thing with industry giants.

Using existing materials is always gonna be the best solution for people and the planet. The work we’re doing is adding value to material that otherwise goes to waste. It already has embedded energy – the growing, picking, processing, dyeing, the hands that have already touched it – and we want to preserve this and bring it back to life.

Making unique upcycled products requires design and material expertise, and a commitment to the difficult extra steps that upcycling demands: designing from materials first, then deconstruction before reconstruction. There are additional challenges in sourcing and upcycling the appropriate materials for use, at scale, while maintaining consistent quality and design. Our team of crafts people in Los Angeles are expert at working with unusual materials.

For the last two years, we’ve been incubating at the Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator, which has been an invaluable resource for growth.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

When my grandfather passed away in 2013, he left me $30K. This was the initial capital that we used to start Rewilder. That money was used to rent our first office, do our first trash deal (we took a road trip to Colorado, brought a box of donuts to the MRF at Miller Coors, negotiated the cost, and bought as much beer filter cloth as would fit in our car!). We set up the website, designed and produced our first line of bags. Lisa sewed all the first samples. It was a very exciting time, where everything was new and possible.

We’ve always been bootstrapped; but it was a few years of living on savings before we were able to pay ourselves any money. Without support from our partners at the beginning, Rewilder would not be possible today.

As part of LACI, we’ve learned a lot about running a successful business. We really started as two designers, and the business bits came later.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Our business is very much about relationships, and we work hard to develop meaningful relationships with people that champion sustainability. Some of those have taken years to develop. We are offering a unique service, and we work really hard at it. Once we’ve completed projects with people, they often come back. Our partnership with the Hollywood Bowl, for example. They are extraordinary clients, and truly committed to upcycling their street pole banners into bags, even at a higher cost. We’ve been working with them for 5 seasons now, and the bags are iconic.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rewilder.com/
• Instagram: @rewildergoods
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifersilbert/

Image Credits
@shermanleephoto @sarahskyann