Liz Henderson On Manufacturing Clothing While Providing Ethical Support For At-Risk Workers

Liz Henderson is an entrepreneur and strategist who has founded and sold a number of businesses internationally.

She has managed strategy consultancies in two countries for 23+ years working with executives, and boards across a range of sectors from global software and infrastructure to financial services and universities. She is Co-Founder of Avodah Global, a sustainable and ethical clothing manufacturing company employing women rescued from trafficking and other vulnerable and at-risk workers in Cambodia.

Liz owns an e-commerce activewear business that manufactures through the Cambodian centre. Prior to moving to Australia, she established three ladies fitness centres which she sold once they reached profitability. She has lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand and has an MA in International Development. In Avodah, her areas of responsibility include strategy, governance, finance, investment, HR, legal, compliance, and business development. Basically everything that is not sewing related!

Liz discusses opportunities for the garment manufacturing industry to become an environment for supporting vulnerable workers and how Avodah Global are working with women to address the root causes of human trafficking.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - Could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

[Liz Henderson] - I am Canadian by background and my first job after finishing University was teaching maths and science in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. The village I taught in was two days along a sand trail and had no electricity, running water or phones. It was a bit of a shock coming from a city of three million people (Montreal) where I grew up. I mention this because it set the trajectory of my work life. I've lived around the world in seven countries across five continents, and I found myself moving to Australia after earthquakes in New Zealand. I was working there, and I ran my own businesses in New Zealand for over 14 years. Although by background I'm a scientist with a Master’s in International Development, my strength has always been in strategy. I've run my own strategy consultancies both in Australia and New Zealand for over 23 years. I took a break from that and did some operational work in our local water utility, which was fantastic. Eventually however, I got an entrepreneurial itch which wasn't being scratched while I was working for effectively a public service organisation. Back in 2016, I quit my job. I had a fantastic team but set out to see what was next in the entrepreneurship space for me. I set up a swimwear business knowing very little about e-commerce and thinking it was a suitable product for an entrepreneur to bring to the Australian market. That went reasonably well, but my partners ended up moving on to other things and I closed it down.

The important thing to remember is the story of entrepreneurship isn't always about success. Sometimes it doesn't work, and that was a good learning for me.

I then went back to strategy, and I've worked with everything including global software, ports, infrastructure, financial services, and even creative digital marketing companies.

I went back to my bread and butter of strategy while looking for the next thing and found an e-commerce maternity active wear business for sale. I've always had multiple projects ongoing at once. I usually do strategy (my brain business), but I must have something else on the side. Maternity activewear became my business on the side, and bought that business in September of 2019, which turned out to be bad timing! However, I wanted to use it as a vehicle to help vulnerable women, so I went on a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, which is where I met my business partner Karine. She became the production manager for my e-commerce maternity activewear business, but my purpose for that trip was to find sewing centres doing good and helping vulnerable people. I wanted to work with these so I could have the manufacturing for my retail business making a positive impact. I never thought at that moment I would end up owning one of those sewing centres which we visited. Fast forward to early 2021 and the sewing centre we visited in Phnom Penh was about to close because it was struggling in COVID-19. Karine and I were distressed by this; she had actually set this particular sewing centre up in 2016. Long story short, we ended up buying this sewing centre in a country we couldn't visit, during the pandemic. It had no customers then, and so that was the start of the Avodah Global journey. We are a sustainable and ethical clothing manufacturer, providing women who've been trafficked and vulnerable or at-risk workers with training, support, and employment. We contractually manufacture for several Australian companies, but also some American labels as well. That brings us to present day, and I'll just say Australia is now home for me. I obviously venture out into Cambodia and other parts of Asia, but I've got the Australian passport and am not moving!

Can you tell us more about Avodah Global’s unique way of operating and the impact you're generating?

Our model is quite different from a lot of social enterprises you see operating in countries like Cambodia. They are usually what I call an inside out model, where they make things and then try to find an external market for them. We're the reverse; we never make any item in our factory that hasn't been asked for by someone else. It's an outside in model which is focused on our customers, target markets and what they're asking us to make. The other difference is we are a commercial enterprise, but we are also different to other commercial garment factories. The first difference is we pay our workers a living wage. The second is we have a full vocational training program and charitable front end. This is in the form of a project bringing women with limited sewing skills and low education into the factory and giving them very hands on vocational training and life skills. We teach them things like how to manage their money, keep fit and learn English. We're building that program with 20 competencies/soft skills which will help them thrive at home and work. The reason we have this charitable front end is because these women are not at the skill level where we could put them into commercial production. Because we're making garments and other textile products for an export market, there's a certain level of quality we must maintain. We are all about excellence, so we need to work with them for 12 to 16 months to get them up to speed.

That's another major difference, but also, usually in big factories, the labourers are in battery hen working conditions. They're crowded into unsafe, unsanitary workplaces for long hours that pay a pittance. Usually, they make low quality garments we sadly buy, wear for a season, and then toss into landfill.

The whole model needs disrupting, and in those big factories, a worker typically (because of a lack of training) is only going to use one machine and learn how to do one type of seam. These workers will spend their whole life sewing an arm of a shirt onto the shoulder, but we take a completely different approach. All our teams are flexible and trained on every machine we have. We sew everything from stretchy, activewear swimwear, through to woven textiles. That's unusual, normally you'll have a factory which just specialises in one product.

How are you addressing the issue of human trafficking through your work at Avodah Global?

Trafficking is an enormous problem; 11.7 million people have been trafficked globally, and 71 percent of them are women. That is such an intractable problem, and it's hard to see how we can do something about that.

The power is in our wallets, and we can choose to buy from companies taking care of their workers and caring for the planet.

What we are doing as a manufacturer is setting up our factories as family-friendly small hubs of 30 to 50 workers. These are designed to support women and help them work from home, which enables them to participate in production but also take care of their small children. What we're finding is that the trafficking often starts with small children, and we have in our network had this very thing happen; a child was being groomed and abused by a neighbour while the mum was working long hours in an exploitive factory. If we could have helped that mum work from home, if we'd existed back then, then she could have minded her children while generating income from participating in apparel production. That abuse would never have happened with this support, and this is our way of dealing with trafficking at the root in local communities where it's going on unseen.

As a recent participant in the Impact Boom Female Founders Forward program, can you tell us about your experience and any key takeaways?

It was a brilliant experience. We loved participating and I got so much out of it. There are two key takeaways, the first being we're not alone. It can feel isolating during the entrepreneurial journey, and just being able to connect with other women who were on the same pathway was exciting. But also, you and Tom leading the program and the speakers you brought in helped us build a network which is very encouraging. The second key takeaway is that building a firm foundation is critical.

We as entrepreneurs can get caught up in the vision and mission of what we're doing, but building a stable foundation Through understanding and articulating your theory of change and using design thinking skills is crucial.

This helps you to design your business and get the financial and legal foundations in place which will sit around your mission and help you make a sustainable business. This was the biggest learning, and the team you pulled together to present to us was exceptional.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

The female founder’s cohort were amazing. For me, the ones that touched my heart were ones working with vulnerable and at-risk people. I love Ethni’s model, where they are working with refugee/migrant women and supporting NDIS clients. These young women are learning leadership skills while providing a beautiful service to others. I love OneBridge; their nursing, mental and physical health services for people transitioning through social housing. Also, Globe Domes are addressing the homeless issue. Those enterprises struck my heart. Also, through my involvement in Coralus, I have a real heart for the next generation. I think the mental stresses they're facing are enormous, and companies like Stymie are providing an anonymous way for young people to self-report or report a friend who's struggling mentally to try and put them in touch with the right care, so we don't see suicide rates increase. ParentTV is another one supporting parents. It's difficult to be a parent today, so giving parents the tools to help their children is fantastic.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I must confess I am a smorgasbord reader. I snack on many books at the same time. I'll tell you what I'm reading now. On the business side, Traction: Getting A Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman is all about scaling your business by putting all those foundational pieces in place. Also, I'm reading a fantastic book by a lady named Suzie Sheehy. She's a physicist at the University of Melbourne, and she's written this book called The Matter of Everything: 12 Experiments That Changed Our World. It's highly readable, so I recommend that one. On the health side I’m rereading The Body Keeps Score, a book by Bessel Van Der Kolk. It's about how trauma plays out in our physical bodies and how you can break that connection.