Most hemp underwear factory stories start the same way: an email to a directory, a sample that arrives wrong. Ours started oa bit different.
Most underwear brands would rather you didn’t ask where their clothes are made. We will just draw you the map. Your Hamppy has two birthplaces. The fabric is woven in China, by a specialist hemp mill. The garment is cut and sewn in Thailand, in a factory I visited in person, where I know the people who make it. Two countries, one pair of underwear, with a real reason for each.
Why China for the fabric
Hemp is not easy to turn into soft, wearable fabric. The plant is strong, which is rather the point, but processing bast fibres into something you would want against your skin takes specialist equipment and accumulated expertise that most of the world simply does not have yet.
Right now, that expertise is concentrated in China, more than anywhere else. Not because of cost. Because decades of specialist hemp textile development happened there, and the mills that can produce fabric at the quality we need are based there. Pretending otherwise, or sourcing from somewhere less equipped out of optics, would mean a worse product or a much higher price. We are not interested in either.
Our fabric is a blend of hemp, GOTS-certified organic cotton and a small amount of spandex. The hemp does the heavy lifting on breathability, antibacterial properties and reliability. The organic cotton brings the soft, familiar hand-feel that makes the first wear unremarkable in the best possible way. The spandex keeps the fit through however many washes come next. GOTS certification on the cotton means no toxic pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers and third-party verification rather than our word for it.
Designed in Amsterdam
Inside the hemp underwear factory in Thailand
Finding a factory we trusted was the hardest part of this entire project. Manufacturer after manufacturer said the right things on a call and looked different in person. At a certain point I almost quit looking entirely.
Then, on a holiday in Thailand, a contact passed along a name. I was not there looking for factories. I was taking a break. But the factory was and hour away, so I went.
I have stood in the room where your underwear is made. I met the people who sew it, saw the conditions with my own eyes and had the kind of conversation about quality and care that only really happens face to face. That is not copy for a website. It is just what happened. It matters to me that you know it.
The garments are stitched with recycled-polyester thread certified to the Global Recycled Standard, which closes one more loop on the material story. From Thailand they travel to our fulfilment partner in the Netherlands, who packs and ships them to you. No middlemen adding a markup and a layer of fog in between.
Why we tell you all of this
Plenty of brands print one country on the label and quietly leave out that the fabric came from somewhere else entirely. It is tidier. It is also a half-truth.
We keep the two origins separate on purpose. The fabric is Chinese. The garment is Thai. Saying “made in Thailand” and stopping there would miss half the picture. The half it misses is the part that took the longest to get right. The fabric is where the quality lives. You deserve to know where that came from too.
Radical transparency sounds like a buzzword until you realise how few brands will actually answer the simple question: who made this, where and can you prove it? We would rather hand you the whole map, mills included, and let you decide.
If you want to go deeper on materials, certifications and the full supply chain, we have a digital product passport with all of it in one place. We will link it here once it is live.
That is the honest version of how a Hamppy gets to you. Woven in China by specialists, sewn in Thailand by people I have actually met, shipped from the Netherlands. No fog, no fairy tale. Just a map.
This is not the finish line
We do not think we have this completely figured out. The supply chain is honest, the materials are certified and the factories are real. But there is always further to go.
We are actively looking at what the next step looks like. That might be joining 1% for the Planet, committing a fixed percentage of revenue to environmental non-profits. It might be other certifications or foundations that hold brands accountable in ways we have not signed up for yet. B Corp, Fair Wear, something else. We are not there. We are thinking about it seriously.
The honest version of any brand story is ongoing. Ours is no different.
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