This Is Unfolded Co-Founder Cally Russell on Finding What The World Needs Through Your Covid Pivot

Cally Russell is the co-founder of This Is Unfolded, a company that creates made-to-order clothes, and then reinvests the money back into the communities who are creating them.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, brands cancelled over $2 billion dollars worth of clothes orders with factories that were mainly in developing countries. This left workers without jobs or livelihoods and an estimated hundreds of millions of pieces of clothing destined for landfill.

To solve this problem, Cally created Lost Stock, which sold mystery boxes of clothing to people around the world to save them from being wasted and support factory and garment workers. The goal was to sell 10,000 boxes, but the team ended up selling 125,000.  This Is Unfolded continues this new way of shopping by taking excess stock out of the equation.

In this episode, you’ll learn Cally’s top tips on how to rethink the status quo in your industry, just how much clothing is sent to landfill in a normal retail model, and how to find purpose-led shoppers and build a community around them.

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Show Notes

Find more of This Is Unfolded: Check out their websiteandInstagram.

**🎧**Full Podcast Transcript Below

Elly: Today on the Conscious Commerce podcast, I’m joined by Cally Russell. He’s the co-founder of this has unfolded. Welcome Cally to the podcast. How’s it going?

Cally: Hey, Elly, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, really good. Really, really good. It’s 8AM in sunny Scotland. So yeah, a great way to start the day.Elly: Sunny Scotland?Cally: Yeah, like it’s not gonna stay for a long period of time. I don’t want to trick anyone into thinking that this is your sunny holiday destination in the near future. But yeah, we’ve had like a week of sunshine, which in Scotland it’s a big deal, basically.Elly: Yeah, I was gonna say you don’t really hear about Scotland being a sunny destination. So that’s cool. You’re getting your vitamin D over there.Cally: For a very short period of time, Elly, for a very short period of time, we’re getting our vitamin D.Elly:  So This Is Unfolded’s mission is to remove waste from the fashion industry and use the savings to create clothing that is better for you, better for the environment and better for the world. But before we get into the business side of things, I’d like to get to know you a little bit better first as a person. So what’s a fun fact about you that not many people know or your go to party trick?Cally: Oh, that’s such a really difficult question because I don’t think I’m great at parties to be honest with you. Like, like my introvert comes out, which is not normally the case. It’s going to continue our Scottish theme – when I was younger, I used to play the bagpipes. So I very much live that Scottish cliche, I still have a set and I could probably give you a tune. And then I would collapse in a heap because it takes so much lungs and lips sort of energy to do.Elly: Yeah, I struggled to blow a balloon, so I’m wondering, is the bagpipe like that times 10?Cally: Times 1000, to be honest with you. Basically, you learn to play the bagpipes by learning to play a different instrument when you’re young. So like a chance to learn how to do the little finger movements and stuff. And then as you get to like a certain age, you then get taught how to do the bagpipe bit, because it takes such lung capacity and also like your lips to be strong enough to be able to blow inside for a prolonged period of time. It’s a really weird sort of instrument and one of the few instruments that probably makes you physically fitter the more that you use it.Elly: So do you ever bring it out for special occasions?Cally: The last time I played it, it was my Dad’s 60th which was like six years ago, so no, no really. I could do that. I just choose not to for everyone involved. It’s better.

Elly: But that’s a great thing to do for your dad, I feel like for a 60th. Cally: You didn’t hear it Elly, you didn’t hear it. Like you say it’s a great thing to do if you’ve had you know, it did sound awful, so yeah, there is that side as well. Elly: And then you passed out afterwards.Cally: Oh, yeah, like I lasted like three minutes and then I was done, and I went to bed.Elly: tendlyn is a global community, so we to like to get a sense of where you’re from in the world. So where do you call home and what’s special about that place?Cally: So I now live in Edinburgh. I’m originally from a small town called Diden which is basically on the west coast of Scotland. And I’m from 25 minutes away from town. I live in the middle of nowhere, but it’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve actually been there for the last couple of days, it’s one of those beautiful places you can go in the world. It’s absolutely amazing. But there’s nothing there at all. I went for a run yesterday morning and I ran for an hour and I saw two people in an hour’s run like running along like a main road. I highly recommend anyone go there for the holiday. I live in Edinburgh, which despite being a small city, I think it’s like an instantly globally recognized city. Like everyone knows Edinburgh has the festivals. I used to travel a lot for work, but obviously that’s all stopped. I think there’s this thing called a global pandemic, so like we’re all stuck – we’re stuck at this point.Elly: Just a small scale event.Cally: I don’t know if you’ve heard about it Elly, I know life is kind of slightly more normal in New Zealand. That’s where I live. That’s where I call home. And yeah, I absolutely love it.Elly: And if you weren’t the founder of This is Unfolded what industry or job do you think you’d be working in right now?Cally: So I do love this question. I would love to think I’d be playing football for Liverpool Football Club. But that is a total lie, because I am nowhere near good enough. But if we could just pretend that I was then that’s what it would be like. Outside of that, I don’t know. I think it’d be trying to change something, somewhere. I think that’s kind of part my DNA of finding problems and thinking that you can make them better for the industry or the sector that I really have no idea, but yeah, professional footballer for Liverpool Football Club.Elly: Yeah, that’s the aspirational, lofty goal.

Elly: Yeah, I would really like to talk a bit more about the impact that had on the livelihood of people who work in these garment factories, as well as the waste that you managed to divert from landfill. How much are we talking? Like, what kind of feedback were you getting?

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Elly: Yeah, you definitely did. It’s incredible. And I’m curious, what learnings did you take from Mallzee that helped you in this situation of creating Lost Stock? Like what insights there helped you actually respond so quickly?

Cally: So I think that the biggest thing is that you’ve just got to try things that you’ve got to put something out really, really quickly. See if it takes, see what happens, and then follow in behind that. We use a lot of our own data knowledge about how do we match customer, against product sort of thing. I think the thing that we had no idea about and how complicated it was was the kind of logistics. And that’s the bit where we made the most mistakes. It turns out building a global supply chain in the middle of a pandemic is a little bit difficult. But at the end of the day, we did everything we could and we had this amazing impact. And now it’s allowed us to continue that into the work that we’re doing with This Is Unfolded and what we’re trying to build here as like a long-term impact driven replacement.

Elly: Yeah, because the mystery boxes probably aren’t gonna work in the longer term right, so how did you turn that initial response into a long-term business model with This is Unfolded?

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Elly: I didn’t know that was a thing. So in a normal retail model, about 30% of the products created are wasted. They’re not sold, they just go to the landfill?

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So we have an Unfolded worker Fund, which pays extra money to the workers that work with our products. But also, we decided that the biggest thing that we could impact was providing education around our factories, and like in the communities where our clothes are made. So also the money taken, we invest in supporting children through education through an organization called Pratham in India, which is where we’re currently purchasing clothes. So we’ve been trialing Unfolded now for two collections, keeping it really small, making an amazing customer experience, and making sure that we can deliver all the time, like really, really working hard on that. Even just for those two trial runs, we’ve supported over 1000 children in education for the next 12 months, which is pretty powerful, plus stopping anything going to landfill. So that’s what we’re building and to us, basically, the way that we think about it is this is designed to be like a new model of retail.

So if you think you’ve got your traditional retail, you’ve got your fast fashion retail, we’re basically going like this is your conscious consumerism version of retail, which doesn’t have to cost more money, because for the vast majority of consumers, you cannot charge them more money. But we can deliver you all these positives: positive for the environment, positive for workers, like all these sorts of different stages, we can give it to you at the same price. But we have to then change the underlying model that kind of comes through to make our work and mix it all together.

Elly: So your community is driving the clothing and asking for what they want and requesting changes. How do you decide who’s part of that Unfolds creators community and how much feedback do you take on board, in terms of what they’re after?

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Elly: What you’re doing is so unique in the fashion industry – is there such thing as too much transparency or too much openness on taking the customer on the journey with you, or so far as that proved to be really positive?

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Elly: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I also read on your website that you don’t call This Is Unfolded a sustainable brand, because the retail industry will never be 100% sustainable. So I’d love to talk about the language you consciously use when it comes to describing your impact.

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Elly: And what’s next on the horizon for This Is Unfolded? How are you planning on making your processes more sustainable in the future?

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Elly: I’d love to revisit it too! And I was wondering, can anyone in the world buy from This Is Unfolded at the moment, or is it not quite global yet?

Cally: Not yet, but please, please go visit This Is Unfolded and you can register for like access when we open up the other places. You can follow our journey on social media and all these sorts of different places. But yeah, we’re only shipping to the UK just now and the reason being with Lost Stock, we shipped to 10 different countries and we set all that off and had it running within a seven month period. We were turning on countries based on demands behind them.. We’re taking it a bit slower this time around to make it all work and be super, super happy with it.

Elly: But that’s great with Lost Stock, you saw that the model works it resonates globally with people. So when you get to that point it’ll be great.

Cally: 100%. If you’re in the UK, come and give us a whirl, give us a buy. If you’re not in the UK, just head to the site, and you can register to get first access when we set up in your country. We can give it a go at that point in time.

Elly: Great plug!

Cally: Did you like it?

Elly: It was a good one. I was going to ask you to plug everything at the end but you bet me to it.

Cally: Just in case everyone drops off by this point, I’ve got my plug in now. Sorry, what are you saying?

Elly: What would be your advice for the fashion brands that are looking to reduce their waste or overhaul their models like you’ve done?

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Elly: For the brands out there who haven’t invested in sustainability or social impact yet, based on the response to you saying that this entirely new model you’ve built, why should they do it now? What will it mean for the future success of their brand?

Cally: I think most of the times when businesses get in trouble or retail is in trouble is that they try to be all things to all people. There’s one fast fashion retailer in the UK, which has had really bad press for certain things, and it’s changed some of them, but none of that slowed down their sales growth, there will always be people that want to consume it that are a piece that’s really upsetting. We can try to educate, we can try to change those people. But chances are, that’s where they are, they’re not going to move en masse to where they need to be another piece. So instead, what it comes down to is that the rest of us just have to do that bit more. If enough of us do it, then it has that same sort of impact. This is just my personal opinion on it. You’re not going to change the person that is addicted to fast fashion. They’re in that space.

Elly: Yeah, so a reframing of that question is, if there are purpose-led brands out there, how do they find that community of conscious consumers? In the sea of all these other consumers?

Cally: How do you find your tribe?

Elly: Yeah, that aligns with your values and your business values?

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Elly: That’s interesting – with the This Is Unfolded model, you think that will work for men as well, in the future, they’ll be interested in that kind of approach to fashion?

Cally: We’ve already got a men’s waitlist, we’ve really got a kids waitlist. It might be that it’s not the men buying, it may be that it’s someone else buying for them, or someone else getting the feedback on it. But yeah, like, I think our model works for many different customer groups. And it’s how do you tap into all of them? And how do you connect up with all of them as you’re kind of going forward?

Elly: I was going to say my partner does not care about fashion at all, so the mystery box model would probably work for him, permanently.

Cally: It did really, really, really well with men, the mystery box model. But you know, there’s also a lot of women who like to buy their other half clothes. So it’s then saying to them, you can help decide what they want to design for him. And that comes out and that becomes quite an attractive model. But yeah, with the mystery box for the men, we had some really jazzy shirts in it from like one brand at one point in time and one had lobsters all over it.

Elly: Like loud party shirts?Cally: Yeah, they were definitely out there and like one of them turned up on TV, a TV personality in the UK wore it and everyone’s was really excited.

Elly: The lobster shirt, just to be clear?

Cally: Yeah. I don’t want to finish like the conversation right here being like come and buy our clothes like they’re really cool and interesting with, ‘Hey we make lobster shirts.’ I want to make it very clear. We don’t make lobster shirts. We just accidentally sold them for a period of time.

Elly: I think it would really liven up the environment when people were doing remote calls working from home if they rocked up in a crazy lobster shirt.

Cally: I think it would liven up most situations, a lobster shirt, to be honest with you. But it’s going to take a brave man together to give it a go at that point. To me, clothing’s a really interesting sector and one of the reasons why I work in this retail sector is because even if you are not engaged in fashion, per se, clothing impacts everyone’s lives, we all have to wear clothes, like all the time. What we’ve got now is what I consider like a push model. I’m a brand, I’ve produced this stuff, and now I’m pushing it out to all. And I’m telling you this is what I should buy. And I’m taking these like stores, and I’m filling it with this stuff. What we’re trying to create is basically a pull model, which is that choices are being pulled by the consumer. And the consumer is telling us, this is what we want, this is what we want to buy. And by moving from this push model to this pull model, we can cut out the waste in the middle, and then do something really positive with that.

Elly: And the consumers are so much more empowered that way as well, in their decisions.

Cally: Exactly, they’re a part of it, and they’re engaged. Who doesn’t love the idea of, I helped design this top that I’m wearing?

Elly: Or it’s named after me.

Cally: It’s named after me! We’ve loved that, too, seeing people who have bought the thing that’s named after them. And then like, the pictures that they take, and the happiness that you see from them. That to me is absolutely buzzing, like I get really excited about seeing that.

Elly: And how do you define and measure the impact of your work? What does success look like for you?

Cally: Personally, because I’m Scottish, like, there’s no such thing as success. There’s only just more work to be done.

Elly: That kind of sounds like New Zealand.

Cally: Yeah, I’m really, really bad at that so I’m trying to get better. So for us, it comes down to two pieces. So the two things that we’re looking at is how many lives have we impacted? Like how many people have we helped, because of the savings that we’ve made? And then how much waste that we saved from the traditional model? What does success look like on each one of them? Well, I don’t really know yet. If I’m being honest. We have lofty aspirations, and hopefully, you know, it’s tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who will be helped over a period of time. We’ll do another podcast then Elly, we’re going to do one in one year’s time and then seven years.

Elly: Lock it in.

Cally: So, basically I can look back on it and say, hey, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people in that time. All because we made a new retail model. That to me gets really, really exciting. It’s not easy. It’ll likely have lots of challenges along the way. But fundamentally, if you believe in something, you’ve just got to go and give it a try.

Elly: 100%. and you beat me to this before, but let’s recap, where can everyone find This is Unfolded online?

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Elly: Wow, that was a great wrap up.

Cally: It was a definite plug.

Elly: It’s been awesome. Thank you so much.

Cally: It’s been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for your time.

Thinking about the broader lessons from Cally’s journey

As Cally noted, the fashion industry’s push model generates massive waste—about 30% of products end up in landfill. This waste isn’t just environmental; it’s a sign of a broken system. The pull model, where consumers drive demand, can eliminate that inefficiency. It’s a principle that applies far beyond clothing.

Consider how automation and smart control systems are transforming other industries. For example, in Australia Agriculture Asset Automation Sourcing, farmers are adopting technologies like an Orchard Automatic Watering system to precisely deliver water only when needed, cutting waste. Similarly, an industrial automation relay board can manage complex machinery with minimal human oversight, reducing errors and resource use. Even in home settings, a smart home relay module or a wireless room light switch lets you control energy consumption down to the individual bulb.

The same logic of cutting waste by matching supply to demand shows up in water management. A City Water Main Pressure Booster ensures consistent flow without over-pumping, while a Triplex Booster Pump Control system adjusts output in real time based on usage. For remote operations, a marine wireless relay or Marine Wireless Power Switch can activate equipment only when needed, saving power and extending gear life.

Cally’s approach—testing quickly, learning from mistakes, and building a community that shapes the product—mirrors how innovators in other fields operate. Whether you’re designing a zigbee switch for home automation, a volt rf switch for industrial gear, or a remote garage switch for convenience, the goal is the same: give people control over what they use, when they use it.

Practical takeaways for any founder

Cally’s story offers a blueprint for anyone looking to pivot their business toward purpose. First, don’t wait for perfection. Lost Stock launched in a crisis, and the team learned logistics on the fly. Second, listen to your community. This Is Unfolded’s customers help design the clothes, creating a sense of ownership that drives loyalty. Third, measure what matters. For Cally, success isn’t revenue—it’s lives impacted and waste diverted.

If you’re building a product, whether it’s a universal remote relay or a dc 5v relay switch, think about how you can involve your users in the process. A wireless remote kit might be more useful if customers can suggest features. An mhz rf garage controller could be improved by feedback from actual installers. The iot wireless relay market is growing fast, and the brands that win will be those that treat their customers as collaborators, not just buyers.

And don’t forget the power of a good story. Cally’s lobster shirt anecdote is memorable because it’s human. It shows that even a serious mission can have moments of levity. When you share your journey honestly—mistakes and all—you build trust. That trust is the foundation of any community, whether you’re selling clothes or mhz remote switch controller modules.

As Cally put it, “If you believe in something, you’ve just got to go and give it a try.” That’s the spirit that drives real change, in fashion and beyond.