Celebrating B Corp Month: 13 Years of Impact
March 10, 2025
Last week, Looptworks founder and CEO Scott Hamlin was honored with Oregon Business & Industry‘s Oregon Visionary Award.Â
“Looptworks is set up to address the waste and excess that happens in the textile industry with multiple solutions for textile circularity,” says Scott Hamlin. “Being recognized for this award is probably one of the highlights of our company. We hope is shines a light on our approach to business.”
Video Transcription:
Oregon Business Journal, Angela Whilhelms: Loopworks truly embodies what the Oregon Visionary Award is. It’s a company that’s successful. They care about their people. They’re solving big problems, and they’re making a difference for Oregon.
Scott Hamlin: Looptworks is set up to address the waste and excess in the textile industry with multiple solutions for textile circularity phase one, which is upcycling. So take those things, use design and innovation to turn excess materials back into new, really cool products, and start a conversation.
Alyssa Augustine: There’s a few really interesting projects that I think are core to Looptworks, and one of those is the airplane seats and making those into tote bags, duffel bags, backpacks.
Scott: And then from there into other solutions, like downcycling, where we take things in a zero waste to landfill solution and turn them into things like insulation, stuffing hard fibers for aggregates and concrete. And then the ultimate goal is to be able to do the aluminum can thing, where the feedstock from our company, the recycled fiber content, becomes the yarn, which becomes the t shirt, which then gets resold again.
Alyssa: One of the first projects that I was able to work on, it was with recycled denim. It’s been a piece of apparel, it’s been a coffee bag. It’s now new material, and now it’s a bag for us, and that’s already five, four or five different life spans.
Scott: And so that’s the technology that we’ve now been working on to evolve. Thus the name Looptworks, and not just Upcycleworks.
Alyssa: By not using virgin materials. We are conserving air quality, we’re conserving water. We’re not creating anything new. We’re creating things out of pieces of material that already exist and products that already exist.
Scott: We have been focused on community in the areas where we operate and we really have positive social impact there. I made the decision to partner with nonprofits that employ adults with disabilities and barriers to employment, and so they’re baked into our supply chain, and those are our receiving centers where we send the raw materials that come in.
Alyssa: We get sent the entire seat, and our nonprofit workers that we work with, they take the leather off the seats. There’s cleaning that we do, there’s deconstructing that they do, and then they will ship it to us, for us to actually cut and sew into new product.
Scott: And the other program that we set up was working with single mothers, refugees and folks who have challenges holding down full time work those folks do manufacturing in home studios, where we’ve set them up.
Alyssa: For me, being able to work with nonprofits and local sewers in the community, it feels authentic, and it feels very family oriented, and it feels like we have a similar goal, and we’re all working together to help each other out.
Scott: I’m proud of the work that we do here. I’m proud of the team, and I’m proud of the reputation that we have for doing the right thing.
Alyssa: I love the people that I work with. I love the challenges that I come to work to solve every day, and I like the problems that we are all collectively trying to solve.
Scott: Us being recognized for this award is probably one of the highlights of the company, winning the visionary award for us, we hope it shines a light on the approach to business that we have, so that other businesses can act this way as well.
We’d love to hear from you!
Denine has over 20 years of experience driving new business opportunities for leading companies, including E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company, Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, Outlast Technologies, and DST Systems. She holds a BS from the University of Pittsburgh and a Certification in Executive Management from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tami is a senior accounting leader with over 16 years of experience in the manufacturing and textile industry. Her specialties include process development and implementation, mergers and acquisitions, job and project costing and analysis, and managing complex teams and technical projects. Tami has served as Chief Financial Officer and Controller for a variety of innovative companies, where her analytical skills and strategic mindset helped organizations create efficiencies in their financial systems.
Kelley is a passionate and strategically minded business development leader with more than two decades of experience in the sporting goods apparel industry. He has experience in product construction, league partnerships, retail relationships, supply chain management, sustainability, circularity, and carbon footprint management. Kelley builds successful partnerships by putting the customer first while simultaneously advancing his organization’s business objectives.
Suzy is a product leader and operations expert with more than 25 years of experience in the textile industry. She is passionate about finding creative solutions to complex problems and motivating people to action through vision, strategy, collaboration, and communication. Suzy has proven expertise in product development, sustainability, marketing, supply chains, and innovating processes and best practices to drive results.
Scott is a visionary leader with more than 32 years of experience in strategic branding, innovative product creation, supply chain sustainability, and sales and marketing for global organizations. He founded Looptworks in 2009 as an industry solution for turning excess materials into upcycled consumer products. In 2022, Scott transitioned the company to a B2B business model focused on eliminating global textile waste through closed-loop solutions.
Scott is a visionary leader with more than 32 years of experience in strategic branding, innovative product creation, supply chain sustainability, and sales and marketing for global organizations. He founded Looptworks in 2009 as an industry solution for turning excess materials into upcycled consumer products. In 2022, Scott transitioned the company to a B2B business model focused on eliminating global textile waste through closed-loop solutions.
