Corporate Social Responsibility at les enphants is divided into four main aspects – Sustainability, People, Community, and Cultural Preservation and Innovation.
Sustainability
les enphants is a family business with the long view always at the core of its vision. Because “children are our lifetime career,” it matters deeply to us that we leave the world a better place for our children and for our children’s children and so on. Rather than chasing the latest trend, les enphants wants to provide its consumers with the best quality apparel and accessories. It has become more and more apparent that the “best” quality today means materials that are renewable, using sustainable methods during production. les enphants already incorporates the use of some eco-friendly materials in our apparel, shoes, and baby care products, and has been increasing the percentage of eco-friendly materials utilized each year. In 2013, our use of eco-friendly materials was 3.8%; in 2017, it increased to 13.4%. It is our aspiration to employ the “cradle-to-cradle” concept to even more of our materials and products.
Our People
les enphants founder, Eric Lin, has always maintained that the biggest asset of the company is the people who work at les enphants. He places great value on each individual and the role she plays and the specific talents and personal experiences she brings to that role. les enphants sponsors various team-building events and company outings that enrich employees’ lives outside of the traditional work environment.
In 2013, les enphants invited Roy Chen, Director of the Taiwan Mindfulness Center, to guide a small number of managers in a mindfulness workshop. Since then, les enphants has incorporated simple mindfulness meditations to the start of each monthly meeting, les enphants has also participated in the Search Inside Yourself course, which was designed by a Google engineer as a way to enhance the health and wellness of its staff.
les enphants strongly believes that true happiness and wellness start from within and that the company’s overall health depends on the health of each and every person who works here.
Community
From offering prenatal and babycare classes in our shops to holding the annual baby crawling contest to making consistent donations to children in need, les enphants cares deeply about the communities it is a part of, both on a small, local level and a broader, pan-Asian level. les enphants is always seeking to do more to support parents, in order to give their children the space and freedom to be innocent, creative, and happy.
In 2015, les enphants began collecting second hand children’s books at its shops and at the beginning of 2016, launched its mobile library. les enphants staff routinely volunteer their time to travel with the mobile library to remote parts of Taiwan to read with children in underserved communities.
Cultural Preservation and Innovation
The fundamental core of les enphants is the desire to serve our clients with the same care as a mother’s doting love for her children, which, in pre-industrialized cultures in rural China, was often expressed through the clothing and accessories she wove and embroidered by hand. Christi Lan, les enphants’ longtime consultant and Founder, Eric Lin’s wife, has been a collector of textiles (baby carriers, hats, bibs, purses) from minority tribes in China for over twenty years. Under the auspices of les enphants, she has published four books on these century-old woven pieces to celebrate and preserve this traditional craft. More recently, les enphants designers have taken inspiration from Christi Lan’s collection and incorporated certain motifs into les enphants clothing, to extend the life of traditional culture by weaving it into a modern context.
les enphants strives to imbue our designs with the same humility and attention to detail that was once given to traditional hand-woven garments. As well, les enphants aims to revive the use of traditional motifs and symbols in modern children’s apparel as a way to infuse each article of clothing with hope and love.