As a family run company, community giving has always been part of our DNA.
Community Giving
As producers of a wide range of children’s products, we choose to align ourselves with organisations that support children and their families to fully realise their potential.
We work with Rotary to donate and distribute any excess stock or samples. Rotary work with a network of charities to distribute our wide range of products to those who need them most.
Progress
We continue to support many charity partners with product donations, through Rotary.
In 2022 Mambo sponsored a team in the Surf Aid Cup at Urban Surf Melbourne. Our team, raised over $6050 for Surf Aid, a not for profit humanitarian organisation working to improve the health, wellbeing and self-reliance of people living in isolated regions in Indonesia.
Caprice, through Dri-Glo online and Mambo Surf Deluxe work with i-change to supportthe Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Starlight Childrens Foundation, Beyond Blue, Greening Australia, Seabin Foundation and The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, with our customers getting to send their donation to the charity they have greatest connection with.
Internship Program
Our intern program, currently run in partnership with RMIT University, is a key initiative of the community pillar in the Caprice Sustainability Strategy.
We are committed to empowering the next generation of fashion, textile and footwear professionals and look forward to sharing the knowledge that we have garnered over the years.
Progress
The Caprice Internship program has blossomed since its beginning in 2020 when we ran our first Industry Partnered Project with RMIT University’s School of Fashion and Textiles. It has since moved into two streams, inhouse work experience placements and partnered projects.
The in-house work experience or intern placement program gives students enrolled in a relevant field of study the opportunity to come and see how a large scale wholesaler, such as Caprice, operates. They gain exposure to the many facets of the business and gain valuable experience and insights into the industry that they are joining.
Since placing our first Intern in 2021, we have hosted students from the Bachelor of Fashion (Design) and the Bachelor of Textile (Design) programs at RMIT University. In 2022 we hosted our first round of work experience students from the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise).
We launched the Partnered Project aspect of our internship program in 2020 with a partnership with the RMIT Bachelor of Fashion and Textiles (Sustainable Innovation) program. The students were set the task to research common footwear materials and report on their sustainability attributes in line with the Caprice Sustainable Design Guidelines good, better, best framework. They also took a style from the footwear teams best sellers and suggested a ‘Good, Better or Best’ way forward to make our product offer more sustainable. The overall quality of the work was outstanding, and it was near impossible to choose the first and second prize winners.
In 2021 we launched a new and exclusive ongoing project with the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program, in their Fashion Range Development Course. We ran the project both Semester 1 and 2, offering industry presentations to the students and hosting some students in house at Caprice to present their projects back to us, while others presented online. Their project brief was to develop a children’s fashion range with mass market appeal and sustainable features. The work that they delivered, from consumer research, product development and marketing was extremely impressive.
In 2022 we have continued to work on our partnered project with the Enterprise program, moving the product focus around to also include footwear in second semester. We love to see how this partnership is blossoming and can’t wait to see how the 2023 cohort go, with home textiles next on the list!
