From textile waste to breakthrough innovation

Read the transcript: ‘Unravel, Rebuild, Repeat: OSOMTEX’ on The Unshakeables

Ben Walter:

There's an age old question. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

Patricia Ermecheo:

I've never been the one driving this thing. It's something greater and bigger than myself, and I just hear that voice and follow instructions just like I am a puppet of the universe.

Ben Walter:

Patricia Ermecheo, Founder and CEO of OSOMTEX and Osom Brands, is in my estimation the force in this scenario.

Patricia Ermecheo:

When you have had other lives in which you were something else, you bring the knowledge in your new lives. So that's the only explanation on how I can actually build an entire facility from nothing.

Ben Walter:

She dreamed up a machine that didn't exist to solve a global problem for the fashion industry. Within days of launching a Kickstarter for socks, one of the biggest companies in the world reached out to partner with her. If she wants something, Patricia makes it happen, but sometimes, things in life happen you can't force your way out of. In her story and in the story of OSOMTEX today, the immovable object was completely out of her control, burnout and grief.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I have so much energy. I don't even know what you mean when you say burned out. I always knew where to go and what to do, and just having that lost feeling was the most horrible thing. When you're there, you think you're never coming back to who you were. It's like you got lost in a black hole.

Ben Walter:

Today, how she got through it. Welcome to The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeart Media. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. There's nothing small about the impact small businesses have on America. They don't just drive our economy. They define our communities, create opportunities, and inspire the next generation of dreamers and builders. On The Unshakeables, we are sharing the daring moments of business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. Kathleen-

Kathleen Griffith:

All right.

Ben Walter:

What's going on, man?

Kathleen Griffith:

Good to see you. In honor of sustainability, I'm in the most eco-conscious outfit I have, a green linen jumpsuit, which I just found out linen is better than cotton, apparently. So here we are.

Ben Walter:

Interesting. You're in LA wearing linen. I'm in New York wearing heavy layers.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is cool. What an anomalous person to have on. I feel like her story is so antithetical to how we hear about most people building, and probably the first and last time we'll ever hear someone saying past life is what informed their invention. Right?

Ben Walter:

I mean, we've had some forces of nature on this show, but I'm not sure one quite like her.

Kathleen Griffith:

That's so true. Let's get into it.

Ben Walter:

On today's episode, OSOMTEX from Miami, Florida. Patricia Ermecheo grew up in Venezuela, but as an adult, Miami is the place she needed to be. She's an artist, a creator, and she loves the vibrancy of the city.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I explored pottery. I explored photography, industrial design, graphic design. I'm very much of a learner, and I think that's exactly what I was going through when I stumbled upon the situation that brought me here, which happened 15 years ago.

Ben Walter:

15 years ago, as Patricia was living and working in Miami, Venezuela was going through a major transition. She was sad to see what was happening at home.

Patricia Ermecheo:

We wanted to help the country in any way, so we started to gather clothing and send a container full of clothing to help people in need. My job was to go to this sorting facility and look at the clothing, make sure it was in a good condition, and buy it and put it in a container and send it to Venezuela. When I first saw a sorting facility for used clothing waste, I realized they were throwing away a lot of the clothing because of the size and not because of the condition, just throwing to a big bin of waste management, clothing that it was in perfect condition just because it was 4XL. And when I asked why, they just said it was because of this size and nobody in those countries were going to be able to wear it. The used clothing business is very lucrative, so I don't think anyone in that business had any problem whatsoever with the environment. They were just thinking about the money.

Ben Walter:

She didn't care as much about the money as she did about the impact. To have all of this great clothing get thrown into a landfill when people could really use it back home was frustrating. But if people really weren't going to wear those sizes, she had to find another way to use the clothing.

Patricia Ermecheo:

And for some reason, I had this crazy vision of a blender bringing back the clothing to the fiber form. I didn't even think about the composition of the clothing at that point. For me, it was everything needs to go inside of a machine and come back to its raw material.

Ben Walter:

Now that may not sound radical, but believe me, it is.

Patricia Ermecheo:

The obvious idea that anyone could ever think about is the deconstruction of the piece to turn it into a new garment.

Ben Walter:

Now, that's very trendy right now. People often call it upcycling. So if you get a blanket at a thrift store, for example, and turn it into a sweater or something, that's the deconstruction and reconstruction of the garment. You're not fundamentally changing what the fabric or garment is.

Patricia Ermecheo:

But I had a more extreme vision, and obviously that's typical of me.

Ben Walter:

According to Patricia, she's super extreme.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I used to be on extreme sports for a long period of my life. I was a skydiver.

Ben Walter:

So having an extreme idea wasn't unusual for her. She took to the internet looking for her magical clothing blender.

Patricia Ermecheo:

And when I did that, it didn't exist.

Ben Walter:

So did you have this machine custom designed?

Patricia Ermecheo: Yes, sir.

Ben Walter:

And did you design it?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Yes.

Ben Walter:

So you're not an engineer, right?

Patricia Ermecheo:

No, but I was reading a book about reincarnation and spirits and stuff, and apparently it's real that when you have had other lives in which you were something else, you bring the knowledge in your new lives. So that's the only explanation on how I can actually build an entire facility from nothing.

Ben Walter:

She did, and she started blending up clothing. So what was the concept, that you would break down the clothing and sell the yarn after it was broken down?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Well, for the concept, obviously I was advised. I met with professional engineers and they were like, "You were crazy enough to get to that type of fiber, but I'm telling you, you're not going to be able to go further than a non-woven product," which was insulation, carpet underlay, materials like more for construction.

Ben Walter:

Right. They use old denim for insulation, for example, or whatever it is.

Patricia Ermecheo:

Exactly.

Ben Walter:

So the concept was unclear, but at least for now, Patricia had the non-woven fibers that could be reused. How did you raise the money? It couldn't have been cheap to build these machines and get a warehouse.

Patricia Ermecheo:

No, no, no, I pitched it to a very powerful group in Central America, and they were going to get a lot of benefit out of recycling clothing because they were a secondhand clothing store. So they believed in the idea and pitched the money for the first machine. So my first facility, installed it in Central America, and that facility is making non-wovens till this day.

Ben Walter:

But that still wasn't Patricia's goal. She had a vision, a vision of new clothing made from old clothing, and that idea resurfaced in a dream.

Patricia Ermecheo:

One morning I remember sleeping and something woke me up, and I sat down on the bed and I'm like, "I need to make yarn out of this fiber." And not only that, but I knew exactly who to call.

Ben Walter:

She called them up and at that moment they were at a textile fair in Milan. Call it luck, call it coincidence. Patricia calls it fate.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I've never been the one driving this thing. It's something greater and bigger than myself, and I just hear that voice and follow instructions like I am a puppet of the universe.

Ben Walter:

The universe led Patricia to her fiber. Despite the detractors, she did eventually get her hands on yarn that was made from entirely recycled clothing.

Patricia Ermecheo:

And when I had the yarn in my hand, I was like, "Okay, this is going to be very boring to sell." A cone of yarn. I am like, "Let's make a collection of socks and launch the socks on Kickstarter."

Ben Walter:

Okay. And then what?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Raised some money, launched the first batch of recycled socks, and I got an email from Nike asking if I was interested in working with them on a product that they were designing with recycled materials and this recycled material.

Ben Walter:

Did you say yes?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Yes, of course. I moved.

Ben Walter:

You moved.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I sold everything and moved to Oregon.

Ben Walter:

Patricia put a tiny house on a hazelnut farm that her friends owned.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I didn't have any expenses. The house had solar panels and we were living on a huge piece of land. I was just like a solo entrepreneur funding everything by myself and living on a tiny house on a farm completely off the grid.

Ben Walter:

She lived there for five years.

Patricia Ermecheo:

We spent three years and a half creating and validating the material. So the amount of research that they put in the material and studies and design and different shapes, that kind of reassured me of how amazing this thing was.

Ben Walter:

Eventually, Nike launched a shoe with the material. That shoe was called the Space Hippie.

Patricia Ermecheo:

The upper of the shoe was made with my recycled yarn, the same yarn that I was using on the socks. Everything went crazy from there.

Ben Walter:

Two important things happened next. First, at the actual launch event in New York City, one of the Nike execs told Patricia how much they loved the shoe, but that they were worried about her ability to create material at the scale somewhere like Nike would need it.

Patricia Ermecheo:

That comment kind of set the path for my next move. I always wanted to have the factory here since day one, so I was like, "Okay, you want more capacity? I'm going to give it to you."

Ben Walter:

The second thing, and it happened a month later, was COVID.

Patricia Ermecheo:

It was like, "Oh my God, what are we going to do now?" Headquarters closed. And then I spent the next year living at the farm with pretty much nothing else to do. I took the year to relax a little bit and planted a lot of vegetables.

Ben Walter:

She had an epiphany in the garden.

Patricia Ermecheo:

I realized that I can actually share this material and this solution and these processes and this recycling thing. I think for Nike, it was a very successful thing. It was amazing, the partnership for us, for that shoe. As far as money, we definitely went to the six figures there. But for me, this thing that I have put five years of my existence needed to be a long-term partnership.

Ben Walter:

Patricia wanted to be more than a shoe drop, T-shirt collab, or story in a magazine about sustainability. She wanted to work with large companies like Nike to reuse their own material for their own brand. In

2021, she said goodbye to the tiny house in Oregon and moved back to Miami to open up her own facility. So you went from being basically a retail consumer brand to being a wholesale material supplier.

Patricia Ermecheo:

Yes. I learned so much, that's why I am so grateful. I wouldn't be here without that experience. That created the actual CEO that I am today.

Ben Walter:

Kathleen, what a crazy story.

Kathleen Griffith:

I know, right? And to go from, you get this email out of the blue, she packs up her whole life, leaves Miami, moves to Oregon, that takes a certain sort of person too, who's just ready to roll the dice and put it all on the line for sure.

Ben Walter:

Well, even she had a degree in design and she spun up this factory in Central America with these people who had extra used clothing and was ...

Kathleen Griffith:

We need to buy the movie rights to this one.

Ben Walter:

I think so. What did you think about her betting the farm on Nike?

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah, this was so good, because I've done business with Nike too, and she went all in, which I'm such a huge believer. I'm going to get on my soapbox a little bit, but about big brand partnerships, major partnerships. When you are starting out, what that can do for your business to align yourself with a brand that is well-known and really well-established, it just gives you instant credibility. It gives you audience at scale. It is a massive unlock that a lot of small businesses don't actively pursue. And I know in her case, it was just a random email out of nowhere, so that does not usually happen.

Ben Walter:

That woman has some karma, I'll tell you.

Kathleen Griffith:

She's got some karma. But it can go sideways. I want to talk to you about that too, because a lot of times when you're in business with these big brands, it takes an inordinate amount of time and energy to navigate the huge matrix that is. I mean, you're at one of the biggest companies in the world, right? Like you know, there's meetings upon meetings upon meetings. And a lot of times also the contracts can be really, I'm not saying in Nike's case, but predatory and more one-sided, and you have a hard time, elbows out, in that scenario.

Ben Walter:

I think it's even more than that. It's also working with big brands requires capabilities that small companies don't have, especially in today's world. You can imagine there are a lot of startup software brands, for example, that really want to partner with big brands, but they don't have the cyber capabilities. So there are insurance minimums. There are cyber capability minimums, things that big companies will require, and they require for good reason. They don't do it just for your bureaucracy. They do it for real reasons. Because if you're a big company and you're going to roll out a product with a small supplier, and suddenly that small supplier goes kablooey, you now have a problem. You can't fulfill your orders and the brand itself is exposed. So it's not like they're doing it for no reason.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah. So what does someone do in that case?

Ben Walter:

Number one, there are resources out in the marketplace. There are supplier education programs in different states with banks, with lots of different places for how to do that. But more importantly, talk to other entrepreneurs who have partnered with big brands, even if it's not in your industry, because they'll be able to tell you, "Here are the kinds of questions they're going to ask. Here are the kind of things you're going to need to have in place." And you may not be able to do it all right away, but at least if you can articulate a path to it, big companies do want to take a chance on smaller brands, particularly if they innovate in a way that a big company sometimes can't. So it's not that they are averse to it, but you need to figure out the non-core things that can get in the way. Because if your core idea is good, you're probably going to get some traction, but if you can't do the other administrative and logistical things, you could get tripped up.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah, that's good. And one of the things I know I'm always harping on, really great legal representation, but getting that early redlining. A lot of times, again, a bigger brand ... I've worked with some of the biggest brands, and at the time, some of the exposure points and liability requirements, I just couldn't have. The perpetuity clauses, I couldn't live up to. And so a good lawyer, sometimes they're willing to work with you too, if you're comfortable pushing back and saying, "I'm a small business and this is a bit too far relative from where I'm comfortable drawing a line."

Ben Walter:

Yeah. I've told people before, "It's okay to bet the company on a deal. It's not okay to bet more than the company on a deal."

Kathleen Griffith:

Ooh, yeah. That's not a place you want to find yourself.

Ben Walter:

Not a place you want to be. Luckily, Patricia was not there. She was actually back in Miami. Why Miami? You'd been up in Oregon for a long time.

Patricia Ermecheo:

Because I am really connected to South America and Central America and Europe. So this was a lot closer to my supply chain, and transporting stuff from Oregon all the way here to go to Central America was crazy.

Ben Walter:

Yeah, I can see that. My favorite line about Miami is, Miami is the Latin American city closest to the United States.

Patricia Ermecheo:

Exactly. That was my second reason. I have always had family here my entire life. So since I am a little girl, I'm coming to Miami. So the closest to a family/friends network, I had it here. And then that was the first time that I went out and pitched for money. That went really well because I had the shoe in my hand. So people pitch ideas and they don't have anything to show. I had a Nike shoe.

Ben Walter:

She got the money she needed to open the factory, but keeping the doors open for good was another story.

Patricia Ermecheo:

When I first installed the factory, because I had so much attention from the brands, I felt very supported and very sure that that was the next step. And when the whole thing was installed and running, yes, they came, yes, we did some pilots, but they never continued for a long-term partnership. So that was a struggle. We couldn't get stability to maintain such an expensive operation. That took me to that feeling, to that mindset. It was such an overwhelming feeling to be so exhausted for no reason.

Ben Walter:

She didn't have a word for it at the time, but she was suffering from what she now knows is burnout. While she was in that phase, another tragedy, her father sadly passed away in 2024. Now grief was paired with her burnout, and the entire feeling was overwhelming.

Patricia Ermecheo:

And when you're there, you think you're never coming back to who you were. I felt like an astronaut that got disattached from the space station and was floating in space in the vast of the blackness, just going like "hwooo," so lost. And that is super unlike myself. I've been very numb. I never thought that was going to affect me the way it did. And for the first time in my life, I got to know depression. Being depressed, being extremely sad, being exhausted, being disappointed at life, like losing completely the fire and the purpose. I started asking myself questions about, what's the purpose of this much sacrifice? I'm just having weird thoughts. I'm having thoughts that I am not very familiar with, like not wanting to be alive anymore.

Ben Walter:

Patricia called all her friends and asked if they could meet her for dinner at a restaurant they all loved in Miami.

Patricia Ermecheo:

And I'm like, "I am thinking these things and I am telling you guys this is not normal, and I don't like to think this way and I think I need help." And I just started crying in the middle of the dinner.

Ben Walter:

And her friends were right there ready to jump in.

Patricia Ermecheo:

They offered all their support. They were on top of me every day, calling me, doing activities, inviting me to things, checking on me. So I felt really, really supported by them. I don't think I would have been out of it without them and all of that love.

Ben Walter:

So when did you start to feel like yourself again?

Patricia Ermecheo:

I think probably this past month.

Ben Walter:

Oh, wow. Was it about a year?

Patricia Ermecheo:

It was about a year. I still feel the empty piece of my heart. It's like an empty space. I don't know if it's going to get replaced with something else or you transform it.

Ben Walter:

So how do you stay motivated through that?

Patricia Ermecheo:

I have learned to separate business from personal. So the same sadness that I feel for that, I completely separate those feelings now that I've been learning how to manage the depression. And I know that I am a big force for my team as far as energy. That's kind of part of my job in this life. Not in this company, in this life. I am one of those people that gives. And because I am also getting a lot of love from my close friends and family because I asked for it, I'm able to keep giving.

Ben Walter:

That's amazing. So let's pivot back a little bit to the business and where you are now. So you had a partnership with Goodwill, right?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Uh-huh. Last year.

Ben Walter:

Tell me about that.

Patricia Ermecheo:

That was a really cool partnership, in which we were processing a lot of their used clothing that was actually not being sold in their stores, but we were able to create an entire sock collection for the Goodwill. So 50,000 pairs of socks were created, co-branded by the Goodwill and Osomtex. And for the first time, a Goodwill product is being sold in their stores.

Ben Walter:

And Patricia finally got a large enough contract to bring stability to the factory and keep those doors open long-term. What changed? What finally broke through?

Patricia Ermecheo:

That this is not a fashion brand. This is not a Nike or a North Face. It's their nature to create collections and to live out of design and fashion, and this is not a fashion. I became a service. And that's kind of when the whole thing shifted from Osom Brand to OSOMTEX, which is the actual company that helps other companies to do the same that I did, to become circular, to use their waste, and to transform that waste into fiber and yarn for their own products.

Ben Walter:

So tell me, what's the end goal with OSOMTEX? Where are you taking it? More funding, more people, more hiring? Where are you going with it?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Definitely more hiring, more funding, more facilities, because with this new client, we got to sign only two locations. They have 400 locations and we are going to be at capacity with only two locations. It's morphing again. We are becoming a material recovery facility. Now we are not only getting or recycling textiles, we are now getting plastics, metals, electronics and other stuff, and redirecting those materials to very legit and specific recyclers. And we're only keeping textiles here, transforming those textiles into fiber and making more product for this same client. So, complete circular.

Ben Walter:

You hope to change the whole textile industry, don't you? What percent of clothing sold today is made with any recycled materials?

Patricia Ermecheo: Very little.

Ben Walter:

Almost none, right?

Patricia Ermecheo:

1%.

Ben Walter:

But if Patricia has a say in it, I'm sure it'll be a lot more. Kathleen, I'm curious, because we talked about Patricia went through a pretty rough period of depression, which made her feel pretty burned out.

Kathleen Griffith:

She had this unbelievable journey, but then really it almost came crashing down with the burnout that she experienced. It's one of those things we don't talk a lot about as founders and business owners. And you've got these big B breakdowns. I call them big B breakdowns and little B breakdowns. Big B breakdowns are these cataclysmic life events, like someone you love dying, that blindside you and bring you to your knees. Little B being more just lack of alignment or something not working, not liking your business partner, who you're in business with. But we have to have a strong hand in terms of how we also talk to our teams about that and really need transparency there.

Of course, that was toward the end of her story, but I just think it's an interesting starting point. Because when you build with that foundation that bad stuff is going to happen to you along the way and you understand that's part of also the process and you can still keep going, it changes things. And I love that she had so much honesty and rawness and realness in talking about that process of even going through depression as a founder.

Ben Walter:

Yeah. We hear actually quite a bit from founders that they go through periods of depression because it's so lonely-

Kathleen Griffith:

So lonely.

Ben Walter:

... because it's so difficult. It's not that unusual. I mean, hers clearly had a duration and a depth to it, but it's not that unusual. And it's particularly acute in a startup environment or small company environment where the CEO's personality is, you are your company and your company is you to some degree.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah.

Ben Walter:

That can be challenging for a company like that. It's amazing she kept it going.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah. The leader really does set the temperature for the whole room.

Ben Walter:

And I give her a lot of credit for being able to compartmentalize despite that. She was very clear. She said, "It was really tough, but I kept my work at work and my home at home." That's difficult for most people to do.

Kathleen Griffith:

I don't know how she did that, but she managed to figure it out. And it's okay. Both ways are okay. You can keep your business afloat either way. I think for any leaders, as you think about burnout, one of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for when that inevitably happens is to have systems and processes that operate outside of you. So really making sure that you've codified all of your systems and operations as a company so things can continue on when there are periods that you're not as functional. I think the second is to then be transparent and honest with your team when it does happen, as it will, and delegate, ask for support. You've got to call in your crew when you're down and out.

Ben Walter:

For me, the one I would add is you need to find something in your life that can bring you joy in small doses, because the grind is not going away. And so you need that thing that you can do for 10, 15, 20 minutes that you know will bring you some joy.

Kathleen Griffith:

Ben, I love that you said that.

Ben Walter:

This was a fun one, Kathleen. Thanks for joining us as always.

Kathleen Griffith:

Yeah, we went on a rollercoaster. I had a great time. Thanks for having me.

Ben Walter:

All right. Next time I'm going to ask you what you did in a prior life. I want to close by asking you a question I ask to every guest on this show, which is, if you had one piece of advice for an aspiring or current business owner, what would it be?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Know your limits and don't kill yourself for a dream.

Ben Walter:

Why is that your advice?

Patricia Ermecheo:

Because I almost killed myself for this and I had to learn how to balance things. I gave it all. I went too far. And I think you also have to learn how to respect yourself and when you are creating something this big, because it depends also in the size of things that you are working on or your ambitions. But I think that's what I have learned from my experience.

Ben Walter:

Excellent. Patricia, this has been amazing. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Patricia Ermecheo:

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Ben Walter:

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unshakeables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it. Next episode, we'll hear from a business owner whose family legacy and main source of income rolled away on a flatbed truck.

Borgatti:

And I was beside myself . It seemed to be I was throwing out more wasted pasta in order to make pasta. It was, it was a nightmare.

Ben Walter:

I'm Ben Walter, and this is The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeart Media. We'll see you back here soon.