Law Squared x Upparel

 

Upparel, pioneers of the sock and underwear subscription model in Australia, are changing the way textiles are recycled in this country. Founded in 2016 by husband and wife team Michael and Tina Elias, Upparel (formerly known as Manrags) started out selling men’s socks by subscription, however after learning more about the effects of textile waste, Michael and Tina realised that they needed to urgently change something to ensure their products weren’t ending up alongside 501,000 tonnes of textiles that are dumped into Australian landfills every year.

Fast forward four years and the innovative business has expanded to offer a textile recycling service that allows all clothing and shoes to be collected from anywhere in Australia. By offering their community the chance to send their unwanted textiles to them, it saves their items from landfill and allows the Upparel team to reuse or recycle them.

  • As Upparel started to grow, they were required by law to convert the company from a sole-trading entity to a publicly unlisted company. All of a sudden, this mum and dad brand had to transition into a much bigger and more sophisticated company. With this transition came a significant amount of legal work, all of which needed to be outsourced to a firm they could trust. The Upparel team had to undertake such works as building a constitution, creating an accountable board of directors and creating shareholder agreements.

    It was a chance meeting with Law Squared Founder Demetrio Zema a few months earlier that led Michael to pursue a relationship with Law Squared to look after the legalities of the company going forward.

  • Over the past couple of years, the Law Squared team have been able to assist Upparel with a number of corporate, commercial and employment matters including:

    · ensuring that the structure of the company is sound;

    ·  negotiating all of their commercial leases;

    ·  building their terms and conditions; and

    ·  working on their occupational health and safety plan and modern slavery plan

    all of which has helped Upparel become one of the leading profit-for-purpose businesses, tackling a super important issue.

 

“As we’ve grown from a mum and dad company to a publicly unlisted company with shareholders and multiple entities, Law Squared has guided and supported us throughout the whole journey.

“In addition to always delivering, the Law Squared team have given me a great amount of knowledge by explaining things in a way that we can make sense of and educating us along the way. The team have understood the journey we are on and understand where we are going as a company – they are big brand advocates which we love and we look forward to continuing to work with them for many more years to come.”

- Michael Elias, Founder & Managing Director at Upparel