Our story
Seljak Brand was founded by us – sisters Karina and Samantha Seljak.
Trained in fashion design and having worked in the New York fashion industry, Karina became acutely aware of the waste in the manufacturing world. Sam had worked in purpose-driven business at Indigenous creative agency Gilimbaa, and started multiple community-led initiatives in Brisbane.
We were ready to crystallise our learnings into our own social enterprise.
Inspired by the resourceful and mutually beneficial business practices we saw sprouting up all around us, we poured our time into understanding the circular economy and closed loop models.
Our respect for Australian wool lead us to the oldest weaving mill in Australia, which retains all of its production offcuts for future use. Using these offcuts to make blankets, we incorporated a closed loop system that re-manufactures the blankets at the end of their useable life.
After working with Australia’s oldest wool mill for a few years, we started running out of waste – which is a good problem to have! But we wanted to divert even more textiles waste from landfill, so we looked overseas. Discovering a mill in Lithuania that collected its own factory floor waste, and processed the waste of other mills, we took our first step into globalising our supply chain.
Today, we work with mills in Australia, Lithuania and Italy to make our recycled wool blankets. This enables us to work locally as much as possible as well as tap into the scale that mills in Europe offer.
Sam and Karina Seljak now consult other businesses on how to embed circularity into their own operations.
Sam is based at Seljak Brand’s showroom and studio in Brisbane and Karina on the Sunshine Coast.
Photo: Mica Schettini