Alumni profile: Zahlen Titcomb
After working the Beijing fabric market and running an athletic apparel brand with his siblings, American born, Portugal based Zahlen Titcomb has changed course. He is now working to change the industry from the inside. Zahlen joined Brand The Change Academy to build the brand for his new company Ravel, a circular economy solution for textile waste. His battle cry? "Check your tags!". Learn more about Zahlen's journey, the Ravel brand, and textile circularity.
WG: What's your story?
ZT: I started the most formative part of my career on the streets of the Beijing fabric market. Working a suit and tie finance job led me to attempt to get to the source to save cost on fabrics for said suits. Having always been someone that was curious about how things were made, I quickly tore off the suit and tie, and I found myself running an international materials design and supply chain for an athletic apparel company that I co-founded with my siblings. Today I’m building a circular economy solution for textile waste.
Me carrying fabric in my past career
“In a strange way I’m attempting to scale a solution that can eventually responsibly manage the roughly half a million items of high-quality blended material clothing I put out into the world over a decade and a half. ”
WG: What’s the brand you’re currently building?
ZT: We are building Ravel, a circular economy solution for textile waste. We find ourselves at this interesting intersection of working in a space where many of our interactions are with businesses, clothing brands, and governments. Yet our solution is one that we want to resonate with the general public. We all wear clothing! And my vision is one where what we choose to wear simultaneously allows people and the planet to prosper in harmony. If we do our job right, we can use clothing to transform a generation’s worth of people into a healthier relationship and conscious responsibility with consumption.
WG: What does your team look like, and where does ‘brand’ sit within that team?
ZT: The Ravel team is nothing short of awesome :) But it’s strange. I don’t think you would pick us out of a lineup. We come from a variety of backgrounds, some apparel, some science, and some a far cry from both. At our stage of the business, brand touches everyone, but it sits mostly with me as CEO.
WG: What has been the most rewarding part of building this brand?
ZT: When you know, you know. Our founding team spent a lot of energy and time coalescing around how to distil who we are and why we exist. And when the current iteration of our name popped up, it was sorta like ‘Yup, that’s the one’. The rest of the brand identity blossomed around the name and the letter R, and it felt easy to harvest all the hard pre-work we had put into our identity over the years.
WG: What is the most challenging part of building this brand?
Doing some science
ZT: It took me a while to discover the idiosyncrasies of separating me as an individual, and Ravel as a brand. I live and breathe this company, and the actions we take on a micro and macro basis align pretty dang well with a good chunk of how I see the world. But separating that out and giving Ravel its own soul has been hard. I think this is something that independent professionals and early entrepreneurs can struggle with sometimes.
WG: What is the brand that you always look to for inspiration if you’re running low on ideas?
ZT: Ack! I can’t not say Patagonia :) Their truth + transparency + authenticity has fired me up, from when I was designing materials and making clothing, through today with my work on Ravel. However, I have to remind myself not to over-idolize our favourites. I hope to avoid emulating something that is working for someone else without a good hard look at whether or not it is good for us.
WG: What brand should finally get the attention it deserves?
ZT: I’ve always had a place in my heart for the brands that require a few seconds more to ‘get’ than just a first glance. When something captivates me slowly, I find a magical elegance in the depth of communication and intentional relationship a well-crafted ‘deep’ brand can conjure.
WG: For people who are just starting on their brand building journey, what is the one tip you would give?
Some early sharpie work on our old logo ;)
ZT: I’m by no means an expert. That being said, I might offer: start with a ‘sharpie’, and then don't stop the proverbial doodling. I’m not sure how to actualize it, but I think the idea of rapid prototyping can be really valuable when you are just starting out on the branding journey. Place more value on accepting an unfinished product that you can sleep on than going to sleep stressed about how your product is unfinished. This is how we started with Regenerated Textiles (our former brand identity), and it allowed us to get comfortable and grow before our next big and more formal jump to our current identity as Ravel.
WG: If you and your co-founder split up, and a judge ordered one of you to keep the product and one of you to keep the brand, which would you choose?
ZT: My day-to-day counterpart is my CTO and Director of Product. BUT, we operate with a north-star model that guides the congruence of business and strategy symbiotically with product and science. If we were to separate them, each half would be a feeble ghost of its combined glory. However, in most of the leadership roles I find myself in, I tend to be the one that connects product and market fit with messaging and strategy. A great not-answer, I know.
WG: If you could have one person be your brand ambassador for a day, who would it be?
ZT: I would love to have someone like basketball player Sue Bird or a politician like Kersti Kaljulaid. In my mind, Ravel would be well represented alongside long-term hard work, dedication to team and the greater good, ambitious and just industry or market leadership, and “rising above the fray.”
WG: What is the next thing on your brand building journey that gets you super excited?
ZT: In the growth stages of a startup, particularly in the climate tech space where you have one more customer segment than many other traditional business models (our planet hehe), we are often under-resourced and stretched thin with our time and attention. A good brand for us is something that makes our conversations easier, our communication clearer, and our prospects more readily attainable. However, I can’t wait until it becomes our superpower and we have a full team that can lean into leveraging it in earnest.
WG: WHERE DO WE GO TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR WORK?
ZT: www.RavelFuture.com is the home base for our business, but I do enjoy engaging and connecting with folks on LinkedIn. I LOVE a quick 20-minute Zoom chat, as I find there is so much to learn from other people out there in the world.
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