What is TSD Carolinas?
TSD Carolinas is a t-shirt brand unique to TS Designs and our customers also known as Cotton of the Carolinas. This line is our experiment with two things entirely foreign to the apparel market: a fully-local supply chain and complete product transparency from farm to printed t-shirt.

Unique Benefits
To our knowledge, there is no other t-shirt brand in the world that offers a way to track every single shirt throughout the entire supply chain. Using the harvest label on your shirt, you can find who farmed, ginned, spun, knit, finished, cut, sewed, printed, and dyed what you're wearing. TSD Carolinas also supports our local economy in a way no other brand does. The farmer and manufacturers involed in Harvest '08, the first crop of shirts for the program, represent over 700 jobs right in our own backyard.

We're also pushing to limit our transportation footprint as much as possible. So far both Harvest '08 and Harvest '09 have transportation footprints of less than 750 miles from field to printed shirt; that's less than 5% of some common t-shirt supply chains! TSD Carolinas are made from 20s/1 ringspun cotton, which gives them a nice solid weight but super soft feel.

Disadvantages
Though we buy cotton from a farmer (Ronnie Burleson) who uses significantly more sustainable farming practices than most conventional cotton farmers, the cotton for the TSD Carolinas program is not certified organic (there is no organic cotton grown in the Carolinas). Our goal is to eventually become a buyer of enough volume to be able to influence how cotton is grown here in our home state, but to do that we have to sell what's available now.

Styles Offered
To see the styles we offer in this and our other brands, check out our shirt style page.

Presentation on Cotton of the Carolinas at BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)