Our products are made from the ground up to be safe, sustainable, and comfortable in every way.
They’re safe from chemicals, bad business practices, and environmental destruction. They’re comfortable, sustainable, and safe. You can feel great for the babies and kids who wear them, and the people who help raise them, too!
Crafted with Purpose: Ry & Pen
We love bamboo & merino wool
Our babywear is made from sustainable source bamboo and merino sheep, and we support Canadian fabric companies in the process. It’s all about bamboo rayon and merino wool.
These two natural fabrics and materials are combined together to give us the certified Oeko-Tex 100 rating of softness and comfortability that synthetic clothes made without love and quality like this simply cannot achieve. You can look out your window and know these clothes were made under the same blue sky all Canadians live under.
We don’t just source local fabrics to support Canadian agriculture and textile businesses for our clothes. We do it because they offer the best options for clothes that babies and children love to wear – not to mention are great for sensitive skin given they’re gentle and hypoallergenic. But just to be sure, we do know for a fact that these two primary textile ingredients are the most effective ones to use out of everything else on the market.
First of all, whoever heard of clothes made from bamboo? Plant fibers are a mainstay in the textile industry. That’s what cotton is, the seedy bud of a plant. However, cotton takes up so much more land, and has a specific climate that Ontario doesn’t get to share with the rest of the world. Bamboo can be grown virtually anywhere and at a surprisingly rapid speed, with minimal water as well. It’s one of the eco-friendliest plants for every purpose and occasion.
Bamboo rayon may sound a little funny by name, but it’s no chemical compound or synthetic asset. It’s a substance that is naturally derived from the cellulose of plants. In this case, bamboo. Bamboo fibers create a long, smooth fabric once they are regenerated and become highly durable, stretchy, and incredibly powerful material with all their beneficial properties for clothing.
This provides the strong basis of safety that the merino wool covers for comfort. Merino wool is derived from merino sheep, specifically. It’s one of the more common (but premium) kinds of wool but is also one of the most sustainable sources of natural animal fabrics.
It’s an incredible natural material, providing both warming and cooling properties that ‘flex’ up and down according to their surrounding environment. If your child is cold, merino wool will naturally act as a warming agent. And the opposite is true as well in cooler weather. It’s lightweight, cozy, and incredibly powerful all at the same time.
Merino sheep are among the fluffiest sheep breed in the world. They are the quintessential image of a sheep that any baby could point out in a picture book. Their wool fiber is long and thin, which gives it a fine quality closer to cashmere than standard cotton woven fabrics. It’s a natural insulator as well. A body covered in wool is warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Sheep are the second biggest benefactors of their own wool. It’s been warming and protecting human beings for eons. They wick away moisture, so the wearer stays comfortably dry. They also absorb water - or any kind of moisture - up to 30% of its own weight without degrading in quality. It also neutralizes strong odors. For babies, that is an essential component that is so often overlooked. These clothes will not hold any unwanted odours or smells. Another perfect reason we chose this fabric for babies.
Safety is in our DNA
Our products (footies and sleep bags in particular) are also equipped with dual-directional zippers that can be concealed in bamboo pockets for safety. That way they don’t poke or brush against the baby’s skin. These zippers also make it fast and easy for diaper changes or getting into new outfits for the day.
Merino wool is also easily biodegradable. Combined with the equally natural bamboo rayon, the combined fabrics that make up our baby clothes can be discarded without a second thought. Babies grow fast. Crazy fast, actually.
When they graduate from one size of our specially blended sleepwear, you can be assured that your Ry & Pen products can be passed on to the next generation and loved for years and years to come.
No neck tags = more comfort
When it comes to the tags we use to label our products, no fussy extra fabric gets in the way of a comfortable sleep. All our clothes, from sleep bags to onesies and toddler PJs, are tagless. Our labels are printed into the fabric so a sensitive baby’s skin won’t detect the nub of any torn-off fabric.
Supporting local businesses is more important than ever. This kind of care and attention to the individual details of sleepwear for babies is not something that can be passed on to factory farms or big corporate industries. We put a humane focus on all of our efforts, from the way the sheep are raised to the conditions the textiles and fabric are manufactured in. All of it has to be done with love. And all of it is done while supporting the country we know and love – Canada.
Proud to be made in Canada
We are an official partner of the Ontario Made Program. All manufacturing and distribution are handled out of Ontario while fabrics are sourced from British Columbia. The merino sheep that supply our merino wool fabrics enjoy the run of mountains and hills and vast open pastures and are cared for by attentive farmhands and shepherds that keep them safe. Happy sheep make comfy merino wool and that’s what we proudly use in our fabric blends.
We do all of this out of love and with purpose. After all, that’s why we started Ry & Pen.
Purpose-driven
Caring for children takes a village and a lot of patience. And sometimes that village needs a boost. That’s why 25% of all our profits are donated to children’s charities. Keeping babies and children comfortable is our business, but that isn’t the only issue children face. There are many good causes that lead to protecting children as early as infancy. We contribute openly to those who can give that help and need money to do it.
As adults, we lose many of our infant and child memories. We may not remember how it felt to be hugged from all sides by the softest, smoothest textures available but our bodies will know. Our clothes are an investment toward happiness and coziness. A comfortable child is a happy one, and happy babies bring joy to everyone around them.
We aren’t claiming that putting a baby in our footies, pajamas, blankets, crib sheets or sleep sacks will make them stop crying and give them pleasant dreams (hopefully sleeping peacefully through the night). That would take something magical. But we craft each and every piece of our products with love – from top to bottom – day after day. We do all this so that you can put your little bundle of joy into something they will love while helping support children’s charities in the process. That’s what Ry & Pen is all about. And that’s the real magic.
