When starting this project, I had a vague feeling of uncertainty regarding the feasibility of combining POD (Print-on-Demand) with donations for animal welfare—wondering if there were really all that many successful examples.
But once we looked into it a little, the picture turned out to be quite different. There are more apparel brands around the world weaving animal-related donations into their business model than we expected.
More Than We Expected
For example,LOVE BRAND & Co.a beachwear brand, states that it has donated a share of its revenue to wildlife conservation and nature restoration projects since it was founded. The exact rate and recipient organizations, however, appear to vary by period and campaign.Ivory Ellastates that it donates 10% of its net profits to organizations such as Save the Elephants.Animal Hearted Apparelstates that it donates 25% of the proceeds from every order to non-profit shelters and rescue organizations.
The causes vary too, from wildlife conservation to local shelters, and so does the basis for each brand's donation figure — revenue, profit, or proceeds — along with whether the same terms apply consistently over time. Even so, it feels like each brand has found its own way of caring about animals and shaped it into a business.
The Numbers Aren't as Simple as They Look
One thing that made us pause: "donation rate" sounds like a single, simple number, but what it actually means varies a lot from brand to brand.
A percentage "of sales (revenue)," a percentage "of profit," and a percentage "of proceeds" mean quite different things when it comes to how much of what a customer actually pays ends up as a donation. A profit-based donation can look impressive as a headline number, but since it's calculated after costs and expenses are subtracted, the real amount depends heavily on each brand's cost structure.
Another thing that caught our attention was how prices are presented. Even when a product's price looks affordable, it's often hard to tell at a glance whether shipping is included or not. We don't mean this as criticism of any particular brand — it was simply a discovery that tracking "how much a customer ultimately pays, and how much of that becomes a donation" is harder than it looks.
Why VEXTANT Wanted to Keep It Simple
That's part of why we chose a slightly different approach for VEXTANT.
We offer a flat, shipping-included price, and calculate our 5% donation based on the total amount a customer actually pays (shipping included, customs duties and country-specific VAT excluded). Rather than basing it on profit or on proceeds, using "what the customer paid" as the baseline is our way of keeping the donation amount from becoming blurred by shipping costs or pricing decisions.
Honestly, this makes things harder for us. Building shipping into the price upfront puts more pressure on margins, and actual shipping costs vary by region. Even so, we decided it was worth prioritizing a donation basis that's as simple and transparent as possible.
Late to the Party, But Still Worth Trying From Japan
Looking at all this, the idea of combining POD with donations already seems like a proven approach, one that's being put into practice somewhere in the world. If that's true, then trying it from Japan might be worth something in itself. And in Japan too, charity-linked apparel and goods for animals already exist in several forms.
For example,Pawfect Projectdonates all of the profit from the T-shirts and goods it sells on "SUZURI" a Japan-based print-on-demand platform, to the "Kanagawa Pet Life Fund, which launched in June 2025,Pawssis a made-to-order T-shirt brand with a stated policy of donating 10% of sales to animal welfare organizations across Japan on an ongoing basis.
In short, we are latecomers to this field. Nevertheless, the reasons we have chosen to take on this challenge—along with what sets us apart and gives us an advantage—can be summarized in the following two points:
- By avoiding major e-commerce marketplaces and using our own proprietary website, we can redirect the savings from avoided platform fees toward donations.
- This approach frees us from the constraints of major platforms, allowing us to target a global market rather than limiting sales to Japan.
We don't have a big track record or an established playbook yet. Still, knowing that people around the world are already walking in the same direction gives us a bit of courage.
We'll keep writing down what we find here, little by little, on VEXTANT Field Notes.