Natural Clothing (also trading as Schmidt Natural Clothing) was set up in the mid 1980's, growing from a buyer's co-op into a mail order company. Now in its 3rd incarnation, it is run by myself Chris (aka Chris Organic) and my family in East Sussex. We have a deep passion for natural materials, and when we became parents we wanted more than ever to avoid the use of unnatural fibres for our children (and ourselves). This spread to a desire to banish as much as possible all unnatural elements from our lives in general. All of our products are made of natural materials and, apart from a very few items (where stated), exclusively all of our wools and cottons are organic, certified to the highest organic certification possible - usually demeter (see www.demeter.net) or Naturtextil or GOTS. Each of our product pages explains in detail about the fabrics used. 

 
We do welcome your calls and enquiries but due to sheer volume we unfortunately cannot answer all of them immediately. We aim to respond to as many as quickly as we can but please do understand, if there is a delay, it is not because we have forgotten or are ignoring you! Since we specialise in products that help people with skin conditions such as eczema, or with respiratory allergies, we do receive a lot of enquiries asking for advice in these matters. Please do understand that we are not qualified practitioners, and all we can do is to offer you advice based on our own experiences and those of our customers. None of our advice is meant to diagnose or treat any specific condition and you should seek the advice of a specialist practitioner for these purposes.  

Sizing

When you receive your clothes, please try them on before you look at the labels and assume they will not fit. All of our manufacturers have different ideas of what the label sizes mean - there is no standard. We have to adjust each item accordingly. Some identical items with the same label size will differ by as much as a year of actual age, therefore we manually adjust each label tag according to our own age categories (as listed on our product pages), and this is what we send you when you select an age category. Also remember that items such as vests are meant to be tight to the skin, and stretch quite a bit from being worn. As long as you follow the manufacturers' washing instructions they will not shrink. We have a lot of returns from people who assume we've sent the wrong size before they've even tried the garments on!

DELIVERY POLICY

We can send good to anywhere in the world. We aim to dispatch all orders within 2-3 working days. For orders within the UK we use Royal Mail 2nd Class for the majority of our deliveries, unless you request or it is necessary to use 1st class or another type of courier. Your order is then in the hands of Royal Mail and can take up to 5 working days to arrive, although in the majority of cases they usually take 1-3 days. If Royal Mail is not suitable, for example large or bulky items, then we use a variety of couriers depending on location and size of order. We use www.interparcel.com to determine the most cost effective and quickest courier. For international orders we use either Royal Mail Airsure or Interparcel, depending on the size and value of the package. Delivery times vary depending on location and size of order. We will notify you by email or phone to let you know how long your goods will take and supply you with a tracking number once they have been dispatched.

RETURNS POLICY

We hope that you will really love your purchase. However, if for any reason you do not, then simply return it to us. All we ask is that you return your purchase to us in perfect condition in it’s original packaging within 14 days of receipt. For those people who own pets, may we respectfully ask that you try your clothes well out of reach of any pets or their hair, as our products are frequently purchased by people who suffer from allergies. We will strictly refuse to accept as a return any garment that is found to contain animal hair or similar fibres of any kind.

Please ensure that the item is well protected and wrapped carefully to avoid damage in the post. Finally, you just need to include a copy of your invoice with your return, together with your reasons for the return. As much information as you can supply will help us to serve you better in future.

We will be happy to exchange the item for you or provide you with a refund, excluding the original postage and packing charge. You do not need to let us know of your intention to return something before doing so. We suggest that you keep your postal receipt as proof of posting, and maybe consider returning more expensive items via registered post, as we cannot be held responsible for any returns lost or damaged in the post. The cost of return postage is not our responsibility and we do not refund this.

We will let you know by email when we have received your parcel and that a refund or exchange has been processed for you. A refund will take up to 14 working days to process. We reserve the right to charge a re-packaging fee of 25% if items are sent back to us improperly folded, overly creased, with missing packaging, or otherwise not in perfect condition and immediately resellable. 

PACKAGING POLICY

A lot of our products such as wool and silk need to be protected in some kind of airtight packaging. Our suppliers choose to do this in plastic in most cases. This is something that we are not completely happy about, but until a better solution comes along, we have no alternative but to use what they send us. We consciously try to reduce as much as possible our impact on the environment and re-use or recycle as much packaging as we can - well in fact all of it actually! For this reason, occasionally we might send you your purchases in re-used packaging, and we hope that you sympathise with our reasons for doing so. This not only means that we keep materials such as plastic from going into the recycling chain (which uses up a lot of resources and is in itself a debatable issue), and we don't throw any packaging into landfill that can still be used, but it also helps us to keep our costs down - savings that we pass on to you by keeping P&P costs as low as they can be. 

If you are able to, we strongly encourage you to continue re-using any packaging you receive from us. If you are not able to do so, then as an alternative to recycling (or worst case, throwing into landfill), why not send it back to us? We will gladly continue to re-use what we can, and responsibly recycle what we cannot on your behalf. 

We do not buy any plastic packaging ourselves and only use biodegradable mailing bags when not re-using or recycling.