The fashion industry has a sustainability issue. Fast fashion’s rise has driven down prices, letting companies bring more collections to market. Consumers have responded to transient trends, changing how they buy and use apparel. Between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production doubled, the average consumer’s annual garment purchases increased by 60%, and the average time consumers kept clothing items dropped by 50%.
Sustainability scores are improving, but they do not yet meet expected industry targets. According to the 2019 Pulse of the Fashion Industry, “Fashion companies are not implementing sustainable solutions fast enough to counterbalance the negative environmental and social impacts of the rapidly growing fashion industry.” Without change, the gap between industry output and sustainability efforts will keep widening.
Sustainability in Fashion
The fashion industry accounts for 10% of the world’s global greenhouse gas emissions and is the second-largest polluter of local freshwater sources. It also contributes to a series of major social problems; for example, forced and trafficked labor is a massive component of the fashion system. Despite previous backlash, the fashion industry relies on this practice. Sustainable fashion aims to push the resource-intensive industry to improve its social integrity and reduce its environmental footprint. It addresses the entire system of fashion, involving domains such as business organization, materials sourcing and processing, inventory management, and managing post-consumer waste.
Young entrepreneurs and designers have driven the shift towards sustainability, experimenting with new fabrics and production processes. For example, Elliss Solomon’s namesake brand, launched in 2016, designs and manufactures its products in the same building. It also exclusively uses organic and recycled materials, such as Econyl, a regenerated nylon process that turns nylon waste into usable fabric. Companies that integrate more sustainable practices in their competitive strategies have greater advantages in brand value, employee retention and access to capital.
These benefits translate to consumers, who are expected to spend up to $150 billion on sustainable products in 2021. A 2019 Nielsen survey found that American households value products that are environmentally friendly and use recycled packaging. Consumers find these qualities important are willing to pay more for them across categories. With diverse supply chains and effective marketing, companies can optimize their gains from sustainability implementation.
Enabling Sustainability Innovation in Fashion
The fashion industry’s haphazard approaches to sustainability and innovation has stifled disruption. Scott Emmons, the former head of Neiman Marcus’s innovation lab, identified three major roadblocks facing corporations: long-term strategy, leadership buy-in and resource allocation.
Fashion businesses can overcome these challenges and promote sustainability innovation through an integrated, topdown approach. Organizational values can influence business model innovation, sustainability performance and financial performance. Moreover, companies with higher business model innovation tend to have higher sustainability scores.
Incorporating sustainability into core values, a business model approach and an organization strategy can empower internal leaders to try new things and develop frameworks throughout the business cycle. It also avoids silo-thinking, where sustainability becomes a technical exercise detached from and out of sync with fundamental business elements. This approach focuses on integration and long-term benefits, encouraging innovation that can be implemented, scaled and built upon.
Sustainable Fashion and Technology
Fashion technologies can help businesses achieve sustainability performance goals at every step of the business cycle. Cloud-based management systems can help reduce carbon footprint and reduce physical space needs. Inventory management and analytic systems can help control stocking, optimizing usage of resources and money.
Consumer-facing technology can also help improve organization sustainability. For example, body scanner software can help consumers find the best-fitting size and reduce the number of garments that are shipped back or thrown out. In an era of e-commerce and dropshipping, getting orders “right” the first time can have a big impact on an organization’s carbon footprint.
Consumers around the world are becoming more environmentally and socially conscious. Fashion businesses can capitalize by integrating sustainability into their core values, driving innovation to improve their efforts and engaging consumers in their efforts. Sustainability is no longer a niche market; it’s a key part of the entire fashion system.
Jeanette Chiu
AIMS360
310-507-7152
