I remember when Patagonia first started marketing its fleece pullovers made from recycled plastic bottles. I ran right out and bought one - so cool! It was rare to hear about a brand launching a tech-driven innovation expressly purposed toward sustainability or circularity in the 90s, and even well into the 00s. These days, though, something has shifted.
Apparel brand sustainability commitments have mainstreamed over the past several years, some galvanized by coalitions and others by executive leadership flexing the long view - internalize environmental costs/risks now and reap the benefits later. When I was studying economics in graduate school, this was basic arithmetic - the cost of mitigating climate change would be far less than the cost of climate disaster and chaos. News of greenwashing lawsuits and the billion dollar price tags on cleaning up climate catastrophes are two easily visible ways we see this today. But the apparel industry is getting hit on seemingly all sides with challenges that necessitate a systematic solution: climate and pandemic related supply chain disruptions, hoards of losses stemming from e-commerce returns, a fast-moving consumer culture that evades traditional marketing plans, a generation demanding cleaner products at the same convenience and price point, an impending regulatory storm… Oh yeah - and you have to do all of this inside a video game, too.
Fashion - we feel you. It's a lot.
To date, much of the corporate action has been organized around setting Science Based Targets and/or attaining B-Corp status resulting in programs set in place to measure, disclose, and ideally reduce GHG emissions and to transition to preferred fibers. There’s been a lot of action advancing renewable energy and using materials with lower environmental impact, and this is all great!
And… it's exciting to see an acceleration of brands pushing the river a bit harder, investing in, funding, and piloting startup innovation that advances sustainability through a systems lens and reimagines its outmoded value chain. Innovation that includes impact across the whole apparel ecosystem from design to production, distribution and sales, use, and waste recovery. We’re seeing technologies using advanced data analytics platforms to radically improve demand and assortment planning, fit technologies that engage customers to buy smarter, DNA markers to improve traceability, lab-grown performance materials using bio-waste, AI-driven resale platforms… This is not your 90s fleece made from recycled plastic bottles or a renewable energy credit (REC).
Alante regularly partners with MBA students at the Berkeley Haas School of Business on research projects and scoping studies. In Fall 2022, we organized a project to look at how brand engagement with sustainable innovation was trending over the past few years. The students scraped all publicly available information, identifying pilots and partnerships that fell into the following categories: Biomaterials, Sustainable Materials, Chemicals/Dyeing, Recycling/ Reuse Platforms, Sustainable Design, Recycled/Repurposed Materials, Packaging, and Transparency/Traceability. From the information we were able to gather, we found that in 2022, brands launched 4.5 times the pilots and partnerships than in 2019 - a great acceleration in the trend. Taking a more granular look, pilots and partnerships in Biomaterials increased 5.5x, in supply chain Traceability they increased 6.5x, and in Recycled Materials they increased 12x. The data is not exhaustive and is limited by what was publicly available and what launches were deemed compelling enough to market publicly. But if anything, this data reflects an underestimate, and still the trend lines are dramatic.
The rise of brands engaging with innovative startups coincides with the growing understanding that “Sustainability,” these days, is about risk management. And it is foundational to Alante’s thesis, that technology and innovation must and will transform apparel supply chains as sustainability and profitability converge on the horizon around decarbonization, supply chain resilience, and regulation. Since we launched in 2017, we have had a front row seat as apparel brands accelerate demand for sustainable innovation. While we are used to seeing launches by the usual suspects - Patagonia, Adidas, Levi’s, Kering Group - it's exciting to see launches from brands like lululemon, Savage x Fenty, Madewell, Macy’s, Oxford Industries and others.
We’re delighted to see that the pace, depth, and volume of brand engagement with innovation that improves sustainability has increased dramatically over the past few years, and from what we hear from the brands and startups we talk to regularly, we expect continued acceleration. We know there is a lot more work to do and a lot more opportunity for impact, but what has us most excited is that the movement to reform the apparel industry has gathered enough momentum that change will happen far more rapidly than what we’ve seen these past 10 years.
We are grateful to Haas Business School students Kira Erickson, McKennan Bertsch, Vivian Hare, and Nishal Gupta for their great and hard work on this project.