What is the fair price for quality ? How much are you prepared to pay for transparency ? What does your clothes tell about your ethics ?
As we celebrate the very sad anniversary of the Rana Plaza accident who ignated the Fashion Revolution movement, all issues have not been solved yet and a key question remains: how can we ensure decent living conditions for the fashion industry designers and workers while raising awereness among consumers so that they can accept to pay the fair price for a fashion item.
What can we learn from creative business models that work ?
If we watch companies who have been successful with innovative business models, in the fashion, beauty, cosmetics, luxury or perfume industry, we can get some ideas about how business models can support the fashion revolution.
Finding new and creative ways to get your fashion brand, your new collection or your designer name noticed often involve invisible, secretive strategies. Sometimes the less obvious you are about trying to nudge consumers and influence fashion markets gives you a very obvious edge over transparent marketing.
Examples of successful innovative and sustainable business models
Changing the rules of the game
Often, underlying drivers for finding a new business model, include an entrepreneurial mindset, a differentiation and diversification strategy, to create a competitive advantage and change the rules of the games in the existing competitive dynamics. For born sustainable startups
Macro trends to understand competitive dynamics
Major underlying trends are finally introducing turbulences in the fashion industry, they include:
- Consumer Awareness (lowsumerism, minimalism, capsule wardrobe)
- Circular economy principles applied to fashion, i.e. circular fashion (recycling, upcycling, vegan)
- A new kind of corporate responsility (sweatshop free, locally sourced, fair trade), without washing and with conscience.
- The rise of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption (second hand, collaboration, fashion library)
- Digital transformation and related technologies (zero waste, sustainable raw materials, wearables/IoT).
- Circular Design
- Becoming carbon neutral
Exemples to help you find some inspirations to find new (service based) sustainability-oriented business models.
and many more examples from these sources: The Good Trade, Circular Fashion, or from TFI, the Toronto Fashion Incubator
Finding the right business model has potentially huge implications for fashion entrepreneurship, it usually makes the difference between success and failure ! If you wish to test your own business model, get external viewpoint and generate new ideas to differentiate your business, do not hesitate to get in touch. Feel free to get in touch with comments or remarks (hackyourstyle@syntezia.com).
It is fashion revolution week, so be curious, find out, do something !!!
Yves Zieba