Each is leading with different circular fashion initiatives. M&S, in addition to “mainstreaming” sustainability in all its products, has launched rental partnerships with Hirestreet in November, and with childrenswear platform Dotte last week. Cos’s most established platform is peer-to-peer resale in Europe. It has also piloted rental in Asia-Pacific and is looking into repair.
GANT, meanwhile, already makes 80% of its collections with sustainable materials. Its “seven routes of Gant” are: “refresh”; “repair” – it offers lifelong repair on all jeans; “rent” – coming out for the first time in the middle of May in London, Stockholm and Paris; “remake” with shirts; “relove”– customers can donate used items to its shops; “regive”; and “recycle”.
Daniels described five important areas M&S took in embedding its circularity:
1 Ensure internal buy-in and engagement. On the face of it the commercial proposition does not stack up, so you need internal support.
2 Find the right partners with a unique asset that complements your offering, so together you can do something quite different.
3 Make sure you offer a great customer journey – especially when it’s something adjacent to your business. The customer journey needs to be as frictionless as the expected M&S customer journey.
4 Get your operations right. Ensure you have the design and know how it’s going to work – particularly the logistics and how you’ll get the products across. Logistics. That’s quite tricky when you’ve got a massive-scale retailer working with a small start-up. A lot of it is genuinely quite manual, so you need to find your workarounds.
5 Evaluation: from the get-go have really clear KPIs: have points where you can reflect on their success and your learnings – quickly. From our November launch with Hirestreet there were some learnings in terms of fabrications most suitable for rental, and in our operations in terms of how we get the stock out. Have an agile mindset.
6 For Gant, store staff training was critical. As ambassadors, store staff need to know everything from logistics to fabrics. Gant has been training its store staff for more than two years on sustainability. Cederberg Wodmar sends out a new film on sustainability every month, informing staff about aspects of Gant’s sustainability strategy. This also gives them the opportunity to come up with questions the team may not have thought of.
7 Educate your customer. Cos’s peer-to-peer resale model aims to engage shoppers and maintain that relationship over time. Lilley said the platform was not a primarily profit-making strategy – although it is hoped that in time it will be. Cos wants consumers not to buy an item for one season and sell it the next – it wants to facilitate the longevity of its garments buy encouraging shoppers’ more responsible behaviours.
Similarly, partnering with Dotte helped M&S get the message across that it wants to help customers with the cost of living crisis, and making the most of what they’ve got.
For Gant, lifelong repair of its jeans – it sells 1 million pairs a year – helps it to establish and maintain its relationships with customers.
8 Engage experts in areas where you don’t have the in-house knowledge or skills. Cos needed to engage a partner, Lilley said: “We didn’t have the expertise for reverse supply chain logistics. We now have take back and are trying to connect that with repair and renewal. We are a big heritage brand and our linear supply chain is our foundation. Look out for partners and supply chain solutions.”
9 Challenge the culture of the business. As a heritage brand, Daniels had to find ways to “set up things in an agile, nimble way that doesn’t mess with the M&S machine”. Introducing rental into its highly automated warehouse “messed and disrupted” the systems. “Ninja your way around that,” she said. “And try to work out the commercial propositions as you go.”