This month, earlier this month, the Australian Fashion Council, in collaboration with a variety of organizations and government agencies, unveiled the final phase of its plan to cut the around 200,000 tonnes of clothing that are disposed of each year across Australia.
The Seamless scheme is a four-cent fee on every piece of clothing produced by fashion companies, which will help fund research on sustainability in the fashion industry as well as create the infrastructure for recycling textiles. The scheme isn’t compulsory, and the minister of the environment in the US, Tanya Plibersek, has warned that the industry might have to be regulated in twelve months. It encourages fashion companies to embrace circularity and take responsibility for the entire life cycle of their garments in the form of rental resales and repair services available to the public.
This week, we look at four fashion companies that can successfully incorporate repair within their businesses and how they’ve navigated the more difficult aspects of the monetization process and collection of clothes.
Patagonia
Patagonia’s Worn Wear program has been an integral part of the company’s history since its inception in the late 1970s. Worn Wear is a generic name for a range of circular initiatives, which include personal repair and maintenance instruments (including DIY kits as well as online tutorials), Resales, repair services, and a recycled line of vests along with bags.
Through the repair-and-resale program, customers are able to return acceptable items via mail or in-store drop-off and receive a voucher of up to 50 percent of the resale value for the product. The secondhand items that are repaired are later sold at a lower cost.
At present, this program is only accessible currently only in this moment in the United States. However, when repairs are needed for Patagonia products, it has 72 repair centers across the globe where items can be repaired for free or at a minimal cost. Corey Simpson, a communications manager at Patagonia, says, “Last, we repaired 100,000 items, and we plan to grow that commitment over time”.
The largest repair center that stands alone is located in Reno, Nevada, where Simpson states that over 115 full-time employees fix returned Patagonia products.
Nudie Jeans
Within every Nudie Jeans store, there is a repair shop for damaged and damaged jeans made by their Swedish label. The repair service in stores began at a “very small scale around 15 years ago,” says Kevin Gelsi, Nudie Jeans circular director of product. At the time, every store had a hemming device to cut the length of jeans; however, as time passed, staff began using the machines to fix their jeans and started offering repair assistance to the customers.
It became a “word-of-mouth attraction,” says Gelsi, so as repair services increased in popularity, Gelsi decided to create “an official concept of its own.”
In the past, Nudie Jeans stores were also equipped with darning machines to patch the denim. Then, in 2012, the brand announced its Reuse takeback program, which offered customers 20% off new pairs of Nudies to exchange their previous old couple. Reclaimed jeans were then resold as patches for repairs or repurposed to be recycled for projects.
The Reuse program has expanded to encompass all Nudie clothes, and the discount incentives are a great way to buy secondhand clothing. The figures show the program’s effectiveness – in the year 2022, Nudie fixed 65,386 pairs of denim, sold 3,984 pairs, and gathered 20,722 post-consumer jeans.
Kathmandu
In the year 2000, New Zealand outdoor clothing brand Kathmandu introduced Kathman-REDU. It is an initiative that takes damaged merchandise and unsellable or returned items and cleans, repairs, and reconditions them to a selling quality. The program first launched at Kathmandu’s Richmond as well as Galleria Kathmandu stores in Melbourne and Sydney, with the goal to expand over time.
Aleasha McCallion from the Monash Sustainable Development Institute collaborated with Kathmandu to determine what point in the supply chain was “a pockets of waste” that could be used to create more profitable products. “None is their garbage is going directly to the landfill and yet it’s accumulating in a matter of seconds, and isn’t being fixed. It could be sold for a price due to a problem,” she says. “This was really about taking a look at and maximising all of that potential.”
In addition, the company offers a return of used clothes scheme that is in collaboration with recycler Upparel. The clothing collection bins are installed throughout 24 Kathmandu stores throughout Melbourne, and customers are invited to give away their used, old, or broken Kathmandu equipment. Some of the items donated to this program will be repaired before being returned to retailers as a component of Kathman’s Redu program.
The month of May was when Swedish company Asket opened an online store with bricks and mortar in Stockholm specifically for the sale of used and reconditioned clothing.
Before deciding to open a permanent store, co-founders August Bard Bringeus and Jakob Sazon Dworsky conducted a 12-month repair and takeback program, which included the opening of two pop-up retail stores to test the concept. The feedback was so positive they thought a permanent store might be financially feasible. At the time of writing, with their Stockholm store, they’ve collected 2,000 used clothes and repaired 70 percent of the items.
Customers send used Asket clothes via mail. In exchange, they are given a voucher that can be as high as EUR25 according to the item. The dresses are then shipped to Fabrikorerna, the partner factory located on the western coast of Sweden, and are repaired to be resold.
At present, Asket is looking for a solution for garments that are not suitable for restoration. “We are in discussion with local remake organizations and continue to look for viable recycling options with a focus on garments being used to create new yarn,” SSaidBard Bringeus and Dworsky in an email reply. “The intended solution would include using fabric scraps to remake into unique items or recycling the fabric.”