”Can Data Save Fashion?” is the million-dollar question of the Scandinavian MIND conference at CIFF during Copenhagen Fashion Week this week. The short answer is no, since the cultural concept of fashion is in no need of rescuing. What needs rescuing is rather the fashion industry, and for this data can be the silver bullet.
Since about a year back, I have been part of the development of a cradle-to-cradle traceability solution for the over 150-year-old tradition of regenerating fibres amongst the manufacturers in the Prato Region of Tuscany, Italy. The goal of the project is to use blockchain and RFID tags to trace and verify the different stages of the regeneration of fibres with the purpose of communicating this data to the end users and incentivising donations of garments for regeneration.
Trust is good, proof is better
The one-year project starts in September 2024 and will trace fibres through the takeback loop, starting with the sorting facility and, via shredding, spinning, manufacturing and user phase, back to sorting again. The uniqueness of the Prato context is that all suppliers are located within a few miles of each other, making the whole process tangible for testing in controlled environments.
During the pre-study of the project, we found strong indications that the possibility of tracing and communicating the regeneration of fibres might provide incentives enough for all stakeholders to engage in recycling on a large scale. Traceability is now the actual catalyst that might propel the industry towards circularity based on the notion that if you can show it and prove it, it is worth it.
Balancing the value for all stakeholders
If data can be the catalyst for change, my bet is that consumers need to shift their expectations of the products and industry representatives shift their business models to share the profits and provide reasonable values for all stakeholders across the regenerative process.
In Prato, where regenerative production is in the DNA, I asked the owner of a factory for shredding cashmere what their major challenge for upscaling was — whether it was factory capacity or lack of raw material supply. He thought for a moment, and then answered that it was neither. They were reluctant to expand too fast because then, they could not guarantee the quality. Like other regenerative industries in the region, they were balancing growth against a wider definition of the concept of quality, thus including more stakeholders than just investors and consumers. Their definition of quality included the region, the biodiversity, the soil, the community as well as coming generations’ right to tolerable living conditions.
The pre-study of the Prato case thus seconds the standpoint that a new balance between regeneration, growth and quality needs to be established. A balance that create value for all and the key would be to trace all transactions, making sure that all participating actors in the process, including the takeback loop, benefits.
Such a system can of course be organised based on trust, but one might argue that it would be even better if it required some liability of the stakeholders. This is where data becomes relevant, particularly the gathering, tracing, and proving of it. And I don’t mean just putting self-assessed-ecological-suppliy-chain-impact-data-in-a-SaaS-platform. I refer to tracing validated, social, and ecological impact data throughout the whole value chain, including both user phase and take-back loop just like the Prato case.
Don’t get me wrong; only tracing the supply chain — cradle-to-gate — has been a good start — but we need to move beyond that.
The new genesis of fibres
The Prato case emphasises that the genesis of textile fibres will change from the cotton fields or the sheep farms to the collecting and sorting facilities of urban areas. As will the end of life. It will be at the sorting that the tracing starts and ends, and where the data is generated that has the potential to create trust, compliance, brand loyalty, strengthened revenues, and less ecological and social impact.
So, if we follow the logic that all stakeholders through the value chain must benefit and that traceability data can provide this, let’s do the math.
The recycling and sorting facilitieswill most likely see an enhancement in status and industry relevance since they will be the non-excludable starting and end point of the closed loop. The brands would benefit from enhanced compliance with legislations such as EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) as well as once they start collecting, they could get assurances that they would get their valuable and exclusive fibres back again to become new generations of clothes. Providing the users with reliable traceability data for donated garments could enhance their gut feeling of ”doing the right thing”, which is about how deep many customer engagements often penetrate.
The more explorative users also get the possibility to create digital twins of the garments concerning shared ownership impact, authenticity, number of owners, and seamless integration to all the numerous digital wardrobes and platforms that are popping up around the globe.
The factory suppliers and manufacturers of regenerative fibres are likely to get competitive advantages by offering traceable data with radically decreased impact of carbon emissions and water usage.
The planet would benefit from takeback loop traceability data through resource management becoming more efficient and a decrease in the extraction of raw material, again following the logic that when verified regenerative processes can be showcased with verified data, they will be good for users, business, and planet.
So, on paper, it could add up. Data might very well present a solution for the business of fashion, providing proof and values enough to engage all.
In a year, I will have the live test results of the Prato case. I will keep you posted.
Erik Lindvall is the founder of circular development and social sustainability consulting agency Manyminds and Business Development Lead at PaperTale
