The Journey Towards B Corp with (Re)vive
B Corp certification has been a goal we’ve been working towards since the early days of Revive in 2022, when we were just beginning our beta testing. When I think back to that time, I remember our scrappy team learning and growing as we took baby steps towards a business none of us really knew the potential of just yet. Back then, all we knew was that we couldn’t stand by as the fashion industry became increasingly wasteful. As our team began to see how impactful garment refurbishment could be for the apparel sector, we started looking for ways to establish our credibility as not just a company with a sustainable solution, but as a company who prioritized solving a problem in the most sustainable way possible. The first time we ever discussed B Corp certification was after a call with a pilot partner, and Allison Lee looked over at me and said, “should we become a B Corp?” I responded, “Yes, absolutely,” as if it were going to be easy (plot twist: it wasn’t).
The “B” in B Corp stands for Benefit for all. B Corporations are companies which choose to go through a rigorous application process to confirm that they meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency as determined by the B Lab network. The B Lab network is international, and works to mobilize their global network to make change within our economic system with the goal of using business as a force for good. The B Corp Movement is focused on collaboration, and B Corp certified businesses are expected to be active in a community which follows the B Corp Movement Manifesto:
Together, we transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.
Together, we lead economic systems change that will realize our vision of an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.
Together, we create standards, policies, tools, and programs that shift the behavior, culture, and structure of capitalism.
Together, we’re changing the rules of the game so that all businesses have to balance profit and purpose.
Together, we’re building a movement of people using business as a force for good.
Together, we won’t stop until all business is a force for good.
Today, as a B Corp Certified company in the apparel industry, we can count ourselves among businesses that are leading a global movement for an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.
While we’re thrilled to be here, it wasn’t an easy road. One simple conversation led to two years of application building. We had to dive into every aspect of our business: our employee pay scale, our supply chain, our governance and our environmental impact. Along the way, we completed research that illuminated the scope of the waste problem Revive was built to solve. Here’s how we did it:
- We doubled down on our thesis.
Back when we started our B Corp journey, we had to drill down into exactly what kind of impact we wanted to make on the inventory. Revive has gone through so many iterations, but we found our niche in refurbishment. We zeroed in on our company mission to divert damaged inventory from landfills and, with our North Star, we were able to conduct focused research on refurbishment.
2. We went deep into research mode.
With an aligned mission, we dove into learning all we could regarding the scope of the industry’s damaged inventory problem. From Revive’s market research and brand surveys, we discovered that most of a brand’s damages are due to returns. According to the NRF, apparel brands see about 12.2% of their inventory get returned (NRF, 2021), and 52% of the items returned are unsellable due to damages. (Market Watch, 2015). These statistics mean that 6.3% of all units produced are unsellable due to damages. This estimate is conservative as it does not account for the units that are damaged due to factory defects, in-store try-ons or other miscellaneous damages. Based on research regarding defective rates in apparel manufacturing (Shrestha, 2019) and surveying our existing brand partners, we can estimate that an additional approximately 4–5% of produced units are destroyed or offloaded due to damages. When combined, we see that 11.3% of already produced units are discarded or offloaded due to damages. From there, we determined our refurbishment success rate to be 79% of all inventory received, meaning that our Revive service could potentially impact 8.93% of all apparel produced (if all of those brands send us their merchandise, of course!).
After determining our potential impact on production volumes, we went one step further. We completed a research-based life cycle assessment of our Revive refurbishment process, taking into account items that would need sewn repairs, cleaning, refreshing, and more. We found that our emissions spent during the refurbishment process came in just under 1 kgCO2e per garment on average, saving over 95% of emissions as compared to new production.
Our research was extensive, but the B Corp Certification application process was the catalyst we needed to dive in and understand the total scope of the problem we were facing. Our documentation was imperative to our application, and showed our dedication to using data to verify our claims of sustainability.
3. We rallied our stakeholders.
The last step towards certification is one not often talked about. B Corp Certification is expensive, and for us, required a change of our incorporation documents to legally become a public benefit corporation. We had to round up support from everyone, including our internal team and investors. Educating our stakeholders was extremely important, and we used examples of other sustainable service providers in the industry, like Helpsy, Vestiaire Collective, and Looptworks, to build our case for investing in this valuable movement. There are so many prominent B Corp Certified companies that we are proud to call our customers — brands like Eileen Fisher and Frank & Eileen. We’re so excited to finally join them in the B Corp community.
And we’re not stopping here. We know that B Corp Certified companies are held to a high standard, and we want to be one of the best out there. Our final score came to 92.1, well over the score of 80 that is needed for certification, but with lots of room to grow. While we’re proud of that score, we know there is so much more to do if we want to lead the apparel and textile industry into a no-waste future. We’ve started internally, by partnering with our friends over at Greenly to measure our company footprint and get an accurate picture of the impact of our Revive refurbishment. We’re also working on new ways to preserve as much embedded value as possible in garments we’re not able to refurbish, and focusing on building a team of experts to sort our non-refurbishable units into their ideal next-life pathway. We want to be ready for recertification, not because we have to, but because that’s the kind of company we want to be.
Revive would not be here without our team, and together we’re grateful for all the work our remote HQ members have put in alongside our onsite warehouse staffs at our Revive Hub in New Jersey and our alterations Threadquarters in NYC. With all of the (well-deserved!) celebration our team is doing this week, I hope we never become accustomed to seeing the below closing line for our blogs, our job postings, or our social media messaging. Instead, I hope it serves as a reminder of why we embarked on this journey in the first place: to be a company that puts more good into the world than it takes.
Revive is B Corp Certified. We are part of a global movement of businesses committed to improving social and environmental conditions around the world.