FROM 2HAND TO A 2CHANCE
FAST FASHION — A COST FOR OUR MOTHER NATURE
The fast fashion industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, and it is obvious why that is — It is cheap, easy to produce, marketable, and convenient. It has the unique ability to put out the next big trend as soon as they hit the market and is affordable enough that almost anyone can get them. However, all of these conveniences come to a price: the destruction of our environment. According to a report by the UN Environment in 2019, it is estimated that 8% of our carbon emissions come from the fast fashion industry. It is also the second-largest consumer of the global water supply.
2HAND-THE 2CHANCE
Although it is such a popular way for people to fulfill their shopping needs, there are better, more sustainable alternatives out there whenever you feel like you need an addition to your wardrobe. Amongst them, second-hand clothing is becoming a popular option for the younger generations. Certainly, thrift stores are the better way to go when you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint and reduce your negative impact on the environment, but for many people, it is only an occasional solution.
Especially, in Thailand, second-hand stores are not widely available, and most of them are the type that lets you find whatever is in a gigantic pile of clothes or squeeze it all together on a row of hangers. People look for thrift stores mostly because it is way cheaper, and thus, the price is relative to the service quality and opportunity to find a good piece. Often, the stores only have the categories of top, bottom wear, and jackets while there are many more kinds to differentiate. You can go to thrift stores and spend hours upon hours in the dust to find the right type of clothing you want, with just the quality you desire, the right size, and so on, and it is such a matter of luck.
But nothing beats just opening one of your big shopping apps, clicking a couple of buttons, and boom, a clean and pretty shirt or two are already on your way. So, how can we make second-hand clothes more accessible, reliable, hygienic, and appealing to the average consumer?
THE LEVERAGE POINT
We used “Leverage points” to discover an effective way to address those problems. The leverage point is described as the place where we can intervene in a system “where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.” Out of 12 leverage points, we chose to work on point number 2, which is “The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises”. We want to change people’s assumptions about secondhand clothes, that they are not only a second option to save money, but they are also a second chance to save the earth. They are not dull and dirty, and in order to find a good piece, it would not be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Therefore, we came up with an outcome that aims to change the structure to access secondhand clothing, which can be clean, trendy, and eco-friendly at the same time.
Fashion needs to be good for the environment → “people, planet, profit” co-exist.
OUR PROTOTYPE
We are Team Nature Nurture, a group of students at Thammasat University majoring in Global Studies and Social Entrepreneur who started this project with a mission to decrease the trend of fast fashion and promote second-hand clothing in Thailand. Our idea is to create a secondhand clothes brand, where we connect buyers and sellers of secondhand clothing and create criteria to guarantee the quality and condition of the product. Everyone can sell clothes to us, but we will provide guidelines about which one we will choose to buy. We make a standard for our stuff and make sure that our product is clean, environmentally friendly, has a pleasing aroma, and still in good condition.
The reason we came up with this idea is that while secondhand shops are long-established, they have not been available in an organized, accessible, and appealing way. Our main target would be changing the trend of teenagers fashion as teenagers are the next generation of our population. We understand that most people overlook secondhand clothing because of hygienic problems. So that is why we decided to offer a quality check and give an offer to customers to buy secondhand clothes that they prefer without having to worry about the quality. Our idea is different from other secondhand items shops as most secondhand shops will only put clothes together without any unique selling points — what we aim to do is to make secondhand clothes become a trend and is fashionable by giving them special packages, verification tags, certificates, and the website design to become more trendy.
The distinguishing features of our prototype:
- Our channel — Application (accessibility)
We also build an app to promote our brand because it is easily accessible and very simple to use. Our main feature would be similar to other online shopping platforms, but we will offer other services and functions. We will have a section on guidelines for buyers and sellers to agree on before shopping with us. Our app will filter clothes into categories such as high-end brand names, regular casual wear, sportswear, etc. as we aim to provide as convenient a shopping experience for customers as possible.
2. Our model (hygiene and quality)
The guidelines for buyers and sellers will state how we accounted quality into levels. We will sort the quality into percentages like 50%, 70%, or 90%. The buyers will receive guidelines of quality of rating from 50–90% of how new/clean the clothes are. For the sellers, they will receive guidelines also on 50–90% of cleanliness and how new it is — and to which circumstances they can sell to us. We aim to clean clothes and distribute them to better quality than when we first receive them. We are going to put tags and give out certificates to our customers proving that we have quality checks on the item.
Social Enterprise: the solution to sustainability
In order to ensure that our idea will sustain and be able to promote the sustainability of the fashion industry on a bigger scale, we developed it into a business model. As our main goal is to conserve and protect the environment, it will be in the form of a social enterprise in which we will receive the amount of profit just to keep our business running. As calculated, the profit would account for 40% of the revenue. This number, as have explained, will be used to sustain our business by paying the cost of business operations, including buying second-hand clothes from retailers/suppliers, washing them, labor payment, delivery, app maintenance, etc, and giving back to the community through socially impactful programs.
Social and Business Value Proposition: We provide high-quality secondhand clothes and the best condition for everyone to increase greener consumption; we save nature, animals, plants, and the environment from the fast fashion industry; and we advocate for environmentally friendly and safe processes of reusing clothes.
To scale it up, we will need several partners to cooperate with us. First, the second-hand clothes suppliers which can be either the big one that has many clothes in their warehouse or individuals who want to sell their used clothes can sell it to us without seeking for the customers on their own, as we will be the credible platform that is different from others and have our own customers. Secondly, to wash all the clothes and ensure hygiene, we will need to partner up with companies that do washing and ironing. Lastly, since we are an online shopping platform, our last partner is going to be the delivery company as delivering is one of the bases of our enterprise.
Social value indicator: We prove the social value of our business through:
- The total weight of clothes reused. According to research done by Fashion Evolution, for every tone of clothing reused, we could save the environment from 20 tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere. (2015)
- The number of people who accesses our website/app
- Feedback from our customers
From the rise of the industrial revolution, there have been various effects due to mass production. There are millions of tons of waste clothing being thrown away in landfills every week and textile waste that is toxic to biodiversity thrown into the ocean and this is because people continuously buy more clothes than they need to. While many people might assume that the reason people should use second-hand shops is it is easier to save money, another big advantage of buying used dresses is they are environmentally friendly. Yes, purchasing used clothing is environmentally friendly, and the recycling system benefits everyone in the community. We can progress together and save nature if more people practice buying and selling second-hand clothes.
*This article is written by my team Nature Nurture, including Hieu Ton, Ananya Suksathianpanich, Millian Leap, Taksaya Thanasakdipat, and Joseph Park.
Sources:
- https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-alliance-sustainable-fashion-addresses-damage-fast-fashion
- https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
- http://www.luxurymanagementconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Sustainability-in-Fashion_FACTBOOK.pdf
