Five Steps To Make Your Brand More Sustainable

Brief Summary

Consumer demand for sustainability in fashion looks set to continue, with projections indicating that the market will be valued at $53 billion by 2032. As a result, buyers are still pursuing sustainable brands to carry in their stores.

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To capitalize on this demand and to maximize your chance of sales, engage in these sustainable business strategies:

• Digitize your processes: choose virtual showrooms and eliminate pen and paper communications to reduce waste
  
• Source responsibly: choose sustainable materials and partner with ethical suppliers that use renewable energy when possible
  
• Avoid overproduction: use forecasting tools to reduce waste and emissions
  
• Adopt circular economy initiatives: which could encourage consumers to recycle or reuse your products
  
• Increase your transparency: make buyers aware of product details like country of origin and production methods to highlight sustainable practices

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How Can Brands Make Their Fashion Wholesale More Sustainable?

Digitize Your Brand’s Wholesale Process

One of the easiest ways to make your brand more sustainable is to digitize as many of your processes as you can. This will help you to eliminate wasteful practices like pen and paper communication, but also streamline your business.

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Leveraging technology to increase your brand’s sustainability provides wholesale buyers with a smoother, faster, and more responsible experience and helps reduce energy, excess waste, and costs.

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Instead of attending meetings with buyers in person and creating carbon emissions from international travel, switch to digital showrooms, where you can do business with buyers from around the world from the comfort of your own office.

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This not only reduces travel emissions, but reduces sample production as you won’t need multiple sample sets in different showrooms around the world, reduces the shipping of samples all around the world and reduces the use of printed materials.

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Source Responsibly for Your Fashion Brand

When researching how to be more sustainable in fashion wholesale, you’ll have come across lots of thinkpieces around sourcing. From trying to work with more eco-friendly materials to vetting your suppliers based on their environmental standards, there are endless ways to improve your fashion brand's sustainability metrics.

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If you are unsure where to start, look at how your supply chain can improve. A 2023 BCG Report found that more than 85% of leading brands have publicly declared decarbonization targets for their supply chains.

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Could you push your supplier to switch to renewable energy? Can you negotiate smaller MOQs? Whatever improvements you can make, be sure to communicate this on your brand’s website and wholesale platform profile so buyers can see you are dedicated to making a positive difference.

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Try To Avoid Overproduction

Preventing overproduction will reduce unnecessary fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions, and also save your fashion brand money. An easy way to do this is by leveraging a platform that can forecast and streamline order volumes based on demand and your previous sales history. Doing so means you can produce quantities that more closely match demand and avoid overstocking.

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A small amount of overproduction may always be unavoidable, but in these instances, you can try to use the excess inventory in innovative ways to give it another life.

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Consider repurposing styles by reusing their fabric and turning them into accessories. Consumers and buyers alike are often drawn to upcycled items, and they often have a higher perceived value as they are seen as a more sustainable choice.

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Adopt Circular Initiatives To Inspire Customers & Buyers

Many fashion brands use recycling initiatives to court the sustainability-minded consumer. Swedish brand Nudie Jeans offers a free lifetime repair service for their jeans, and when customers tire of a style, they can trade their old pair in for store credit.

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British heritage brand Burberry teamed up with Vestiaire Collective to offer a gift card to customers who wished to trade in their older Burberry items for a piece from their new collection.

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These circular initiatives not only improve your brand’s sustainability credentials but are also highly attractive to buyers. The potential opportunity for customers returning to their store to recycle an item boosts their footfall, builds brand loyalty and increases their chances of repeat business.

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By building a close relationship with a buyer, you'll be able to negotiate upcycling terms and may even create an opportunity for in-store recycling pop-ups and ethical fashion events.

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Improve Your Brand’s Transparency

Sustainability and traceability often go hand in hand, and buyers are increasingly interested in supply chain visibility. To appeal to stores’ building out sustainable assortments, provide accurate product information to help buyers make better choices.

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Provide as much detail as possible in your product details, including country of origin or where you’re shipping from, so buyers can see where a product was made and how much carbon is being used to get it to them.

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Certain wholesale platforms may even allow you to create a badge to signify if a product is sustainable, or a ‘greener choice’, making it a great way to highlight these items to buyers on linesheets.

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In Conclusion

There are many sustainable fashion strategies brands can implement to be more environmentally-friendly and, in turn, attract buyers.

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Whether you choose to digitize your processes, source responsibly, reduce overproduction, increase your transparency or adopt circular economy initiatives, be sure to use a wholesale platform that allows you to highlight these changes.

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JOOR offers virtual showrooms, digital linesheet software and unique product badges, so you can easily communicate sustainable changes with buyers. Request your demo to learn more today!