The Amazon box

1HQ Amsterdam 

Online shopping has increased vastly over the last few years, but are you part of the 41% of consumers who buy an item with the intent to return it?

This increase in insatiable online retail ‘therapy’ showcases a fascinating turn in immediate service from retailer to consumer. Free returns are now the new norm and a qualifying factor for consumer experience. In response, retailers are increasing workforce, creating new spaces for handling reverse logistics and expanding the fleet to meet expectations and keep the sales pyramid afloat.

How do brands resolve this? If return deliveries cost $550 billion in 2020 in the US alone, how can brands react to this as quickly as they react to fast demands? The Dutch government is reportedly looking into reducing the ‘availability’ of ‘mindless’ returns and is finding ways to change the cycle. This debate follows a much-appreciated change in the food industry where restaurants and supermarkets are joining forces to help reduce waste. Now, let’s raise our shopping bags to a future of conscious consumerism.

Allbirds footwear 

1HQ UK 

The tail end of a fascinating day at the Stylus Decoded Future event in June this year saw a closing interview with Sandeep Verma, Managing Director of Allbirds Europe.

With already over a million sales, an engaging Sandeep told the story of Allbirds and their mission to prove that comfort, good design and sustainability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. They are dedicated to making the most sustainable footwear using premium natural materials, with a commitment to making better shoes in a better way, fuelled by a belief that the shoe industry needs to focus more on thoughtfulness.

Here was a product and brand to truly believe in; they create footwear with the best materials including merino wool, eucalyptus tree fibre, sugar cane and recycled plastics, carrying this through to better factory and shipping methods, creating less waste and pollution.

The event host had already bought a pair, and she enthused about how comfortable they are, straight from the box which, by the way, is a masterclass in e-commerce packaging. Every touchpoint with the brand is delightful from the website to online ordering, communications, delivery, packaging and finally the product itself.

This is a brand that really understands what consumers currently want and how to deliver on that promise. Brands that do the right thing, in the right way, who understand their consumers and deliver on expectations will prosper; those that don’t will disappear.

£1 Bikini 

1HQ Singapore 

Online fashion retail store Missguided recently launched a £1 bikini that sold out within 45 minutes.

Missguided launches 1,000 new items a week, making the term 'Fast Fashion' seem slow with 'Rapid Fashion' becoming a newly coined category. The bikini was extremely popular, with the traffic heading to the Missguided website supposedly “breaking the internet”, but it also raises a couple of questions:

1) How much are the workers who created the bikini being paid and how well are they being treated? Missguided, and it is not the only retailer, sources half of its garments from the UK where workers are paid less than the minimum wage. The remaining half is clothing from the East in places such as Bangladesh, where over $30 billion worth of textiles were exported in 2018. The fashion retailer still has one of the lowest paid textile workforces in the world, with a worker taking home on average $95 a month.

2) How does this sort of practice contribute to the carbon footprint? It is reported that apparel and footwear industries account for 8% of global climate impact. There are a few companies that are challenging the status quo, such as Singapore based company ‘Style Theory’, who offer a monthly subscription to rent clothes. This removes the need to purchase new clothes and in turn reduces the consumer demand to produce more apparel.

Tierra Bio-Based jacket

1HQ New York 

The Bio-Based Jacket created by the Swedish outdoor apparel brand Tierra is an alternative to fossil-based synthetic performance clothing. Deterra consists of an outer fabric woven from Evo yarn, made from castor beans and a wool padding. It’s stitched with Tencel, a thread made from wood cellulose, while the buttons are made from Corozo nuts, which have a resin-like quality. 

Super-strong packaging for fragile goods can be biodegradable, and luxury apparel can be made to last a lifetime. These innovations are showing that performance doesn’t need to be synonymous with synthetics. Vegetable-tanned leather with hand-dyed finishes, self-coloured materials and delicate details distinguish this refined yet natural direction. 

This is an example of the increasing ‘Smart Naturals’ that offer a more sustainable approach to materials and a way for active brands to set themselves apart. I predict that this innovation will become common place in our future, with bio-clothes becoming everyday wear.