How Can C&A Pform "Fast Fashion" With "Sustainable" Pformation?

The persistence of speed in modern society has spawned fast fashion, but now "fast" is no longer the only criterion.

With the sustainable integration becoming the mainstream discourse system, more and more people begin to pay attention to the cost of shopping Carnival and consumerism, and the sustainable problems and moral problems behind the fashion industry emerge.

The report shows that fashion is one of the most polluted industries in the world after oil and natural gas.

Fast fashion, which involves excessive waste and labor benefits, has also become the object of criticism in the industry.

As consumers gradually wake up, they gradually realize that consumption is not happiness, and consumption is only the price of happiness.

They may not need so many clothes. Overspending will bring a burden to their real life and psychology.

No one knows when the shopping Carnival will reach its peak, but few people believe that the shopping Carnival will never stop.

In this case, fast fashion has to plan for its own future.

If we look at the long term, global warming, which is caused by excessive consumption, production and logistics, will become a nightmare for fashion retailers including fast fashion.

Earlier reports pointed out that there was a "clear relationship" between temperature and retail sales. Nearly half of the retailers admitted that weather was one of the three external drivers of performance.

Obviously, fast fashion brands will not be able to rely on the extensive development strategy of sacrificing long-term interests to share market share.

But the key problem is that "fast fashion" seems to be a natural contradiction with "sustainability". The former is pursuing efficiency, while the latter is willing to sacrifice speed for social responsibility.

Some fast fashion brands' green marketing is also referred to as "green washing" or "floating green", that is, to declare their own efforts to protect the environment. But in fact, it is a false environmental publicity that goes against their way. This also makes it difficult for the fast fashion brand's environmental protection efforts to gain public trust.

Three carriages of sustainable development

After several years of hard work, C&A, headquartered in Belgium, has gradually emerged from the fast fashion category and has become a fashion retailer focusing on quality and social responsibility.

Its comprehensive pformation, including supply chain, raw material and other links, has provided a reference for more fast fashion brands. It also makes people think more deeply about the contradiction between "fast fashion" and "sustainable" and the way out.

As early as 2012, C&A launched the three strategic pillars of global sustainable development commitments, including sustainable products, sustainable supply chains and sustainable life.

Since 2005, C&A has joined the Textile Exchange of textile trade association. It has become "the world's leading organic cotton buyer" in less than ten years, and won the top spot in the annual ranking of "ten organic cotton producers" from 2012 to 2016.

In December 2016, C&A China issued a commitment to sustainable development.

In terms of sustainable products, since 2017, C&A China has asked suppliers to commit themselves to 100% more sustainable cellulosic fibers.

In the undertaking, C&A China supports the CanopyStyle initiative, which requires suppliers to purchase artificial cellulose fibers from fiber producers, such as cotton, modle, and Le cel, from the CanopyStyle verification audits.

To this end, the group designated Lan Jing and Bola group as the first choice of cellulosic fiber producers starting from the first quarter of 2018, and the brand demanded all the artificial cellulose fibers supplied by the suppliers from the two producers.

Canopy is an international non-profit environmental protection organization dedicated to the protection of forests, species and climate. It has "button ranking". Its dimensions include the contribution to forest protection, the development of new alternative fibers, traceability and pparency.

In terms of raw materials, C&A has made detailed regulations on various raw materials, including organic cotton products that must be authenticated by independent third parties. The brand does not allow the use of animal hair collected from animals. Therefore, the brand products are not allowed to contain Angola rabbit hair fiber and Ma Haimao.

For the controversial and usually duvet and feather materials that are usually related to animal rights, C&A China stipulates that the feather and feather must be derived from poultry which are mainly processed for food production. It is not allowed to use feather and feather collected from animals in vivo, and the down and feather of any endangered species are not allowed.

C&A the leather and fur used in China are only allowed to originate from animals such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats and pigs, which are mainly raised for food processing. They are not allowed to use leather products from endangered species or exotic species.

In order to strengthen the supply network and strengthen the implementation of the responsible down standard (RDS), C&A China has also conducted a review of the down market supply chain in the local market.

In 2017, the brand conducted a due diligence survey of the RDS certified supply chain to understand further improvements and improvements.

In terms of sustainable supply chain downstream of raw materials, C&A China shares 45% of suppliers with C&A Europe.

20 of these suppliers in China provide C&A with 75% of the products, thus producing more intensively.

In September 2017, 20 C&A employees from purchasing, design, marketing, and procurement departments learned organic cotton cultivation on a farm in Binzhou for two days.

The team picked cotton, talked to farm workers, and worked with farm leaders to better understand cotton farmers in practice.

In view of the management of chemicals, C&A China has made a commitment to the list of restricted substances and zero emissions of hazardous chemicals. The company says it will complete the goal of eliminating hazardous chemicals in all the supply chains by 2020.

In 2018, with its outstanding performance in sustainable chemicals and supply chain management, C&A was ranked the top ten among the top 2018 list of the "green supply chain CITI" index, ranking fourth in the industry and second in the apparel industry.

In terms of sustainable life, labour welfare, which is often neglected, is also a key link in sustainable development.

In recent years, C&A has made an improvement in the sustainable life effort, one of the three major strategies for sustainable development.

C&A China said in its commitment to sustainable development that the company publicly denounced any act and supplier of employing underage child labor and would suspend its business relationship.

In view of the health and safety concerns of the textile industry, C&A China stopped buying jeans used in sandblasting technology in 2010, instead of buying other cowboy products with the same texture, such as mechanical grinding.

In closer proximity to the daily operation of the brand, sustainable development is also related to the company's humanitarian spirit and employee satisfaction.

In May 2018, 97% of C&A employees participated in C&A global inspiring world activities (2018 Inspiring World Campaign).

Data show that 87% of C&A Chinese employees say they are very proud of C&A's contribution to the community, society and environment.

79% of respondents believe that the practice of sustainable development is related to their work.

C&A formulated sustainable development goals for 2020, including 67% of raw materials and 100% of cotton.

C&A total carbon footprint of national stores, distribution centers and headquarters has been reduced by 20% to achieve zero hazardous chemical emissions.

Continuously improve the performance of staff's sustainable development, and establish and achieve the key objectives in the "women's empowerment principle action" plan.

Localization Practice of sustainable concept

Sustainable products, sustainable supply chains and sustainable life have set up a global view of sustainable development for C&A.

On this basis, C&A is flourishing on existing branches by launching more localized and diversified marketing activities and independent projects.

In April 2018, C&A launched the first multi-channel global sustainable development publicity campaign #Wear the Change green new fashion in China. This year, it expanded the environmental protection fabric series products, including the environmental protection Binzhou cotton series, the comfortable cotton hemp series and the vitality natural cotton series.

Because the demand for organic cotton as raw material in the global market is far greater than that of organic cotton, C&A is committed to improving conversion rate of organic cotton fields.

So C&A and the C&A Foundation (C&A Foundation) and CottonConnect jointly launched a pilot project in Shandong to support the pformation of 300 cotton farmers from traditional cotton to organic cotton.

In 2019, these cotton will be used to make 270 thousand T-shirts and jeans.

It is noteworthy that this year's latest environmental protection fabric series has been released recently.

The raw material of the environmental protection Binzhou cotton series comes from the farmland without chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and uses the "vital cotton" that can be cultivated in 3 years. C&A Shandong Binzhou has joined the environmental protection planting for 2 years.

The comfortable cotton linen series is mainly made of 100% pure natural fabrics, using natural plant fiber to create a natural, breathable and comfortable wearing experience.

Vitality cotton series does not use genetically modified sowing, does not use chemical expenses and pesticides, and textile process reduces pollution.

The strict control of raw materials and the promotion of healthy and environment-friendly life are catering to the consumer psychology of the current consumers. They want to withdraw from the endless cycle of constantly consuming mediocrity, especially the fast fashion brand, which has been criticized for plagiarism and low quality.

Now consumers want to buy high-quality and cost-effective brands, and they increasingly value original creativity.

Last year, C&A China launched the "environmental friendly cotton pattern design competition" in collaboration with station cool net. Eventually, the "harmonious symbiosis" of the former illustrator Li Xiao won the Champion Award.

C&A therefore works together with the original design brand nine hills to create "harmonious symbiosis" joint environmental protection paper notebook series, trying to achieve the gap between sustainability and creativity.

At a more practical level, C&A also launched energy saving and low carbon projects. Since 2016, C&A has replaced the lamps and lanterns of the store as a power saving LED lamp one by one, and now 15 stores have been converted.

A reformed store can save up to 130 thousand -15 kilowatt power in one year, saving 33% of the waste compared with the previous one, which is equivalent to nearly 100 thousand hours of air conditioning power consumption per store.

Forest protection has also become the focus of sustainable development of C&A in China. The company has promised to encourage the brand's fabric supply chain in a reasonable way to contribute to the protection of the existing old and endangered forest and its endangered species habitat.

It includes the assessment of the use of fiber fabrics at present, instead of Canada and Russia's northern coniferous forests, the coastal temperate rainforests and other old and endangered forest areas.

C&A James Michael Dubow, the chief executive of China, recently accepted SocialBeta's visit. It said that in the Chinese market, #Wear the Change green new fashion is the most important thing. The most important thing is whether consumers form a sustainable concept and how to pass the meaning and idea behind the environmental products to consumers. This still needs a long-term process.

He said that in 2018, C&A conducted a survey of consumers in different markets of the world "whether you know #Wear the Change green new fashion trend". The results show that the project has made a good response in the world, and the Chinese market has performed particularly well.

The group also gathered a lot of feedback from consumers to improve its activities and make the sustainable fashion truly localized.

The way to "fast fashion"

The pformation of C&A's sustainable development has been recognized by third authoritative global organizations.

According to the Fashion Transparency Index released by the fashion industry NGO Fashion Revolution every year, 10 clothing brands made outstanding progress in 2018, and C&A also listed them.

The report selects the world's 150 largest apparel brands, ranking according to the brand's social responsibility and environmental protection policies and achievements.

Although the pformation of sustainable development means additional initial investment to some brands, but in the long run, it increases consumer's interest in brand, but helps to improve brand sales performance. For example, the C&A energy saving project mentioned earlier can also directly reduce the operating cost of brand.

C&A has nearly 2000 stores and 60 thousand employees in 24 countries in the world. It has been stationed in China in 2007. So far, it has maintained a positive momentum of development and has 71 stores nationwide.

After the global fast fashion battle and price war craze, fast fashion products enter the market cooling off period, and speed is no longer the sole criterion for deciding the future of medium fashion retailers.

In the interest of running fast and unpleasant, the market is now more concerned about who can run farther.

Now, C&A's early layout for sustainable development is partly due to corporate social responsibility, but in business, this layout is also very forward-looking.

Through its efforts in recent years, C&A has succeeded in subtly replacing the previous impression of "fast" brand by "sustainable" brand image.

This means that in the hands of a competition, C&A has become a more recognizable and differentiated fashion retailer.

The fact shows that the company's sustainable layout does not drag down the speed of brand development, but instead becomes a positive driving force.

Through the sustainable layout of raw materials, supply chain and staff working environment, C&A has also achieved enough sustainable standards in the production of non sustainable production besides environmental protection fabric series.

On this basis, the future C&A will be able to extend the series of sustainable environmentally friendly fabrics more smoothly to the brand's more product lines, and achieve product upgrading across the board.

In the absence of physical stores and faster fashion providers, the traditional fast fashion brands will be able to maintain market competitiveness only if they have advanced layout.

The new era is coming, and the once hot "fast fashion" will soon become an outdated concept.