The past decade has seen a surge in mindfulness from corporations around sustainable projects and keeping environmental, social, and governance initiatives a top organizational priority. Companies have become more innovative in how they support those initiatives.
For instance, fast fashion, the model that involves rapid design, production and distribution of clothing, has become popular with brands. This method makes it easier for fashion brand icons to copy runway trends at a lower cost. Business Insider reported in 2019 that the fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions, is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply, and pollutes the oceans with microplastics.
Companies like ReSuit, a second-hand clothing marketplace for selling and renting wardrobe items, reduce carbon emissions by 500 pounds per person annually. This decreases carbon, waste and water footprint by more than eighty percent.
“With a rental [model],” Nada Shepherd, a fashion designer and entrepreneur, states during a phone interview, “it allows the user to keep their coveted pieces and monetize it while it’s in their closet. So there’s no need to throw it out. When it comes back to them, they can either wear it again or lend it to someone else. And over time, that would constrain the pipeline; the demand will subside because you are utilizing what is already in the ecosystem. So, not everything fits the rental model. We have clothes we wear all the time that are stained and soiled; they’re not in great condition to rent out. And that’s okay. Things will still end up in the landfill. Again, I get cautious around extreme statements or binary thinking. I think this is a solution to minimize a very complex issue.”
Millennials started the trend of paying more for experiences than collecting things; Gen Z has continued the notion. According to Statista, the global sharing economy is predicted to increase to $600 billion by 2027 from $113 billion in 2021. Through the sharing economy, people are able to appropriate more money for fun-filled activities rather than materialistic items.
Shepherd has spent her career working in and building companies within the fashion industry. In 2011, she made the difficult decision to close her production down, even after being in Lord & Taylor and 80 other stores across the U.S. and Canada; scaling a business during the end of the recession didn’t seem logical. Retailers were shutting their doors at an expedited rate. Shepherd took her chance and returned to school for an MBA.
As she reworked a new business model, the thought of no inventory surfaced. She created the business model from a new mindset of eliminating the pain points of the designers and thinking more strategically.
“When people create, it’s like a blue sky [blank canvas],” she explains. “I think that’s the worst thing you could do when you ideate, think blue sky. You need anchors; you need to put some boundaries up. Then, within that, you go crazy and bounce off the walls. One of my anchors was no inventory. As resale and rental started to evolve, ReSuit started to take shape. It wasn’t until I was almost finished my MBA that the idea snapped into place, given my evolved thinking in business and strategy, my strong dislike for inventory, where the consumers and the market were, and the acceptance of interacting with things without needing to own it. I come from a generation where everything you interact with you must own. And that’s a huge shift in the consumer mindset.”
Shepherd and her husband, David, built out the platform and community for ReSuit. They wanted to develop a space for people to rent their clothing and for indie or smaller designers to create new lines without carrying a large inventory.
“She came back one day and was obsessed with this idea of creating a platform to help designers to be more successful because, as a small designer, the fashion [industry] is really tough,” David comments. “This was probably her fifth or sixth idea for an app she bounced off me. As she started going through the details of it and what she envisioned, I thought it was a pretty compelling idea. It evolved from that initial thought of allowing designers to do a rental collection to having a peer-to-peer rental platform where people could monetize their closet, rent items and sell them.”
As Shepherd begins to pivot from bootstrapping to fundraising, she focuses on the following essential steps:
- Listen to the advice being given to you, but be cautious of accepting it. Not all that is spoken is going to be for you.
- Be comfortable with the unknown. It doesn’t mean you’re going to fail or that you’re going to be a roaring success. It just means you don’t know—being at peace with not knowing is essential.
- Focus on the next step. It may not completely align with your five-year goal, but it is critical to get you to where you want to go.
“It’s important that we drop this notion of ‘I’m too old,’” Shepherd concludes. I hear this in circles of women in their 30s and 40s where they feel like they’re too old [to try something new]. I want to share with women not to be afraid to go for it. Maybe you won’t be the next Rihanna, but it doesn’t mean you can’t explore singing part-time. Whatever it is you want to try, try it. Get out of your own way.”
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