Levi’s Partners With Recycled-Cotton Start-Up

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This article was prepared by By Alison A. Nieder for Apparel News

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Levi Strauss & Co. has created a jean made from post-consumer recycled cotton. To make the jean, the San Francisco–based denim giant partnered with Seattle-based social-purpose company Evrnu, which has developed a technology for recycling post-consumer cotton clothing to create a recycled cotton-like fiber for use in clothing.

“LS&Co. was the perfect first partner for us to demonstrate our technology and capability as they are an iconic American company with a product that’s recognized around the world,” said Evrnu Chief Executive Officer Stacy Flynn in a statement. “Our aspiration is to build a pair of Levi’s jeans that are just as beautiful and strong as the original, and we’re making great progress toward that goal.”

The Levi’s-Evrnu prototype jean is made with yarn made from approximately five cotton T-shirts in a process Evrnu says uses 98 percent less water than traditional cotton products.

“This first prototype represents a major advancement in apparel innovation. We have the potential to reduce by 98 percent the water that would otherwise be needed to grow virgin cotton while giving multiple lives to each garment,” said Paul Dillinger, head of global product innovation at Levi Strauss & Co. “Although in its early days, this technology holds great promise and is an exciting advancement as we explore the use of regenerated cotton to help significantly reduce our overall impact on the planet.”

The Levi’s-Evrnu prototype is part of Levi’s ongoing innovation and sustainability strategy. The company has shared its WaterLess finishing techniques with other manufacturers around the world in an effort to encourage water conservation throughout the apparel industry and reduce water consumption worldwide. Levi’s Wellthreadproducts also look at the social, environmental and economic sustainability factors within the product’s lifecycle.

“By tackling water conservation through new fiber innovation, the apparel industry has the potential to significantly reduce its water footprint,” Dillinger said. “As technologies such as Evrnu evolve over time, there will be greater opportunities to accelerate the pace of change toward a closed-loop apparel industry.”

Evrnu was founded in 2014 with a mission to address “the problem of the resource-intensive, environmentally negative impact of the textile and apparel industries.” Evrnu’s recycled-cotton technology breaks down the postconsumer waste fabric to the molecular level and converts it into a high-quality textile fiber. For more information, visit

How IoT is changing the fashion retail experience

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This article was written by Cate Lawrence for readwrite

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It’s plain to see that emerging technology has changed the retail experience beyond recognition.

We can shop on the internet anywhere, and at any time, without a physical cash transaction and have it delivered to us in what can feel like the blink of an eye. In times where retail fashion can be bought in seconds and free returns mean that your apartment can be an at-home changing room, I was interested to talk last week to Healy Cypher, co-founder and CEO of Oak and creator of a hardware enabled platform that uses mirrors as a conduit to transform the retail experience.

Oak has creating the Oak Mirror, a connected device that turns the bricks-and-mortar retail experience into one that is closer in reality to what we have come accustomed to online. Cypher reminded me that while it’s easy to do your shopping online, it still only accounts for a small amount of all retail sales:

“In-store sales are still up to 95% of all retail experiences and e-commerce is less than 7% of all retail transactions. Retail is a $12 trillion industry that employs a quarter of the people in the US. and accounts for 50% of  expenditure of disposable income.”

It is an sector that Cypher is passionate about, particularly in regard to improving the customer experience. Usually trying on clothing means stumbling around a store semi-dressed to find a different size or dealing with the ministrations of an overeager sales attendant who whips back the curtain to catch you in your…unawares.

But Oak wants to make that a thing of the past.

They currently have embedded their technology in a range of Ralph Lauren stores in the US. All in-store items are connected to it with RFID chips. This means an almost self-curated shopping  experience. Any clothes you select to try on appear on a connected touch screen which is part of the dressing room mirror. Need a new size or a different color? Just tap the screen and a store assistant – each outfitted with a corresponding iPad – brings you your choice. The screen also offers you styling recommendations based on what’s available in store and you can email your selection to yourself for future consideration.

For those a little more discerning, the mirror even offered a variety of lighting experiences: Fifth Avenue Daylight, East Hampton Sunset and Evening at The Polo Bar.

It’s easy to dismiss such notions as gimmick but the reality is that Oak see the benefits of their platform far beyond novelty factors.

“The RFID gives perfect data. This means stores can always know what’s in stock at a glance, including size and colours. The average industry inventory accuracy is 55% in retail. It also enables buyers to see what other people bring into the fitting room and what items they are buying together. You learn whether certain items are always tried in one size but bought in another or tried but never purchased”.

All of which is especially important for fashion houses, especially those that stock “fast fashion,” defined as fashion cycles of six weeks or less.

Cypher admits that fashion is a traditional industry that has in some respects been slow to adopt technology. Two of the leading reasons he attributes this to are generational norms – “Younger, digital natives are more likely to adopt this technology than older store owners” – and also the difficulty in “getting retailers uses to expending capital on technology. They are more likely to see the value in expenditure on their front of house signage.”

Yet, as Cypher notes, “consumers want things fast, easy, beautiful, robust and personal.” This will be the reality of retail fashion, and Oak is keen to be part of this innovation, blurring the boundaries between the digital and physical retail experience.

Check out the The Oak Interactive Fitting Room from Oak Labs, Inc. on Vimeo.

 

US retail giants feel pain as online shopping hits

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By John Biers for AFP
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NEW YORK – Iconic American stores Macy’s and Gap are facing tough questions about their future following dreary earnings announcements last week that highlighted the growing market share taken by online retailers.
Conventional retailer profits are falling as fewer shoppers head to malls in favour of click-and-buy options offered by Amazon and a trove of emerging online fashion vendors. The trend is all the more striking because retailers see good conditions in the economy for consumers, including strong employment levels.

“We’re frankly scratching our heads,” Macy’s chief financial officer Karen Hoguet, told an analyst conference call. “We see the same economic data you all see and it would point to a customer that would be spending more.”

In the first four months of 2016, all online retail sales rose 8.1 percent over a year ago, compared with just 1.9 percent growth in clothing stores, according to the Commerce Department.

“We’re seeing a fundamental reorganization of retail from an automobile-centered model to a smartphone-centered model,” said Andy Dunn, chief executive of Bonobos, a nine-year old men’s apparel store that does most of its sales online.

“We’re seeing a tremendous shakeout as we see online grow and offline contract,” Dunn said. Still, he added, “I don’t think we’re moving to an online-only world.”

In women’s apparel, rising online players include websites like Wanelo, which “curates” products from 550,000 vendors and doubles as a social network for shoppers.

There are speciality sites for plus-sized women, such as Eloquii, and for consumers focused on sustainable manufacturing, such as Reformation.

There are also fashion websites that combine editorial and selling functions, such as WhoWhatWear, part of the Clique Media Group, which boasts 12 million unique monthly visitors.

“People are now realizing they have more options,” said Chris Morran, deputy executive editor Consumerist.com. “I don’t see any of the (newer) companies replacing Gap, but I see them all chiseling way.”

Shoppers say the online experience is greatly improved from just a few years ago, with sellers permitting returns and sometimes paying for the shipping of items that don’t fit. More online vendors lets shoppers easily compare items and prices as well.

“It’s not only that you don’t have to leave your house, it’s that you don’t have to walk around,” said one forty-something professional mother of two. “It’s very efficient.”

Men’s fashion too is experiencing seismic shifts. Gone are the days when department stores could rely on a captive audience to buy button-down shirts for the office. Boutique stores like Thomas Pink and Charles Tyrwhitt boast a multitude of fits for different body types that can be bought online once a consumer knows his size.

Bonobos, which began as an online-only men’s store in 2007, began adding small showrooms in 2011 to display product and let customers get fitted.

“The store piece of what we do is really profitable,” Dunn told AFP. “But you want the right sized store footprint and you want to be fully integrated with online.”

But online earnings remain constrained by factors that include high shipping cost and bruising competition. Profit margins in brick-and-mortar stores remain about 10 percent compared with seven percent online, said Credit Suisse.

However, as shipping costs decline and rent and other infrastructure weigh on traditional stories, “brick-and-mortar” stores will be the ones to suffer, Credit Suisse said. That means more retail stores are likely to close.

Nordstrom, which reported earnings Thursday that badly lagged analyst expectations, said it will emphasize a buyer loyalty program and exclusive merchandise. It is also beefing up e-commerce.

“We’re seeing a transformation in our business model,” said chief executive Mike Koppel. “We continue to see traffic falling off in malls, and how we think about our store base asset will probably require some level of adjustment.”

Macy’s, which announced in January plans to close 40 stores, is emphasizing store-within-store ventures intended to appeal to millennials, such as the off-price Backstage and the beauty-and-spa Blue Mercury stores.

Macy’s Hoguet said the 186-year-old retailer is “always evaluating” its fleet of 870 stores for potential closures.

Gap, which a year ago announced plans to cut 175 namesake stores in North America, pledged renewed focus to streamline its operations and whittle its presence internationally to the most promising markets.

The mother lode of young entrepreneurs

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Article written by Sungula Nkabinde for Moneyweb

shutterstock_321155882-555x370 (1)Much is said about the need to foster a culture of entrepreneurship among South Africa’s youth. But it’s already there. Just untapped.

Be Bold is a student-driven movement, with a network of over 53 000 student entrepreneurs nationwide. Through university societies and clubs Be Bold is creating a culture of entrepreneurship. According to its founder Charles Maisel, it is the only student society with a presence on every campus in the country.

“That’s where the potential lies,” says Maisel. “If you’re going to approach entrepreneurship as a means to solve the youth unemployment problem, and take it to the next level, then you have to start with the 600 000 people already at university.”

Primarily, the societies’ functions are to organise pitch events, where students come to pitch their business ideas, and members contribute by interrogating each idea and choosing the best one. Because a lot of the pitches are for products and services for students themselves, they understand their market better than anybody else.

“Plus if you have 100 people attending a pitch event, you’re going to get a lot more feedback,” says Maisel.

The top pitches from each campus go to an inter-varsity pitching competition held at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch offices in Sandton. It is the sponsor of the competition.

In Limpopo, people fight to pitch, because there can only be ten pitches per night and there are up to 50 people who want to pitch. “So the demand is massive,” says Maisel.

“There is no format. You can pitch with beer in your hand if you want to. You can use a Powerpoint presentation. There are no rules…. But we only want original ideas. You can’t go there with ideas for food trucks, hair salons or event management companies.”

The societies also have speakers that come to campuses and talk on issues surrounding entrepreneurship. To help members come up with the best ideas, they hold programmes on how to generate ideas and develop them as, according to Maisel, this is the biggest stumbling block for all entrepreneurs.

Success stories

A masters chemical engineering student from the University of the Witwatersrand saw a need in the university for sneakers to be cleaned. He developed his own range of chemicals and started to wash sneakers in his room, charging R60 a pair. Be Bold is planning to help him get a presence on every campus in the country.

A student from the University of Pretoria has designed and manufactured a paper-based brick, which costs 30 cents, compared with regular bricks, which retail for around R2 each.

There is also a group of students at Fort Hare University who have designed an Uber-type tutor-sharing platform. “So basically you can find a tutor anywhere and you pay for every ten minutes of tutoring. The university has since bought the idea from those guys,” says Maisel, adding that there are thousands of examples of other entrepreneurs.

Lack of funding

One problem that Be Bold has been able to resolve for students is in making it easier for them to own the intellectual property of their business ideas, whereas in many cases, it would have been the university that would own it.

An obstacle that remains, however, is funding. Maisel explains that, despite approaching many institutions, their efforts to fund these students’ ideas have come to naught. Invariably, funders want to see some kind of track record, which Maisel says is unreasonable because university students do not have a business with a track record, otherwise, they wouldn’t be at university.

Says Maisel: “We’ve got the brightest brains in the country and they are coming up with innovative ideas, but they can’t get any money. We’ve gone to the IDC and we’ve been to a couple of venture capital companies and the reality is that it is impossible to get funding.”

Creatives are also getting involved

Be Bold has built upon the university society framework to target other kinds of entrepreneurs. Snake Nation is a social studio and multi-platform network for creatives, which allows anyone to create a profile of themselves and share their creative works, be it music, art or literature, and get exposure in the US market.

There is also a publishing society, which despite the fact that it has only been in existence for four months, has also had two books by student writers published. Lastly, Fashion Society, aims to help fashion designers on campus create lasting brands, “because young people are coming up with new brands and T-shirts all the time. In Cape Town alone, there are eight different fashion brands started by students already,” says Maisel.shutterstock_321155882-555x370 (1)

How fashion retailers are helping the environment

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This article was written by  KARISHMA DIPA for THE STAR

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As one of the largest polluters in the world, the clothing industry has taken an initiative to minimise the hazardous effects it has on the environment.

Global fashion retailer H&M has been one of the chain stores to take up the challenge. According to H&M South Africa spokeswoman Amelia-May Woudstra, the store has a “global garment collecting initiative”.

“This initiative is in place in all of our stores, 365 days a year,” she told The Star. It involves customers bringing their old clothes into H&M stores and in return they qualify for a 15 percent discount on a future purchase at the fashion outlet.

During World Recycle Week last month, customers who brought their unwanted clothes into the store qualified for two 15 percent discounts during the seven-day period.

Although the collected items are still being tallied, Woudstra said globally about 25 000 tons of clothes had already been recorded as being donated during the week of recycling.

As part of the initiative, H&M has partnered with I:Collect (I:CO), the international organisation that buys the donated clothes from the retailer, as well as other well-known clothing brands – including Levi’s and Puma.

The solutions provider, with offices in Germany, the UK, the US and Japan, then reuses or recycles the garments.

“I:CO aims to keep consumers’ clothing and shoes in a closed-loop production cycle where the goods can be reprocessed and reused again and again through I:CO’s take-back system and global infrastructure,” the organisation said on its website.

“This protects the environment, reduces waste and preserves resources.”

As part of the process to get the donated garments to the organisation, Woudstra said the collected clothes from all the stores in South Africa are sent to Joburg.

The attire is then stored in a container and once it is full the garments are shipped off to I:Collect’s nearest split point, which is in India.

The clothing donated by H&M customers is then sold to the organisation by the kilogram, where it is sorted to either be re-used, re-worn or recycled.

The money H&M gets from the garments sold to I:Collect is then donated to the UN Children’s Emergency Fund and South Africa’s early childhood development programme.

“The rest of the money earned will then be donated to the H&M Foundation and earmarked for investments in innovation projects for closing the fashion loop on textiles,” said Woudstra.

These initiatives are seen as a step in the right direction, as the fashion industry operates under strenuous conditions of production, textile manufacturing, clothing construction, shipping, retail, use and ultimately disposal of the garment.

On its website, I:Collect said the production of a T-shirt alone consumes between 10 000 and 30 000 litres of water and emits 3.6kg of carbon dioxide.

The organisation said only five to 10 percent of these quantities are used or produced with a recycling process.