Traditionally, fashion brands used to present two collections per year: Fall-Winter and Spring- Summer.
With the introduction of Prêt-à-Porter and the following rise of Fast Fashion, luxury brands started to increase the number of collections and pre-collections, offering five or more collections per year. Fashion giant H&M even releases 12-16 collections, and Zara also launches a new collection approximately every two weeks.
Limited resources
We have by far exceeded the limits in terms of intensive land use, waste, water consumption, CO2 emissions, biodiversity and more. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2018 that we have only ten years to try and avoid a catastrophe, and this has a lot to do with the vast amount of garments that are produced.
The fashion industry knows all too well that sustainability, health and environmental consciousness are growing interests in our present society. This has been further encouraged by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has increased the consumers concern about sustainability and social commitment.
Fast fashion: the constantly new
Several studies show that changing fashion collections every few days or weeks increases the urge to buy new clothes, since it contributes to the feeling of opportunity, or FOMO (fear of missing out). In The Secret of Zara’s Success, a chapter in the book Fast Fashion: Business Model Overview and Research Opportunities (Ed. Springer, 2015), the authors explain that dynamic assortment has been most fundamental. Inditex, for instance, went from selling 697 millions of garments in 2008 to more than 1,597 in 2018, increasing their income a 129%. So, in a nutshell, overproduction is profitable.
Every year, 100,000 millions of garments and some 23,500 millions of shoes (according to Fast Feed Grinded) are produced worldwide. The Ellen McArthur Foundation affirms that if the fashion industry remains on this course, it will be responsible for a quarter of all human CO2 emissions by 2050. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) estimates that 40% of the world’s yearly production never gets to their first use.
The stock is the key
We need to accept that overproduction is strongly affecting the environment. This is particularly important in terms of disposals and pollution in emerging countries, where unsold products and clothes end up in landfills.
Tekstila buys huge amounts of new garments directly from fashion companies and sells them to predetermined international distributors. We protect the brand and comply with the sales stipulations agreed with the firms (geographic, sales channels, distributor profiles, etc.)
Our primary aim is giving millions of new clothes a first use, thus honouring and respecting the natural resources used in their production. And we do so through a model of business which is both circular and profitable for everybody: fast fashion labels, international distributors and consumers. We make sure that nature does not go to waste.