Fashion Retail: Sustainable Material Costs

What are, typically, some of the challenges you face, in getting a supplier to source those materials?

The principle challenge, I would say, is definitely, let’s call it ignorance, or not knowing how to move and where to move. It’s something that takes a little bit of time to investigate. Your supplier usually will have their own preferred fabric suppliers; often two or three. Maybe if they want sustainable fabric, they will need to go and look for another supplier. There is an element there, of having to go out of your comfort zone of your supplier and find a new source for fabrics or accessories. That’s one issue.

The other issue is that we are still seeing that there is a difference in price, in costs, between a sustainable fabric and an equivalent fabric that is not sustainable. This is something that is reducing, very fast and everybody is predicting that, within the next 12 to 18 months, the cost differential will be zero. But it is the case that, at the moment, there is still some cost difference there.

So the landed intake margin will be much lower for the sustainable products?

Yes. The difference is not huge; we’re not talking a big difference. There is a difference in fabric, which is maybe 20 cents per metre, just to talk about numbers. When you translate that to the finished garment, the difference is, actually, not that great. But if you are a Mango or a Zara and you are buying big batches of items, a few cents multiply and the final difference can be, not necessarily huge, but still important.