How Can Fashion Brands Enhance Value And Life Span Extension Of Products An Exploratory Study Of Circular Economy In Regard To The Economic Viability Of Product Life Span Extension

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: A, , course: Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation, language: English, abstract: Awareness of the fashion industry’s harmful impacts that significantly affect the environment and the society has increased enormously, specifically the problem of an ever-growing throwaway culture. This has led researchers and practitioners to find feasible solutions, dealing with post-consumer garment waste. In that respect, the CE has undoubtedly become the focus of current research. Substantial economic benefits are expected to accompany the transition from a linear to a circular economic model. However, there is still a lack of frameworks that explain how companies have to adapt their BMs in order to succeed in a circular environment. Furthermore, the question remains, if this could be economically feasible from a company perspective because the economic model of the fashion industry is still highly linear and its success depends on product obsolescence. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify motivations, enablers and challenges of implementing circular strategies and PLE initiatives in BMs, and explicitly exploring the economic feasibility of prolonging the lives of products. To explore these phenomena, pioneers in the field of CE and PLE were studied. The researcher employed an inductive-exploratory case study design that allowed her to investigate the practical implementations of circular approaches and contribute to existing CE and PLE theory. The findings of the cross-case analysis revealed that the transition towards a CE has been voluntary, underlying the companies’ internal motivations and sustainability agendas. External pressures do not play a role at this moment. Circular approaches support the companies’ visions to realise long-term strategies. Despite the higher costs of circular strategies and PLE initiatives, this study found that these have a positive effect on the businesses regarding enhanced customer loyalty and long-term relationships with the customer. The study is one of the first academic studies that investigates the economic feasibility of PLE initiatives from a company perspective. However, the findings of this research cannot be generalised, as the scope of the study and the sample size are constricted. Therefore, further research in this field is required.

Product lifetimes are critical for the circular economy, resource efficiency, waste reduction and low carbon strategies for sustainability, and are therefore of interest to academics from many different disciplines as well as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other stakeholders. The challenges related to product lifetimes must be tackled from multiple perspectives, making the sharing of knowledge and expertise from different disciplines particularly important. This book presents papers from the second Product Lifetime and the Environment (PLATE) conference, held in Delft, the Netherlands, in November 2017. The conference originated from the desire to bring together academic researchers working in the field of sustainability to benefit from each other’s knowledge and further advance the field. The book includes the 88 full papers delivered at the conference, grouped according to the following 7 conference themes: design for product longevity; product lifetime optimization; cultural perspectives on the throwaway society; circular economy and product lifetimes; business opportunities, economic implications and marketing strategies; consumer influences on product lifetimes; and policy, regulation and legislation. The book will be of interest to all those concerned with sustainable consumption, circular economy and resource efficiency.

Circular Economy in Textiles and Apparel: Processing, Manufacturing, and Design is the first book to provide guidance on this subject, presenting the tools for implementing this paradigm and their impact on textile production methods. Sustainable business strategies are also covered, as are new design methods that can help in the reduction of waste. Drawing on contributions from leading experts in industry and academia, this book covers every aspect of this increasingly important subject and speculates on future developments. Provides case studies on the circular economy in operation in the textiles industry Identifies challenges to implementation and areas where more research is needed Draws on both industrial innovation and academic research to explain an emerging topic with the potential to entirely change the way we make and use clothing

Natural resources, and the materials derived from them, represent the physical basis for the economic system. Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in demand for these resources, which has triggered interest from policy makers in transitioning to a more resource efficient and ...

Fashion law encompasses a wide variety of issues that concern an article of clothing or a fashion accessory, starting from the moment they are designed and following them through distribution and marketing phases, all the way until they reach the end-user. Contract law, intellectual property, company law, tax law, international trade, and customs law are of fundamental importance in defining this new field of law that is gradually taking shape. This volume focuses on the new frontiers of fashion law, taking into account the various fields that have recently emerged as being of great interest for the entire fashion world: from sustainable fashion to wearable technologies, from new remedies to cultural appropriation to the regulation of model weight, from advertising law on the digital market to the impact of new technologies on product distribution. The purpose is to stimulate discussion on contemporary problems that have the potential to define new boundaries of fashion law, such as the impact of the heightened ethical sensitivity of consumers (who increasingly require effective solutions), that a comparative law perspective renders more interesting. The volume seeks to sketch out the new legal fields in which the fashion industry is getting involved, identifying the new boundaries of fashion law that existing literature has not dealt with in a comprehensive manner.

This handbook is a compilation of comprehensive reference sources that provide state-of-the-art findings on both theoretical and applied research on sustainable fashion supply chain management. It contains three parts, organized under the headings of “Reviews and Discussions,” “Analytical Research,” and “Empirical Research,” featuring peer-reviewed papers contributed by researchers from Asia, Europe, and the US. This book is the first to focus on sustainable supply chain management in the fashion industry and is therefore a pioneering text on this topic. In the fashion industry, disposable fashion under the fast fashion concept has become a trend. In this trend, fashion supply chains must be highly responsive to market changes and able to produce fashion products in very small quantities to satisfy changing consumer needs. As a result, new styles will appear in the market within a very short time and fashion brands such as Zara can reduce the whole process cycle from conceptual design to a final ready-to-sell “well-produced and packaged” product on the retail sales floor within a few weeks. From the supply chain’s perspective, the fast fashion concept helps to match supply and demand and lowers inventory. Moreover, since many fast fashion companies, e.g., Zara, H&M, and Topshop, adopt a local sourcing approach and obtain supply from local manufacturers (to cut lead time), the corresponding carbon footprint is much reduced. Thus, this local sourcing scheme under fast fashion would enhance the level of environmental friendliness compared with the more traditional offshore sourcing. Furthermore, since the fashion supply chain is notorious for generating high volumes of pollutants, involving hazardous materials in the production processes, and producing products by companies with low social responsibility, new management principles and theories, especially those that take into account consumer behaviours and preferences, need to be developed to address many of these issues in order to achieve the goal of sustainable fashion supply chain management. The topics covered include Reverse Logistics of US Carpet Recycling; Green Brand Strategies in the Fashion Industry; Impacts of Social Media on Consumers’ Disposals of Apparel; Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Eco-labelling; Reverse Logistics as a Sustainable Supply Chain Practice for the Fashion Industry; Apparel Manufacturers’ Path to World-class Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Slow-Fashion Industry; Mass Market Second-hand Clothing Retail Operations in Hong Kong; Constraints and Drivers of Growth in the Ethical Fashion Sector: The case of France; and Effects of Used Garment Collection Programmes in Fast Fashion Brands.

This updated and revised edition outlines strategies and models for how to use technology and knowledge to improve performance, create jobs and increase income. It shows what skills will be required to produce, sell and manage performance over time, and how manual jobs can contribute to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources.