This weekend reading an article on climate change, I read about slowfashion, a super important and relevant topic in the fashion industry and for us marketers.
What is slowfashion? Why does it arise? What is the consumer asking us?
Slow fashion is not simply fashion, nor is a trend a way of thinking, feeling and acting of consumers.
The textile and clothing industry market in Mexico contributed 3.2% of the GDP of manufacturing industries and ranked tenth among the most important manufacturing economic activities in 2019. Source: INEGI.
However, the pandemic sank the textile industry according to the consulting firm McKinsey in Feb 2021 “Companies in the sector have between 140,000 and 160,000 million in unsold clothing and their profits are sinking.”
In addition to this, consumers are also aware of the garbage that this industry generates. According to information from Greenpeace “the pollution generated by the production of clothing is approximately 500 thousand tons of microplastics a year that reach the oceans.”
All these factors that I mention have promoted the emergence of this new way of thinking and living “slowfashion”. Slow fashion proposes a slowdown, a respite from excessive production and excessive consumption. So, what to do as marketers in this situation?
Brands must already have a strategy in this situation, (I hope so) it is not something new, that is why the rise of used clothing apps is being so successful…
So it is that the marketers who are in this industry have a very strong challenge, on the one hand, to see how they are integrated into this new way of thinking and living of consumers; As well as the production teams, the textile industry adding innovation issues should be thinking about how to produce less clothing, less waste, more value for consumers to be able to live on a cleaner planet and at the same time be a profitable brand.
Big challenge, don’t you think?