The world of fashion has always fascinated me. It is a world of beauty, craftsmanship, art, show so remote from the world of finance and international development where I’ve spent over a decade. And yet, I have recently discovered an area where these two worlds intersect in a surprising, but also shocking way – fast fashion.
The story of this discovery goes a few years back when I felt yet again the entrepreneurial calling to try something completely new, to build something, to pivot. There was an idea I had been contemplating for some time and I felt the time was ripe for testing it out. While simple, the idea proved to be complex and beyond my remit – building an app that would help people dress better. The rationale behind the idea is a bit more complex, but in summary my intention was to provide a sophisticated yet effortless stylist service through an app that would build on the most cutting-edge technologies available, including artificial intelligence.
As I do in my day job, I started with desk research and interviews. First, trying to understand why such a solution did not exist and why the solutions that did exist were less sophisticated and did not achieve a significant scale. As I was learning answers to my questions, the product development roadmap on my chalkboard was getting more and more complex. Before long I understood that while the problem I was trying to solve was relevant, there was a much, much bigger issue worth tackling – returns.
Now, depending on where you live, you may have a decent intuition that returns from online purchases are an issue. And that this issue is particularly significant in fashion. Let me put some numbers on that intuition borrowing from great research by Earth.org: “2.6 million tons of returned clothes ended up in landfills in 2020 in the US alone.” (See “10 Concerning Fast Fashion Waste Statistics,“ by Martina Igini and Chloe Lam at https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/).
- “1.92 million tons of textile waste are produced every year.
- The average US consumer throws away 81.5lbs of clothes every year.
- The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water.
You may think that this is primarily a problem for the garment industry that bears the cost of returns. The truth is, however, that we all do. Shockingly, most of the returned garments get destroyed, translating into millions of tons of waste. While a big problem on its own, consider that the fashion industry is one of the most significant polluters due to unecological production. It also consumes precious resources such as water (the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of the global wastewater – see Earth.org).
Not only this is a big problem, but it’s not going anywhere. To the contrary, with the emergence and success of fast fashion players fueled by social media influencers and further pressure on value chains, the problem is accelerating with customers from all different segments being complicit.
I parked the AI-based fashion stylist idea and started looking into the returns problem. Fairly quickly one issue stood up and it was one that had been on my product development roadmap for some time already – sizing. Most returns (40-50%) are driven by mismatch in size (followed by mismatch in fit and quality – both also on the roadmap). For specific numbers you can see, for instance, Coresight Research Analysis (https://coresight.com/research/the-true-cost-of-apparel-returns-alarming-return-rates-require-loss-minimization-solutions/). From here on, it was a slippery slope to the realm of a century-long problem of garment standardization.
You might have heard that the garment sizing system as we know it today has roots in the 19th century and more or less matured during the First World War when the need for mass-production of military uniforms necessitated a different approach from small-shop tailors. What you may not know is that there have been several attempts since to improve the system and make it more accurate…and they all failed. As a result, today we use the system that works reasonably well for uniforms and for in-store shopping but is almost useless in online shopping despite continuous growth of the segment.
Why don’t we come up with a better system you ask? First, because it is not easy. Second, because there are not enough incentives to do so. It is not easy, because human body is more complex than S, M, L and changes more rapidly than you may think presenting a real challenge for standardization. The human body sizes and proportions also vary across places, posing a challenge for international harmonization. And there are other issues such as size variability due to design, textiles used, and margin errors in production. These are all interesting problems to solve, but what captured my attention most is the lack of incentives for the industry to seriously reduce returns through sizing standardization. I don’t know it for fact but returns seem to scare the manufacturers and retailers less than the idea of harmonized sizing charts, transparency of value chains and full disclosure of materials used in garments.
Coming from the financial industry shaken (in a good way) by the recent wave of open banking and open finance initiatives that forced large incumbents to share data for the benefit of customers, I have been wondering how much could be done if a little more regulation was imposed on the fashion industry. For instance, by requiring better quality controls through the production chain. By insisting on accurate disclosure of the textile composition. By ensuring that sizing is used to guide customer’s choice rather than please (apparently, customers prefer brands whose sizing flatters them most).
There is a chance that regular, accurate disclosures of returns and the means of their disposal could change customer’s behavior over time. Once upon a time, cigarette advertisements were everywhere. They no longer exist, and, in many markets, every packet has a truly unsettling picture showing consequences of the habit. What if every pants you buy had reliable, easy-to-understand measures and on the delivery box a picture of the burning clothes on a waste dump? To make this reality, we need a system of international standards and standard setting bodies with enough powers and credibility to make necessary changes.