Taking Smart Steps Towards Sustainability

It’s December. The time of year where we begin to wind down and draft up new goals for 2020. As you may be aware, it’s important your goals are measurable so you can take action and track your progress. However, what do you do when everyone is talking about making a change, but there is no standard for measuring success? You may have already caught on by the subject of this blog post, but we are referring to the goal of sustainability. 

We get that the topic opens many doors for discussion and one of the largest conversation starters is how do we measure our impact? While there is no current standard for defining sustainability, we know we need to start somewhere and take initial steps that can measure your brand’s progress to be green.

In regards to the fashion industry, if there is one factor that causes the most pollution in our environment, it’s the overabundance of unpurchased manufactured goods which are dumped into landfills and eventually will make its way into our beautiful ocean waters. In a recent study by Business Insider, 85% of textiles go to the dump every year and a large chunk of the material is what ends up in our oceans. While this number is daunting, we can take steps to start retracting the number of goods produced, increase our sell-thru and head into a greener direction this next season. 

Let’s start cleaning up our mess with the goal of better Forecasting insights into what your buyers will plan to buy. We know you work hard to predict quantities and we want to propose a more efficient solution. Instead of just looking at past season bookings and reports, incorporate another step of sending out a Preseason Digital Catalog. With this catalog, your retailer’s can go ahead and Favorite their predicted best sellers so you can forecast the right quantities of goods that will be booked vs. the ones that may end up sitting in the warehouse. 

With this goal of creating smarter buys, thanks to the insight of Digital Catalog interaction, you can measure sustainable goals by tracking the:

• Amount of paper, waste, and energy saved by using a Digital Catalog instead of print. To help more about how you can calculate savings, check out this recent blog post.
• Difference in forecasted quantities year over year.
• Difference in manufactured inventory and sell-thru year over year to measure not only the number of garments consumed but also the amount of money saved.

As you plan your goals for 2020, think of the measurable actions you can take to reduce your brand’s footprint on the earth. Not only is this necessary to steward our planet, but it will also serve your customer’s demands and can help increase the amount of green in your company’s bank account. In ultimately will help your brand go green on all levels. 

If you want to learn more about how RepSpark’s tools can help your brand take smart measurable steps towards sustainability, then Schedule a Demo today!