FASHION MADE: The Need for Bespoke Sustainability with Tabea Soriano of FUTUREMADE

I'm sitting here with Tabea Soriano, and today's chat is going to be around sustainability. Tabea, welcome to Future Made.

Thank you. Hi guys.

Let's dive straight in. What does it mean for a company to be sustainable?

I think the important thing to note is that sustainability is a is not just something that you, you know, you do once. It's kind of the way that you engage with your entire business operations.

So, does it encompass culture change as much as anything else?

Yeah, I think so. Culture change both internally, which is a little bit more vague, but B Corp actually handles a lot of that employee engagement and kind of workforce engagement, but then also the cultural change of looking at how you make things and like the processes and, as we said, the business operations, looking all the way down your supply chain, basically. Yeah, it's definitely a culture change.

When we spoke on the phone, you said something to me which I want to pull you up on now, and you said there's a lot of noise in sustainability, but not a lot happens. How can we fix that?

That's a good one too.

3 good ones in a row.

Yeah, I know, 3 good ones in a row. So I think, you know, and this is something that we do at FutureMate, I think a big part of it is being strategic about what sustainability means to your company. And so that would involve kind of having a plan across different verticals within your company, you know, with different milestones and goals. So that you can work towards this thing that we're calling sustainability. I think there's a lot of, you know, when I said that there's a lot of noise, I think we actually have this on one of our decks. We didn't coin this, it's from some news article, but random acts of greenness that companies or brands kind of engage in. And really that can be noisy because you're not really able to communicate necessarily to your customers what's going on and/or you're not really able to rally your internal stakeholders behind a cause because you're kind of just doing a bunch of random things. So yeah, I would say becoming strategic about it and setting goals for the business would be a good way to start moving towards the same goal of sustainability, quote unquote.

It seems to be a word that's said so much, something gets lost in there sometimes about what it really means.

Yeah, and actually people have, you know, especially in terms of marketing, people have been shying away from that word, which makes sense. It's kind of been overused. But that being said, I think the new buzzword right now is transparency, which doesn't necessarily mean sustainability. Okay. Other words are ethical, responsible. But yeah, as we said that at the top of our conversation, that can mean different things. All of those words can mean different things for different companies and can mean different things in terms of how companies approach certain parts of their business. So really, it's about getting into the details on all of this.

I mean, if you truly wanted to be sustainable, you know, you're probably going to impact on your profit.

That's— Yeah, that's definitely true. You know, I think we say if you want to be sustainable, you have to be— you have to have a sustainable business first. Like you have to be profitable or at least on the road have a good, you know, P&L and financial model, because otherwise you won't have an— if you don't have a business that's working, you won't have an impact on the other things that are important in terms of sustainability as we said being social or environmental. So, Yeah, it's a balance for sure. There are ways to implement sustainability strategies that might have an impact on the bottom line favorably, but there are just as many that have negative impact, at least in the short term, on the financials. And that is— that's true, and that's something that, you know, business leaders weigh on daily and have, and have to decide for their own company, you know, where they're going to put efforts and where they're going to put resources.

I guess companies have to figure out if they want to make some big marketing story that they're sustainable on this one occasion, or if they want to implement maybe a sustainability, or a sustainable strategy, shall I say, in their company for years to come.

Yep.

And permanently. So being sustainable permanently is, I mean, I guess that's the true meaning of sustainability, right?

That is the true meaning.

Yeah.

And it's funny that you say that about marketing, you know, the marketing aspect, because we have been getting a lot of inquiries from the CMOs of companies or from the marketing leads of companies. And, you know, a lot of times kind of the first question is, well, what story can we tell? And then our answer back to that is another question of, well, what are you doing? You know? So yeah, consumers are getting more savvy and I don't think having just a one-off sustainability story is going to cut it anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I do think that the implementation of strategies or a strategy that is Honestly, coupled with business strategy, it has to be. It can't just live in a silo. Sustainability strategy can't live in a silo over in the back corner office. Yeah, I think that long-term vision is important.

Yeah. So, it's not a department in a company. It's an ethos. It's a philosophy and it has to run through every single department.

Yes. That's definitely how we see it. We call it integrated sustainability, where, you know, you have cross-functional teams or cross-functional, um, conversations even, uh, around sustainability, and you're needing to kind of bring in all verticals, you know, along the product life cycle and supply chain to implement changes. Yeah, definitely.

So why is sustainability more important for the apparel industry? Especially now in the 21st century?

Well, I think it's become important. You know, what started with kind of social compliance in the early '90s has, you know, that has— we have elevated from no child labor to actual better working conditions. You know, just as we have become more interconnected as a global economy and an outgrowth of that then became the environment and kind of environmental impacts. And I think that just has to do with, you know, the interconnectedness of things and information flow and kind of consumers and just people in general asking where their clothes and all of their products basically are made. And secondly, it has to do with kind of this rise in apparel consumption. I don't— I'm not very good with stats off the top of my head, but, you know, I think we've doubled our clothing purchases over the past decade or two decades. So just having a global economy that can maintain that in some kind of fair you know, quote-unquote fair way. I think that is what's making this more important. Everything's just moving faster, and there are people there still making these clothes. I think that's the third aspect. It's still a very human input, labor-intensive industry.

Yeah. I mean, can fast fashion be sustainable? Is that a misnomer or a contradiction?

Yeah, it's kind of a contradiction because if you're, you know, sustainability inherently would mean kind of buying something that is beyond trends so that that doesn't just become obsolete. That planned obsolescence is kind of the antithesis to sustainability. So yeah, I'm not entirely sure that a trendy clothing item can be sustainable, you know, by definition. Now if you as a consumer continue to wear it and you're kind of uncoupling yourself from from the trend and only wearing the thing when it is trendy, then yeah, that perhaps it could be sustainable in, you know, looking at it from like a, I don't know, like an ethical or philosophical way. And then that's, you know, not even getting into the conversation of how perhaps that fast fashion garment was made, which is a different conversation entirely.

[Speaker:BEN] Yeah, this is so hard because every step along the way from its ideation to it being thrown in the bin bag of charity clothes a couple of years later on, or 10 years later on, there's so many different people and groups responsible for, let's say, the ethical sustainability of that particular item. And as a consumer, I guess we're equally as responsible as, let's say, the fast fashion companies that are producing them. You know?

Yeah, that's an interesting conversation that I have quite a bit. It's like, is it on the companies or is it on the consumer? And I don't think it's as easy as saying one or the other. Yeah, because, you know, companies are putting out what consumers are buying and vice versa. So yeah, we as consumers definitely have a role to play, you know, a lot. The energy use post-purchase tends to be the highest, you know, after a garment is sold in terms of the washing and drying and dry cleaning. That's kind of where all the energy usage goes. So that just as a little tidbit is definitely one way in which we as consumers have our role to play. And then, you know, if we are discarding clothing after 6 months, 6 months to a year, which is I think also the newest stat that I've read or we've read, that goes into the landfill mostly. Charities only have so much bandwidth and quite honestly a lot of people don't— just don't even bring it to charities.

No.

So, yeah.

No, I mean, mine stay in my cupboard. I've got my clothes since I was 16 years old.

Do you still wear them?

No, they're just at my— they're at my folks' home.

Yeah.

Back in the countryside, just in a cupboard somewhere.

Oh, my parents—

Is that sustainable?

I don't— maybe? I don't know. Maybe if they— I guess that landfill diversion is always favorable in some way.

Yeah.

But—

Well, maybe my kids will wear them one day.

Yeah, exactly. Probably. It'll probably be in fashion by the time They're that age and size.

So I guess for them, from the consumer, be more of a hoarder is a good way to be sustainable, right?

Well, buy quality and make it last, I think, is the better way. I think psychologically not being a hoarder would be preferable.

If you could make it in the consumer's interest to donate their clothes, whether that's a financial interest or an ecological interest, that's a route for the consumer to be more sustainable.

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of— well, not a lot of, but The RealReal, for example, the kind of luxury secondhand clothing store, online clothing swap situation, that is sustainable because you're giving an item of clothing or, you know, a handbag or sunglasses kind of a second life. And that's a whole new economy that's opening up. That's not even donating, you know, you're kind of reselling. Donations are hard because it kind of impacts the economies in which the donations are being made, especially if we're talking at this scale where we're, you know, we're just purchasing hundreds of items of clothing over the course of our lifetimes. You know, where does that go? But back to kind of the RealReal example, Again, what's important there as a consumer is to take care of that clothing that you had originally bought, because you can't repurpose or reuse it in, you know, without downcycling or recycling. Like, let's say you would want another person to wear the item of clothing, that would necessitate that it's taken care of. And these are like little tiny levers that we can pull. And yeah, it's going to take kind of a retraining, I think, in terms of our consumption habits. I think there was a little bit of a dip in kind of like this throwaway culture over the past 2 to 3 decades. But yeah, there is definitely— I think we're coming around again, or hopefully maybe that's the bubble that I'm sitting in, is taking care of our things more.

Is there anything that we can influence companies? Can we make companies do more towards sustainability as consumers, or is it just purely on them?

Yeah, no, you know, Fashion Revolution Week was a couple of weeks ago, and there is activism in that way going on. It's just asking and digging deeper as consumers, especially with inquiries customer service inquiries, those questions start to stack up on the brand side. And if you have however many consumers asking, "Who made my clothes?" which is the Fashion Revolution tagline, and/or wanting to know more about the fabric and the fibers and where raw materials came from, I think there is change that can happen there. It might be slow, but definitely it's up to the consumer to also ask questions.

Can companies use technology at all to help them?

Yeah, there's, I mean, that's a whole nother, I think that's another podcast conversation. Yeah, there are a bunch of things. I mean, not only in terms of, you know, technologies are out there for kind of blockchain and you know, along the supply chain and kind of lifecycle of a garment. They're not completely implemented yet, but that technology is there. On the one hand, just in terms of traceability and transparency, you know, moving back a few steps up the lifecycle, you could use 3D design for the iterative process. So you do everything, you know, on your screen first, and that technology is pretty advanced at this point where you can mimic kind of the drape of fabrics.

Um, we do a lot of super cool work around that.

Yeah.

You know, our events have gone from focusing on data management to really looking at 3D.

Yeah.

It's amazing how fast people have picked that up.

Definitely.

Because it's saved so much money as well. And if a company can be sustainable and save money at the same time, exactly. Oh my God.

Yeah. It's saving all these, you know, samples flying back and forth via DHL or FedEx from typically Asia.

It's huge.

It's huge. And you're getting to kind of that perfect fit faster. There is also, I was just thinking, oh yeah, you were saying data. I think, using technology just in terms of data management, having, you know, having data inputs for your merchandising and product assortment. I mean, that's new. That's a newish thing, having kind of the inputs to make smarter decisions. Yeah, so technology is huge in this space. I mean, technology is huge in all spaces, obviously, but here specifically, yeah. And then of course the integration between kind of design and pattern making with with manufacturers and being able to basically get rid of a lot of the miscommunication that happens along the development cycle and along the production cycle, actually. So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there. Mobile technology for bigger transparency, instead of sending Excel spreadsheets and kind of PDFs back and forth between the tech team and the manufacturing house, just having it all kind of in a PLM or, um, system. Yeah, there's, there's a bunch. I think, as I said, I think that's a, that's going to be a separate conversation.

So you've just started a company called Future Made. Is that right?

Yeah, we've been around for a couple of years now.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, it's a sustainability consultancy.

Um, is it just you?

No, I have two business partners. We all work remotely. So I'm, you know, I'm obviously here in New York and my business partner Jeff is in Park City and James is in San Francisco. And the three of us come together on projects, you know, and most of our clients are in New York. So being here is beneficial to kind of get those conversations going and as needed we kind of combine forces on, on projects as we need to.

Do you all take different elements of sustainability?

Actually, yeah, we do. So Jeff was head of the sustainability working group at the OIA, the Outdoor Industry Association, for many years and was materials engineer at The North Face. So he's very vertical on the environmental side of things. And James is deep on the social compliance part. So he is still part owner of a social auditing company, no longer active there on the day-to-day operations, but he knows social compliance. So we have social environmental with them, and then for me, I kind of do the liaison for the projects build out kind of the scope of work and lead the projects client-facing. You know, my background is and was on the product development and production and design management side of the apparel industry, working for a few brands over the past decade plus some change. So yeah, we, you know, and Jeff having been kind of, you know, also on the product development and materials side of things at North Face, we together cover the environmental aspects and, as I said, have James pop in on social as needed.

Yeah. Does it work well as a trio?

Yeah, it's actually really good. You know, different— what's interesting and kind of, you know, As we've been talking and has maybe become clear already is that sustainability is no one thing. And, you know, it's not easily replicable across companies and brands. And then for us, what that means is that kind of every project is a little bit different. What we focus on for each client is a little bit different depending on what the client wants and you know, what their goals are, what they're aligning themselves with and what their business strategy is. But, you know, the baseline for almost all of our clients so far is and has been doing the strategy work and setting the goals. So that kind of is similar across the board. But yeah, depending on, you know, what we need to go deep on for a client, it makes a lot of sense that there's 3 of us with our skill sets.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, God, you can be responsible, you can be transparent, you can be ethical.

Exactly.

You can build sustainable products, right? No, longevity, all of these things. So I guess having that three-pronged approach can really help people.

Exactly. No, it's real. It's been, it's been great. Um, and I've, you know, I think we've all also, because we're together, um, learned a lot from one another, which has been super cool. Um, And that just makes the conversations that much more interesting, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. I want to know who you're working with and what kind of work you're doing, but maybe have there been any projects that you've worked on that you're particularly proud of, or?

Yeah, so we have a lot of NDAs, so I couldn't even tell you the brands.

I'm sure, I'm absolutely positive.

Two examples, I think, from last year that are completely different, but both equally fun. One, you know, one was a big strategy session and strategy project that we did for a very large brand that we all know in the United States, at least. Yeah. Doing the strategy work around, you know, what exactly what we've been talking about, like what does sustainability mean? What does it mean for us? Like, you know, where do we put our resources? That was great because we use different assessments and benchmarking exercises to kind of set the path with leadership and internal stakeholders to define what that meant. So that, that was fun because it is very inspiring. And I would say that that going forward is going to be the bulk of what we do. I think the over the past 2 years we've kind of honed in on what that is exactly, you know, what that thing is that we do and I would say it is strategy. But at the beginning of last year we also did for another client, also someone that you would know, at least in the US, they needed a supplier— a supplier risk tool. It was basically calculating and quantifying not just zero tolerance issues, you know, zero tolerance would be like no child labor, no forced labor, you know, that kind of thing that you'd find on a code of conduct, but also quantifying the very many other stipulations that manufacturing companies have, you know, around worker health and safety, you know, right to freedom to associate, all these other provisions that would be in a code of conduct to include company risk. I guess what I'm getting at is we built a very elaborate Excel spreadsheet with lots of formulas, and it was really fun. Maybe that says something about me more than it does about the project, but I like that one too because it was kind of like really figuring out how some— you could take all these different inputs and make it a user-friendly and a little bit more, you know, nuanced data than just a 0 or 1, you know, like a zero tolerance or a not zero tolerance.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you get your kicks on Excel spreadsheets. Exactly.

Yeah. Cool.

Hey, everyone has their thing, you know.

I know.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's true. That's fun. Look, I want to finish up today talking a little bit more about Future Made because I'm quite interested in the work that you've been doing. And I know we touched on the cultural shifts, but it seems to me that changing culture, i.e., changing the mindsets of people, is perhaps the best route to becoming more responsible, more sustainable. You can use technology, you can use all of these different things, but if people still think the same way about things, then how much can you truly change?

Definitely.

What can Futuremade do to help change the hearts and minds of people?

Oh man. Well, you know, we kind of work in the background. We're supply chain people. So I think if anything, what we as Futuremade can do is help companies define their sustainability sustainability strategies and implement their sustainability efforts so that then their marketing teams have a basis to market and tell stories that around their sustainability efforts that are true. I think that's our piece in this big puzzle. You know, as we said kind of at the beginning, Consumers are becoming more savvy. And, um, I think for companies to, to, for companies to inspire change and for, you know, having this symbiotic relationship between companies and customers, just having the right tools and kind of mechanisms and levers to do better business. Or to do business better, that's kind of where we come in, I would say.

Nice.

Yeah.

Well, Tavia, thank you very much.

Thank you.

It's been a great chat and I look forward to hearing your presentation at BioPower in a few weeks' time.

Can't wait for that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got it all worked out?

100%.