As the source of 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it must be asked: how can the fashion industry be more sustainable?
This is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined (Europarl). Retailers must urgently work to reduce this staggering figure. They need to create a drive for fundamental change in one of the least sustainable industries in the world.
Many fashion retailers have started to address the huge impact they have on the planet through various supply chain initiatives. Simultaneously, customers are changing their behavior with preferences for sustainably produced or second-hand garments.
However, change is not happening fast enough. The future depends on retailers changing the entire way we consume fashion, by both buying and selling better. This can happen by driving both back-end efficiencies, and front-end experiences.
At Dressipi, we are at the forefront of sustainable fashion innovation. This is because we know how AI can enable a sustainable future for fashion retailers - through unique fashion data and prediction models.
Reduce Waste with AI-Driven Product Forecasting
According to Forbes, overproduction in the US fashion industry runs at an incredible 30 – 40% each season. Solving this problem is fundamental to sustainability in the fashion industry.
Dressipi helps retailers optimize product assortments & size ratios on a garment specific level - with a 90% lower error margin. This facilitates a shift to a more demand-led (and hugely less wasteful!) business model.
When considering how much of each size to stock, retailers consider style and length. However, when analyzing a deeper, better set of data retailers would see that neckline, embellishment and even color play a major part. This cream pair of leather trousers had 8% more sales in sizes 6 & 8 than the equivalent pair in black.
Good attribution is the key to this. By having detailed data on products, retailers can start to see significant performance benefits in this area.
The use of data-driven retailing models highlights when retailers are buying markdowns from the outset. These can be easily eliminated with the added benefit of improving the sustainability of the retailer and reducing waste. Another genuine ESG benefit for everyone.
It is an impossible scenario to have zero waste: but with Dressipi, retailers can make a significant change.
Fashion Sustainability Embedded Into APIs with Return Propensities
In our most recent returns analysis, we discovered there will be an additional 121m returns in 2022 compared to 2019. According to Optoro, these returns will be responsible for an extra 400k metric tons of CO2 (equal to 1.6m hours worth of flight emissions!) as well as waste in landfill for those products that cannot be sold.
Dressipi’s core focuses on helping fashion retailers increase their revenue and reduce their return rates. Returns are one of the key inputs into our algorithms and we have spent time understanding what is driving return rates for retailers.
By building the return rate propensities into our algorithms we have been able to reduce the return rates for our partners by 10-15%. We are the only recommendation provider that does this (for every customer, every garment and every feature).
This minimizes the reverse logistics hassle and has a genuine ESG benefit due to fewer emissions and less waste.
Final Thoughts
To genuinely affect real change for fashion retail sustainability, you cannot only impact front or back-end operations. Sustainable fashion ecommerce requires a symbiotic approach, improving both back end efficiencies and front-end experiences.
Working with Dressipi, fashion retailers have a real potential to propel lasting change. We transform how retailers engage their customers through recommendations and personalized outfits. Data collected through these algorithms allows Dressipi to create more efficient supply chains.
Get in touch if you’d like to get started in achieving your sustainability goals.
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