CIRCULARITY
VISION
5% of revenue coming from circular business models by 2025
*from a 2021 baseline
20% of styles designed for circularity by 2025
100% of excess GANNI materials are reused, upcycled or recycled
Our work on circularity is split into three sections. In the Designed for Circularity section we think about the product in its design phase and how we can design our clothes to be durable, repairable and recyclable within the current recycling infrastructure. In the Recycling section, we look at how we’re creating local partnerships with collectors and sorters to ensure that fibre-to-fibre recycling technologies are able to recycle GANNI clothing, and how we can reuse and upcycle excess materials in our own supply chain. With Circular Business Models we look at new business models that have the potential to reimagine the fashion industry as we know it. Our resale and rental platforms play a key role in this.
DESIGNED FOR CIRCULARITY
GOAL 19
20% styles designed for circularity by 2025
While we work hard to implement principles of circular design throughout our design process, we also decided to target specific product categories one by one, to be able to concretely measure the impact of designing for circularity.
In 2023, 16% of our total production volume was organic cotton t-shirts, meaning that this was a large category for us to tackle. The technology for cotton-based products to be recycled into new cotton-like fibres is the most advanced, so this made sense to us.
While this might seem like an easy task, it comes with its own unique challenges. In 2023, we tested the recyclability of our cotton t-shirts with a screen print (example below), with one of our manufacturing partners in Portugal. To enable recyclability, we had to switch to 100% water-based dyestuff and conduct tests to ensure that the printed area could be recycled fully, making sure that the print wouldn't ruin the t-shirt's chances of being recycled into new cotton fibres. It is our priority to ensure that GANNI clothes are in circulation for as long as possible, but it is also our responsibility that when the t-shirt has been loved to death, we know it can be made into a new t-shirt again.
Unfortunately, our work on designing for circularity is increasingly becoming harder to push, as we are essentially designing for systems that do not exist yet, and designing without the assurance that the clothes designed for circularity will, in fact, end up in a closed-loop system. This major blocker, alongside being a design-driven brand that is well-known for its distinct use of print, colour and trims makes it a hard battle to face.
If we are able to ensure that 100% of our t-shirts are designed for circularity and, as often as possible, enter a closed-loop system, that would be a massive win for us in showing what is possible to scale at a systemic level. However, the challenge does feel quite great.
We look forward to updating you on our progress in next year's Responsibility Report.
See our Circularity guidelines here.
recycling
With our 2025 vision – the Gameplan 2.0 – we wanted to make a bold commitment to 100% of our excess material being either reused, upcycled or recycled. This unfolds into several streams of work, which we have broken down into achievable goals. In 2023, we onboarded the help of several partners to help us achieve this goal. It’s important to note that in order for GANNI to achieve its Gameplan 2.0 strategy, we are heavily reliant on innovation and external partnerships to help us succeed.
GOAL 20
Develop and roll-out localised sorting & recycling partnerships in EU & US by 2023 and China by 2024
GOAL 21
Launch in-house sorting at warehouse to enable fibre-to-fibre recycling in 2024 and a closed loop recycling programme by 2025
In last year's report we wrote that Europe was our priority for sorting and recycling partnerships. Our partnerships in Europe include:
SOEX
We have been working with German-based SOEX since 2019 to downcycle unsold inventory in Europe that cannot be resold, fibre-to-fibre recycled or repaired; it is our priority to send as little to SOEX as possible.
FAST FEET GRINDED
In 2023, we piloted a shoe recycling facility in the Netherlands called FastFeetGrinded to handle any unsold, claimed or sample footwear GANNI produces. FastFeetGrinded has developed a unique shoe recycling installation that pulverises and separates all types of footwear. They treat 3 main sources: old shoes that can no longer be worn, unused materials or residues during the production process and sample shoes that have never been worn but are not for sale purposes. With the proven technology, they can recycle all footwear and deliver the resources, such as rubber, foam, fluff, textile and leather, back to the market. From our pilot project, 60 kg of material was recovered and downcycled into other products, such as soles, laces or sports flooring. In 2024, we will focus on embedding footwear recycling into our operations and looping some of the recovered material back into our production.
BLECKMANN / THE RENEWAL WORKSHOP
Towards the end of 2023, we started a pilot project with our warehouse partner in the Netherlands, Bleckmann, to extend the life of returned items. Leveraging Bleckmann's circular solution, The Renewable Workshop, we are incorporating an additional secondary check into the return process. This enables us to identify brand-new pieces requiring minimal adjustments, such as reattaching a loose button, removing lint, or garment steaming. Instead of being sent to storage, these items will receive meticulous care and be reintegrated into our inventory. The pieces will be shipped out again to customers, effectively reducing the volume of garments in perfect condition that would otherwise contribute to unnecessary waste. The pilot project will run throughout 2024, while we explore other services with The Renewal Workshop, such as repairing returns for resale channels. Before the pilot, our return process involved only one garment check, where only brand-new pieces with no need for adjustments were identified and returned back to stock.
Moving over to the US, in 2023 we worked with several partners for recycling:
SUPERCIRCLE
In 2023, we trialled working with SuperCircle, and explored the sorting and fibre-to-fibre recycling options for our nylon rain jackets. In this pilot project, the garments unfortunately couldn't undergo fibre-to-fibre recycling due to their waterproof coating. Instead, they were routed to open-loop recycling, where the process transforms the product into something else of lesser value. In our case, the processed jackets were de-trimmed, shredded and turned into a shoddy, a type of felt made from recycled textiles often used for padding or insulation. Even though this pilot didn’t lead to our preferred outcome of having the garments fibre-to-fibre recycled, it served as a stark reminder of the importance of how we design our products at the beginning of their life to ensure we’re giving them the best opportunity to be responsibly handled at the end of their life. Of course, there are systemic challenges at play.
AMBERCYCLE
In 2023, we launched a jersey shirt with Ambercycle made from 25% post-consumer recycled polyester, known as Cycora®. Established in 2015, Cycora® textile-to-textile polyester is the company’s first premium material solution made from end-of-life textiles. The partnership enables GANNI to engage in textile-to-textile recycling for synthetic fibres and post-consumer waste.
This innovative breakthrough is important for GANNI, as recycled polyester remains our 2nd most-used material in our overall material mix, and was the 3rd highest emission emitting material in both 2022 and 2023 considering its total volume in our collections.
REFIBERD
In late 2023, we explored a pilot with a US-based company Refiberd, which utilises a hyperspectral camera and AI-enabled technology to sort the clothes, allowing for quick identification of a wide range of fibres within garments, including tricky trace amounts of spandex, nylon or acrylic. We kicked off the pilot in March 2024 and expect to assess its findings in Q2 2024.
circular business models
GOAL 22
5% of revenue to come from circular business models
*from a 2021 revenue baseline
RESALE
In last year’s report we spoke about our partnership with Reflaunt, a resale platform. Unfortunately throughout 2023, we had to end the partnership with Reflaunt after an unsuccessful pilot. The core reason for the unsuccessful pilot was a lack of traction, as we had to host the resale site on a separate URL to GANNI.com, which for the customer, made it pretty difficult to find the service without a lot of marketing spend behind it. The separate sites did not feel like a seamless experience with the GANNI brand. Looking at it in hindsight, we have contemplated whether our online resale customer is more drawn to sites that offer a multi-brand experience. This is still a business model we are considering. All in all, we had created a solution that was too costly to operate without a unique selling point that would give GANNI second-hand an advantage over other platforms.
However, in more positive news, our own in-store resale model which was trialled in our POSTMODERN archive store in Copenhagen has proven to be very successful. In 2023, 1,880 products have been given a new lease of life through resale and we will continue the physical in-store resale model and look at how we can replicate this success in other markets.
In 2024, resale will become more of a priority for GANNI. We endeavour to find a workable solution as circular business models are imperative to reaching our 50% carbon reduction goal and achieving 5% of annual revenue coming from circular business models. Watch this space!
RENTAL
In 2023, we put more attention to partnering with rental platform solutions across Europe, as we believe that rental has a lot of potential to become a viable solution for a more circular economy. While we see potential in partnering with rental platforms we are also coming to terms with the fact that driving our own platform is both resource-heavy and costly. We are finding that sites providing a multi-brand experience have more to offer customers than we do, as they also tend to benefit from economies of scale. We are likely to reconsider our approach to our own rental platform, GANNI REPEAT, this year in order to be able to spend our resources more efficiently by driving partnerships that actually deliver value to the business. Read more about our rental partners below.
HURR, LONDON, UK
Founded in 2018 by Victoria Prew, HURR is the leading wardrobe rental platform operating a hybrid model combining peer-to-peer rental, powering fashion rental for 120+ exclusive brand partners such as Ganni and rental for the UK’s leading retailers, including Net-A-Porter and Selfridges.
MWHQ, LONDON, UK
My Wardrobe HQ is the destination for recommerce solutions from fully integrated subscriptions to white label websites. They have over 170 direct contemporary and luxury brand partners available for rental and resale on MyWardrobeHQ.com and a physical location in the department store Harrods in London.
POOL BERLIN, GERMANY
POOL is an awarded retail tech start-up for clothing rental - our mission is to decrease the negative impact clothing has by giving customers access to rental products more valuable than ownership. In 2023, 110 GANNI products were rented out by POOL customers in Berlin.
STUDIO PAILETTE, PARIS FRANCE
Established in 2020 by Léa Germano, a fashion stylist and luxury womenswear designer, Studio Paillette has emerged as a trailblazing French rental platform with a meticulously curated fashion ethos. Offering an exceptionally affordable rental pricing set at just 10% of the retail price per month, a diverse selection spanning over 30 creative brands, and a seamless user interface, it stands as one of the most promising rental models in the industry.
REPAIRS
Since 2021, we have been working with UK-based, Sojo, to offer our UK community free repairs and tailoring. In last year's report, we spoke about struggling with the traction of the service. In 2023, we put more marketing efforts behind repairs, including newsletters and 3 in-store events. This paid off, with demand for the service growing by an average of 62% each month in the second half of 2023. As a result, Sojo completed 365 repairs and alterations in just one year. 2024 will be an important year for Sojo and GANNI as we continue to put more effort into repair and alteration services.