Circularity
Introduction
GANNI’s commitment to circularity spans various parts of our fashion value chain and is divided into three key areas: Designed for Circularity, Circular Business Models and Recycling.
In Designed for Circularity, we approach product development from the outset by focusing on creating garments that are durable, repairable, and recyclable within existing infrastructure. Through our Circular Business Models, we challenge the traditional fashion system by extending the life of our products, primarily through resale and repair initiatives. Our Recycling efforts center on forming local partnerships with collectors and sorters to support fibre-to-fibre recycling technologies, enabling the transformation of old textiles into new fibres. We also work to reuse and upcycle excess materials within our supply chain. Beyond these focus areas, circularity is integrated into our material strategy by prioritizing recycled fibers across all material categories, as detailed further in the Material section.
Designed For Circularity
20% styles designed for circularity by 2025
One of the cornerstones of our circularity strategy is designing garments that are made to last, built to withstand countless wears and washes over time. Creating durable clothing is one of the most powerful tools we have to extend a product’s life, keeping it in use for as long as possible. Whether it stays in your wardrobe or finds a second life through resale or other circular models, it needs to hold up in both quality and condition, even after being worn and loved. With this in mind, we relied on our circular design guidelines (see here), and in 2023, focused on t-shirts when it comes to our 20% circular design goal. T-shirts represent a significant portion of our production volume and, while far from simple, their single-material composition (organic cotton) makes them a strong starting point for fibre-to-fibre recycling.
One challenge we keep running into is that there’s no universal checklist for what makes a product truly “circular,” which makes tracking progress in this space tricky. As a brand known for bold silhouettes and playful details, we often see a disconnect between what’s theoretically circular and what’s practically achievable while staying true to our design signature, especially when it comes to recyclability. Acknowledging this, we’re shifting more focus toward designing for longevity: doubling down on durability, prioritising mono-materials where we can, and selecting high-quality, preferred fibres that stand the test of time.
Circular Business Models
5% of revenue coming from circular business models by 2025 (from a 2021 baseline)
In 2024, we reviewed our overall circular business model strategy and decided to prioritise resale and repair as the key short-term drivers to help us reach our ambitious goal of generating 5% of revenue from circular models by the end of 2025. As per our approach on design for circularity, beyond the business objective, we believe in the positive environmental and social impacts of extending the life of our clothes as long as possible. Therefore, it is our priority to engage with our community and to offer services where they can repair, alter and resell their GANNI pre-loved items.
Based on past pilots’ learnings, we understood that driving our own platforms is very resource-heavy and costly. Therefore, in 2024 we focused on strengthening existing partnerships and scouting new ones that are aligned with GANNI’s positioning and long-term goals.
Resale
In 2024, our main focus was to increase consumer awareness of our in-store resale model at the POSTMODERN archive stores in Copenhagen and Oslo, introduced in 2021 and 2024, respectively. The results have been outstanding: 2,827 and 611 pre-loved items have been given a second life, which represents a super positive 83% increase versus last year's performance. Outerwear, dresses, and knitwear are the most frequently traded items among our customers. This shows a willingness from our community to engage in second-hand models, whether trading in or purchasing, and in 2025 we will lean further into our pre-loved offering.
PRE-LOVED ITEMS GIVEN A SECOND LIFE AT GANNI POSTMODERN
2024
3438
2023
1880
Rental
While we value rental for our consumers, we decided to pause the collaboration with our existing rental service providers in Europe to narrow the focus on repair and resale, which will substantially impact GANNI from a sustainability and business perspective.
On the other hand, in the US, we have an expanding collaboration with Rent The Runway, where GANNI created a strong and loyal digital native fan base. We began our partnership with the team in 2023 and have worked to create a curated selection of our top styles. The classic KPIs that we look at for evaluating rental businesses success are the following: UTE (66.2%) Utilization Rate - how many times our GANNI clothes are actually rented out versus sitting in the inventory; Wear rate (66.4%) - how many clothes were actually worn by RTR customers out of the clothes rented; Love rate (67.4%) - the percentage of customers who loved their rented item and they would rent it again or recommend it to other peers. Overall, we are satisfied with the positive 2024 performance and customer satisfaction and we will continue reviewing our offering to improve our rental experience.
Repair
In 2021, as part of GANNI’s circular business model strategy, we launched a collaboration with UK-based repair partner Sojo to offer our UK community free repairs and alterations. Since then, customer engagement and the number of repairs have skyrocketed, leading to outstanding results in 2024: Sojo completed 1,160 services, including 368 repairs and 786 alterations, in just one year, reaching a total of 640 customers, 164 of whom were repeat users. Compared to 2023, we saw a 228% increase in service volume across all channels and an impressive 393% growth in in-store orders, highlighting the rising demand for in-store repair services.
Based on displacement rate calculations conducted by SOJO, which measures how buying, renting, or repairing an item through a circular business model offsets the purchase of a new item - it was possible to quantify the sustainability impact of GANNIxSOJO repair services. In 2024, GANNI saved a total of 1,748.1 kg of CO2e and 498,661.7 liters of water. To put this into perspective, repairing just one cotton t-shirt instead of purchasing a new one can save over 7.5 kg of CO2e, making this a significant achievement.
In 2025, we will continue collaborating with the Sojo team to further expand the repair services offered to our consumers as repair will become a key business model in our circular strategy.
Customer Engagement with SOJO
SERVICES
335
CUSTOMERS
232
REPAIRS
119
ALTERATIONS
238
IN-STORE
137
REPEAT CUSTOMERS
69
Customer Engagement with SOJO
SERVICES
1,160
CUSTOMERS
640
REPAIRS
368
ALTERATIONS
786
IN-STORE
675
REPEAT CUSTOMERS
164
In the Spotlight
The Renewal Workshop
In 2024, GANNI partnered with The Renewal Workshop, a service offering a full set of circular solutions from our warehouse partner in the Netherlands, Bleckmann, to repair and extend the life of our ecommerce returns, ultimately reducing waste.
In October 2024, we concluded a six-month pilot called Rescue. The initiative involved performing secondary quality checks and invisible repairs, such as reattaching a loose button, removing lint, or garment steaming on the e-commerce returns, enabling more products to be restocked instead of discarded. During the pilot, 660 out of 2,000 damaged returns (33%) were successfully rescued and restocked as new.
Given the promising results, we will continue our collaboration with The Renewal Workshop on Rescue and explore additional impactful circular solutions that could help support our circular business model strategy.
While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made in developing our circular business model, we recognise that reaching our target of 5% of total revenue by the end of 2025 is ambitious, and there’s still much work ahead. From 2025, the circular business models will become a crucial pillar for our sustainability strategy that will support the overall GANNI decarbonisation objectives as well. As of now, our circular business models results are not included in the corporate carbon footprint calculations, but we are working on validating a framework that can show the environmental impact of our resale and repair services. In this regard, we will fully focus on refocusing our efforts on resale, strengthening our existing POSTMODERN model and expanding our repair services.
Recycling and End Of Life
We create our garments with the intention for them to be worn, loved and kept for years, but we also need a plan for what happens when they reach the end of the road. One of our 2025 goals is to ensure that 100% of our excess materials are reused, upcycled or recycled, with no clothing ending up in landfill or incineration. Taking it a step further, we’d love to see a world where any excess fabric, material or garment can eventually be turned into new fibres through fibre-to-fibre recycling. But right now, less than 3% of global textiles are recycled this way, simply because the systems needed to make it happen do not exist at scale. Recycling requires several steps working in sync, from sorting and de-trimming (removing zippers, buttons and labels) to the recycling process itself, and a fully functioning infrastructure isn’t in place yet. From our side, we’re focused on building strong, local partnerships and are actively exploring new solutions to bring us closer to our goal.
Partnerships
Develop and roll-out localised sorting & recycling partnerships in EU & US by 2023 and China by 2024
Launch in-house sorting at warehouse to enable fibre-to-fibre recycling in 2024 and a closed loop recycling programme by 2025
We’re continuing to scout responsible solutions for sorting and recycling our products end-of-life, focusing partnerships in the EU and US, while looking into our options in China. In 2024, we made progress by piloting and testing several new recycling solutions, with the goal of establishing long-term partnerships across different product categories. We're prioritising partners that offer local solutions to reduce transport emissions and are actively working to scale fibre-to-fibre recycling.
Just as important is increasing our visibility into where and how our garments are processed, giving us confidence that nothing ends up in landfill or incineration. To help enable fibre-to-fibre recycling, we’ll explore whether we can pre-sort excess or damaged clothing directly at our warehouse (starting with key materials like cotton and polyester) and work directly with recyclers to see if they can turn our waste into their feedstock.
In the Spotlight
SuperCircle
In the US, we’ve been teaming up with circular solutions provider SuperCircle to test the fibre-to-fibre recycling potential of our products. In 2023, we piloted recycling on nylon rain jackets, but due to their waterproof coating, they were downcycled into padding or insulation. In 2024, we expanded the partnership to include footwear, sending in damaged leather loafers and rubber boots. Similar to the jackets, these were repurposed through down-cycling.
In late 2024, we kicked off a third pilot, sending SuperCircle a mix of 45% ready-to-wear items and 55% shoes and accessories, all damaged or defective stock from our US stores. Of the total items sent, SuperCircle was able to find fibre-to-fibre recycling solutions for 21%. When we break it down, footwear and accessories were downcycled, but 44% of the ready-to-wear items were successfully recycled through fibre-to-fibre solutions. This is a big win, as only about 2% of apparel globally is fibre-to-fibre recycled at the end of its life. From the pieces we sent, those made with a high percentage of a single fibre (monofibre) were eligible for fibre-to-fibre recycling. SuperCircle found fibre-to-fibre recycling solutions for garments made of over 85% polyester, more than 90% cotton, 100% wool, and certain polyester-cotton blends.
In 2025, we'll continue partnering with SuperCircle to explore how we can scale fibre-to-fibre recycling for our garments once we've maximised their use phase and they reach end-of-life. Internally, these results also reinforce our focus within circular design to prioritise mono-fibres where we can.
*Fibre-to-fibre recycling refers to a recycling method where textile fibres are transformed into new fibres of the same type.
*Down-cycling is a process that transforms the product into something else of lesser value.
Final words - Thank you/Tak!
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our work, 2024 progress, and broader sustainability strategy, GAMEPLAN 2.0. To stay up-to-date on our journey, visit www.ganni.com/responsibility.