Switching Gear

What they bring to the table

ACS operate from state-of-the-art purpose-built facility complete with innovative technology, onsite engineers and textile care specialists. They have c. 25 years of experience in the rental and resale space and dispatch over 3million items each year. A circular rental and resale business model allows retailers to enhance profitability, embrace sustainability and embed circular practice within a linear business model. Moreover, ACS are ahead of the curve in the drive towards net-zero and their mission for sustainability is embedded throughout their business processes.

What they bring to the table

We enable brands to own the resale of their products through a white-label resale platform that seamlessly integrates into the checkout processes and customer experience of their sales channels.

What they bring to the table

As experts in the rental space we can offer consultancy on how brands can launch their rental offering, using our white label technology Zoa & fulfilment partner ACS. If brands aren't ready to launch their own rental offer, we can work with them to launch rental as part of a consignment offer under the Hirestreet brand (for suitable brands only).

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

Our desire is to be an integral part of the sustainability movement by enabling brands to successfully launch recommerce and rental programs in order to lower the environmental impact of textile processing. For recommerce and rental business models, we can provide turnkey services such as the necessary sorting, C02 cleaning, repair, upcycle and logistical support.

What they bring to the table

Mini-Cycle will offer valuable insight as to how to process and resell preloved pieces. They have been doing it for 2 years and have a good understanding as to what it takes to be able to resell items online. Mini-Cycle have spent a lot of time and energy identifying the pain points and valuable strategies - key inputs needed to make a recommerce model viable economically from a practical and operational standpoint.

What they bring to the table

Our brand is ready for the next step in sustainability. We have been improving our sustainability efforts, using recycled materials and doing a slow, timeless core-product collection. We feel that it's time now to even further evolve and truly address the overarching problem of ''unsustainable consumption behaviour''. After improving our product quality, durability and sustainability for over 5 years, we realised that our product actually lends itself perfectly for a rental model. The brand evolvement of BYBROWN in combination with the EU has helped us ignite and kick-start the development of this business case, whilst discovering a potential durable revenue stream, helping our brand to ground financially furthermore.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

Reskinned controls all elements of the process – including the tech, sort and final redistribution channels. Their end-to-end approach enables Reskinned to provide full clarity to brands on where their central stock and customer returns find a new home.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

Upchoose is operating a mix of circular models including a rental model and a secondhand platform, hence have first hand experience of these different models.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

SHAREaLOOK is developing Software as a Service technology for rental fashion, with a launch scheduled in July 2020. Through the technology and infrastructure, apparel brands can start renting their collection instead of selling, reducing this way the use of nature resources, energy and water. Through providing technology, infrastructure and community, SHAREaLOOK will be able to help any sustainable brand and service to scale their business and make the fashion system more fair and sustainable.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

RE-NT can help brands by 1) using their platform to test products, 2) offering their software solution as a white label solution, 3) support in consultancy.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

Nudie Jeans has, for approximately ten years, been working with free repair service and also a take back scheme which has made way for recommerce and other circular initiatives. Although these projects are still relatively small, it's been a process of development. These experiences, among others, are valuable to other brands who are looking to make similar investments.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

Thelittleloop are already working with three major UK based children's clothing brands to enable them to bring rental to consumers via their marketplace. They handle all operations, logistics, marketing etc as well as providing the rental tech platform. And, by acting as an aggregator for multiple brands in one place, they make rental more feasible and appealing for customers and, by extension, for the brands themselves. Consumer research has shown that few consumers are looking to hold multiple, single brand subscriptions...rather they would prefer 1, multi brand subscription to meet all their needs. Thelittleloop address this problem and are open to collaboration with our core brands.

What they bring to the table

Several years of working with reuse and rental programs. Also a pilot in subscription.

What they bring to the table

Stephanie Dunn has led numerous and varied large scale technology projects, and has directed e-commerce and business development for several fashion brands. Her skills include gathering input from all business areas, developing requirements, evaluating various models, technologies, and partners, building project roadmaps including creative, operational and technical objectives, identifying blindspots, and then fully implementing plans that serve the needs of all.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

BaB can offer fashion rental companies promotion on the platform, as they can create a company profile and offer items at the platform. Currently BaB has an expanding community of lenders and renters, exactly the community these Brands will be focusing on.

What they bring to the table

Trove is the leading expert in scalable branded resale and working with world-class brands such as Allbirds, lululemon, REI, Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, and many more. They operate the largest, most successful branded resale experiences, with in-store trade-in programs across 700+ nationwide stores across their brand partners. As a technology company—with a test-and-learn mindset—they've gathered countless valuable insights about how to develop, launch and optimize branded resale programs at scale for beloved brands.

What they bring to the table

To come

What they bring to the table

Treïs invests to pass on a better planet to the next generation, making a positive contribution to our environment. Treis’ mission is to promote responsible entrepreneurship, and to sustain and transmit our family values and legacy, in order to contribute to a free and fair society, confident in the future.

What they bring to the table

What they bring to the table

The Renewal workshop process guides a brand from interest to launching their recommerce strategy. It includes baselining where a company is at, where their waste is, then understanding their business's ability to become circular and then conducting tests and finally to market.

What they bring to the table

The Next Closet provide a circular recommerce solution for designer fashion brands. In a nutshell how it works: 1. Encourage your customers to give their pre-loved items a second life via The Next Closet (TNC). 2. Provide credits as a reward for their upload at TNC and encourage your customers to spend this on your brand again (extend their lifetime value and connect them to a beautiful circular solution reducing the environmental impact from the fashion industry)

What they bring to the table

TEXAID Retail Solutions provides custom-made concepts for producers, distributors and retailers in the textile industry. Our concepts are made to keep pre- and post-consumer textiles in the textile circle. TEXAID Retail Solutions addresses the textile industry's growing need for sustainable end-of-use solutions. With the take-back systems In-shop collection and PACKMEE, TEXAID operates two systems which enable the return of used textiles in both, the stationary trade and e-commerce sector.Overstock and customer returns can be kept in the textile cycle by professional sorting, innovative recycling processes and the international distribution network. Brand protection and customer-specific requirements are taken into consideration. All proceedings are taking place in one of TEXAIDs sorting facilities.

What they bring to the table

SWAP Society are eager to share their learnings and experiences in the space of recommerce.

What they bring to the table

Style Lend can offer their rental software as a service to retailers which they have developed over the last 6 years with great dedication.

What they bring to the table

Stuffstr partners with retailers and brands to provide instant buy-back of every item. At the touch of a button, retail customers can have items picked up the same day for free, and be paid instantly in the form of store credit as soon as the items are received. Currently, only 2% of items are ever resold on any resale marketplace, and over $400 billion per year of residual value is either discarded (70%) or recycled/donated (28%). Stuffstr captures this value for both consumers and retailers, and provides a core foundation for the global shift to a circular economy.

What they bring to the table

RePack can eliminate single use packaging trash and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty

What they bring to the table

Reflaunt have been running a second hand marketplace for the last 6 years we can provide extensive insight into the re commerce business. We can provide a number of tech assets for brands to get involved in the re-commerce business. - Reflaunt can provide a stock exit solution using our second hand network. - Reflaunt can implement their resell button and our circular model with their e-commerce. - Reflaunt can build a white label peer to peer second hand marketplace dedicated to the brands. Note that Reflaunt second hand distribution channels can also be used by brands to move unsold inventory (past collections).

What they bring to the table

We are wanting to partner with apparel brands who have a shared vision of a sustainable world free of poverty and injustice. We will develop a business model that will provide our partners with a sustainable and ethical solution for excess stock that will raise money for Oxfam's work. We can offer our partners the following; Pick up from anywhere in Europe, de-tagging/de-branding service if required, All stock will be barcoded, regular sales and impact reports, presentations to staff on the impact the partnerships will deliver, Joint PR/Marketing, Visit to Oxfam program (East, central & Southern Africa)

What they bring to the table

In 2012 Mud Jeans introduced Lease A Jeans, a rental model for circular jeans. Therefore, Mud Jeans has a lot of knowledge and lessons learned to share on the topic.

What they bring to the table

MonoChain can connect the primary and resale market thereby enabling a circular economy while simultaneously combating counterfeits. Our easy to integrate multi-tenant blockchain platform facilitates brands to generate new revenue streams in the resale market as well as collect valuable data by keeping in touch with their customers. To reduce friction, we ensured a quick and convenient customer experience. Basically, we make a physical asset a digital one which can lead to new business models including leasing. Our solution can be white labeled.

What they bring to the table

Lizee has developed a program that allows brands to launch and validate their rental offer – hassle free – in 9 months only. During the program, we help brands define the offering (2 weeks), prepare before launch (2 months), test and iterate an offering live (6 months) and learn before scaling (2 weeks). We provide brands with all the assets they need to conduct a successful rental offering: technology, reverse logistics, process, equipped warehouse, rentals experience and so on.

What they bring to the table

GIBBON is a good entry point into the rental business model for the 6 brands. Catering to the travellers, GIBBON serves a target market outside the brand's geographical market and is a marketing platform for new client acquisitions. By extending their excess stock to GIBBON, these brands can launch a smaller rental business model to understand the key highlights they should be concern of when they scale their pilots by 2021.

What they bring to the table

We can be a resource and mentor for those companies trying to start recommerce initiatives. We are happy to share what we know and can host visits for anyone who can get to us.

What they bring to the table

Advanced Fabricare extends the active service life of apparel products while optimizing the performance of those products, giving them more valuable in-service time. The ëClean fulfillment center has the physical storage space to manage the shipping, receiving, cleaning, repairing and inventory logistics so brands can rent or sell more items, more often and more profitably. Brands can concentrate on what they do best. We have 35+ years of success in the apparel cleaning industry where we have been leading innovators and solution providers.

What they bring to the table

1) Circular design strategies, such as designing for optimal use. Garments intended to circulate among many users through recommerce or rental models would greatly benefit by being designed for that purpose so that the pieces last as long as possible. This can be done through increasing the garments’ functional durability by e.g strengthening stress points, making the size adjustable to fit many users, designing for many occasions etc. 2) Exploring the potential for circularity.ID, a digital information carrier they developed and that holds full transparency of the piece it is attached to- from materials and production to options for updating, reusing and recycling. This is especially interesting as this kind of technology opens up incredible opportunities for transparency and traceability of the supply chain, increased consumer engagement, prolonged use period of garments and to finally ensure reuse and recycling.