What's the best circular fashion business model?

If you are starting a business tomorrow and it happens to be a sustainable fashion business, you are in luck! Cause I just stumbled upon a very interesting report that helps you save the earth and make money at the same time.

This report by WRAP examines financial viability of 5 circular business models in clothing, finding out which circular business model makes money better and saves more resources.

The 5 circular business models it examines are:

1. Repair workshop: Retailers or manufacturers providing repair and upgrading service as well as workshops designed to equip, educate and inspire people to take care of their clothes through activities such as repair, and make them last longer

2. Baby clothes leasing: Retailers providing radical new large-scale leasing services for baby clothes

3. Formal clothing hire: Retailers providing large-scale services for one-off hire focused on a small segment of clothing (formal and evening wear)

4. Buy-back & resale: Retailer offers an incentive for their customers to return their used garments (bought from that retailer) to a store

5. Peer to peer: Retailers creating an online platform for peer to peer exchange of garments

Here are the results -

It's interesting to see that the "Buy-back & resale" model is the most financially viable with "good" resource savings in 10 years. This would give confidence to brands to invest in a buy-back and resale programme to close both the product loop and material loop. Hope to see more brands to adopt programmes like Patagonia's "Common Threads" take-back and recycling scheme, which has been running since 2005.

Highly recommend you to take a look at this WRAP Report to find out why the revolutionary baby clothes leasing business has a lower financial viability but with the most resource savings!