Key takeaways:
Demand for eco-friendly denim is leading a comeback for a category that has faced years of falling sales.
Traditional denim brands are implementing more eco-friendly manufacturing processes in response to competition from upstarts that have embedded sustainability into their DNA.
True sustainability requires looking beyond one stage of production and focusing on denim’s lifecycle.
LOS ANGELES — After years of decline, denim is making a clean comeback.
According to Euromonitor, US sales of jeans fell 11 per cent over the past five years even as overall apparel sales, driven by athleisure, rose 10 per cent. Globally, denim sales fell 2.3 per cent. The pendulum is swinging back: Euromonitor forecasts a 5 per cent US revenue increase by 2023 for jeans, to $17.5 billion, and an 11 per cent global increase, to $111.6 billion, in the same period. “We are seeing the cycle return towards denim. The desire for it is there,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry advisor for retail at NPD Group.
Lyst, a global fashion search platform, reports 13 searches per second for denim, making it the third most-searched item worldwide after sneakers and dresses. But consumer enquiries reflect changing demand. Lyst saw the biggest increase in views for “sustainable” denim over the past year — a 193 per cent rise that placed it ahead of searches for, say, mom jeans or skinny denim. The leap comes amid a new era of sustainability that is touching every corner of the industry. “People are more aware than ever of the effects [that] fashion and excessive shopping has on the environment,” says Chana Baram, retail analyst at Mintel.
This has prompted jeans makers, which are rooted in traditional, rustic imagery and branding, to clean up their act. Wrangler, for one, is trading its “original cowboy jeans” marketing for promoting its new foam-dyed, water-free production process, which claims to use 60 per cent less energy and 90 per cent fewer chemicals than traditional methods.
“The landscape today is different, and companies have to manage global issues like climate change,” says Roian Atwood, Wrangler’s senior director of sustainable business. “It would be irresponsible for other industries to innovate and for denim to stay stagnant.”
Denim, for all its ubiquity, is highly eco-unfriendly. It takes 1.7 million tons of chemicals to produce 2 billion pairs of jeans every year, and the water consumption needed for production can go as high as 7,000 litres per pair, according to Greenpeace.
The effort to tackle this issue has been led by direct-to-consumer upstarts like Everlane and Reformation, which see sustainability as key to their DNA and a major differentiator from traditional brands. But legacy players are catching on.
Levi’s, for instance, is focused on significantly reducing water use in denim production. By 2020, the company — which is the world’s top-selling jeans brand by retail value — aims to make 80 per cent of its products using techniques that reduce water usage by up to 96 per cent. (It currently produces 67 per cent of its products this way.)
To maximise efforts, Levi’s gives key suppliers individual water use targets based on local levels of water scarcity. India and Pakistan, for example, are home to several denim mills while ranking among the countries most at risk from a water crisis, according to the World Resources Institute. “This will lead to significant short-term water savings in areas that need it most,” says Michael Kobori, Levi’s global vice president of sustainability. The company plans to reduce cumulative water use in “water-stressed areas” by 50 per cent by 2025.
It’s not just traditional denim companies that are changing their ways of working.
For Autumn/Winter 2019, Fast Retailing, which owns brands including Uniqlo, J Brand, Helmut Lang and Comptoir des Cotonniers, produced some 18 million pairs of jeans but claims to have reduced water usage by at least 90 per cent compared to traditional methods. It has launched a Jeans Innovation Center (JIC) in Los Angeles, which creates denim for all its major brands. The Japanese group, which plans to manufacture 40 million jeans in 2020, is expanding this project next year.
“[We] acknowledge the responsibility that comes with our scale as the third-largest apparel retailer in the world,” says Masaaki Matsubara, chief operating officer of Fast Retailing’s JIC. “We don’t want to make or sell wasteful items. Our ambition is to redefine sustainability in apparel by making sustainable purchasing effortless and anxiety-free for our customers.”
These companies are also gaining recognition for their efforts. In 2018, Levi’s took 37th place for its sustainability efforts on Fortune’s Change the World list, which recognises companies that have had a positive social impact. PVH, which previously ranked number 37, jumped to number 12 this year on Barron’s annual ranking of the most sustainable US companies.
Research shows that a sustainable supply chain can boost the bottom line: a 2018 report by the Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group shows that potential savings and efficiencies gained through more sustainable operations could boost companies’ profitability by between 1 and 2 percentage points by 2030.
PVH-owned Tommy Hilfiger, which this year released a permanent line of 100 per cent sustainable denim, sees eco-friendly initiatives as an investment rather than a cost. Those styles saw an “above average sell-out” over the last two seasons, according to Daniel Grieder, CEO of Tommy Hilfiger Global and PVH Europe. “There’s still a huge opportunity to grow and take market share,” says Grieder. While denim represents 10 per cent of the global Tommy Hilfiger business, the executive hopes to increase the figure to at least 30 per cent over the next few years.
Meanwhile, Wrangler’s Rooted collection, comprised of sustainable and traceable product, is one of the brand’s most successful initiatives, becoming the most popular online collection in 2019, according to Atwood.
True sustainability goes further than just focusing on a single stage of a garment, whether the production is being improved by reducing the amount of water or cutting out chemicals in the process. The whole lifecycle needs to be taken into account.
Denim executives say that the technology to support full circularity is not yet there. “Being 100 per cent circular is a fantastic stretch goal for a denim brand, but there is still much work that we need to do in order to get to that stage. It’s not something that we have the infrastructure or technology for today,��� says Atwood.
There have been some early steps. Levi’s is encouraging resale with its Authorised Vintage collections and offering repair services. “We are very much moving in a direction of a more circular economy in the years to come,” says Kobori. (Such services also offer brands the chance to profit twice off the same product.)
Brands investing in eco-friendly denim production process have access to free information that also serves to formalise industry standards. In July, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the circular economy and sustainable practices, released a set of guidelines which strives to address waste within the denim industry by setting minimum requirements around materials, durability and more. Open-source sustainability can also promote a group effort.
“It would be irresponsible for any one brand to have important sustainable technology enter the market and hold it only for themselves. We encourage other brands to take advantage of our foam dye technology,” says Atwood. He noted that shortly after launch, Gap discussed adopting the foam dye technique across its brands, which includes Old Navy and Banana Republic. “We need collaboration to change the historical footprint that has been so damaging to the environment.”
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