European e-retailer Zalando launches value-based browsing experience

The new browsing experience aims to help customers better understand sustainable fashion and make more informed fashion choices. They can now browse through the platform based on the values they care about, such as water conservation, worker wellbeing, reusing materials, animal welfare, reducing emissions, and extending the life of fashion, said the company in a press release.

Based on consumer research carried out in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the UK, the report called ‘It Takes Two: How the Industry and Consumers Can Close the Sustainability Attitude-Behavior Gap in Fashion’ finds that for the fashion industry there is a need to make sustainable choices more attractive, realistic and accessible. It gives 10 recommendations to close the gap, and points to three key priorities for the fashion industry – earning trust through simple communication; motivating changes in behaviour; and scaling circularity and offer solutions to close the loop.

“We aim for 25 per cent of our GMV to come from more sustainable products by 2023. During the coronavirus crisis, customers told us that shopping sustainably became more important to them than ever before. But when we asked them how they felt about sustainable fashion, the strongest association was ‘guilt’ and the weakest was ‘fun’. If, as an industry, we’re serious about sustainability, we need to fix this dissonance now to build a stronger future for fashion,” said Zalando co-CEO, David Schneider.

“Our role as a platform is to enable ourselves, our brand partners, and our customers to make more sustainable choices, inspire collaborative action and long-lasting change. That’s why we produced this report, which we can all learn from: Zalando, the fashion industry, and consumers. This report brought us to the conclusion that if we really want to close the long-existing attitude-behaviour gap in fashion, collaboration is the only way forward. We have to come together; the fashion industry and our consumers,” said Kate Heiny, director sustainability at Zalando.

The release also said that customers in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy and Sweden will be able to trade in and buy pre-owned fashion directly on Zalando.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (KD)