I’m going to take a chance and suggest a radical idea that selling less can be better. You, or your boss, have set your bar for years by asking how much MORE you can sell. More to new clients, more to existing clients, whatever, the incentives are based on you selling MORE. Bear with me for a couple of minutes and read on—there is a method to the madness of selling less that can be better for your client, for you, and for our environment.
If you’ve been around the promotional product industry for more than a minute, you know how important it is to be fashion-forward. Your clients have been trained to expect soft goods that mirror the latest fashion trends. To meet those expectations, it has become okay for some suppliers to manufacture cheap wearables relying on relatively poorly paid labor in Asia and other developing countries. It has become okay that the textiles are made from inexpensive plastic-based materials, and, of course, critical to the process is doing it all faster.
Since it’s hard to predict every one of the changing trends when you’re running at breakneck speed, there are always lots of items that just don’t sell. Every season, and with every catalog, the problem of unsold inventory for suppliers just ratchets up. How bad is it for the big retail brands? The New York Times reports that a power plant in Vasteras, Sweden relies partly on burning unsold clothes as a fuel source. What you might not know is that the popular retail brand H&M started in Vasteras.
You’ve dropped a bag of clothes off at Goodwill or the Salvation Army and felt pretty good about it, right? You assumed that your gently used clothes were creating jobs and ultimately going to those less fortunate. But, when you look at it globally, 80 percent of textiles still end up in landfills or the incinerator. The numbers here are staggering: Goodwill spent $7 Million in California alone last year to incinerate or pack up clothes to be sent outside the U.S. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has found that the frequency that we wear our clothes has dropped by more than a third over the last 15 years. For many of us, we’ve stopped treating our clothes as durable, long-term purchases because the fashion-forward mindset has trained us that way. Think about your own closet for a minute — is it packed with things that you rarely wear? If so, you’re definitely not alone.
Back to you and your company’s sales strategy. If you’re pitching your current clients to buy more apparel, and if you’re focused on constantly finding new clients to buy as well, you’re part of the problem. A $1.3 billion fashion industry problem.
This year, manufacturers will produce 53 million tons of clothes worldwide. Staying on the current exponential pace of growth, it will be 160 million tons by 2050. That’s 53 million tons of clothing today that is infinitely more than we, as a global society, need. Never mind the 160 million tons that extrapolates out to.
So, how is selling less and not contributing further to this problem going to make you more money in the long run? Perhaps you could adopt a strategy like Cuyana, an online women's fashion and accessories line that lives by the motto of "fewer, better things." Now worn and endorsed by some of the more influential fashion bloggers, Cuyana started with just a $20,000 loan and featured handwoven Panama hats made by craftsmen in Ecuador. The company offers upscale fashion essentials including caps, blouses, dresses, and leather bags, and even Meghan Markle carried a Cuyana structured tote to Wimbledon to cheer on her friend Serena Williams. Cuyana recently announced a $30 Million round of funding for the U.S. market.
The brand’s website encourages customers to think carefully before making purchases, promoting the concept of “conspicuous conservation.” Cuyana even goes so far as to suggest that buying less is actually a sign of greater wisdom. That gained wisdom goes a long way to ease the pain of individual ticket items being more expensive, of course. This concept of conspicuous conservation flies in the face of years of fashion marketing that pushed conspicuous consumption, the idea was the more money you had, the more clothes you needed.
Cuyana co-founder Karla Gallardo says that customers tend to buy fewer items whenever they make a purchase with Cuyana, but the repeat purchase rate has been much higher than the industry average, and the lifetime value of the Cuyana customer is significantly greater than that of other fashion brands.
“We try to take a long view with our customers,” she says. “We’ve found that if a customer buys something that she loves and uses a lot, she will come back to you later when she needs to replace something else in her closet.”
It’s a radical idea, but could you take a longer view with your customers? Trading fewer items purchased initially for repeat purchases that are likely to be of higher value (and higher margin)? In our commodity price-driven industry, nobody talks about the “lifetime value” of a client much anymore. But what if you could? Being able to both drive client loyalty and avoid the race to the bottom pricing would be a big win and perhaps even a competitive differentiator. It’s also a great opportunity to encourage sourcing higher quality, longer-lasting, responsibly sourced apparel (that usually commands a higher purchase price).
In case you’re wondering, Cuyana means “love” in Quechua. As in “love for the planet” — and that’s a concept you could take to the bank.
Jeff Jacobs has been an expert in building brands and brand stewardship for 40 years, working in commercial television, Hollywood film and home video, publishing, and promotional brand merchandise. He’s a staunch advocate of consumer product safety and has a deep passion and belief regarding the issues surrounding compliance and corporate social responsibility. He retired as executive director of Quality Certification Alliance, the only non-profit dedicated to helping suppliers provide safe and compliant promotional products. Before that, he was director of brand merchandise for Michelin. You can find him volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem, traveling the world with his lovely wife, or enjoying a cigar at his favorite local cigar shop. Connect with Jeff on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, or reach out to him at jacobs.jeffreyp@gmail.com.