Spotlight on bio-based fabrics: Sustainable innovation – don’t be blinkered by big brand names – Bio Market Insights
By Tomas Vucurevic, owner and handling director of BRAIND
“If you have a terrific brand-new sustainable invention, don’t let yourself be talked into an unique contract with a large brand or retailer, but build your own brand.”
Big brand names in style, automotive, food or individual hygiene market are frantically browsing for brand-new sustainable and circular development in order to enhance their own credibility. Their innovation groups scan the market and determine brand-new innovations at an extremely early phase with the goal of making them as unique for them as possible. Why? They want to link new innovation stories with their brand name to build-up their own “purpose”. Large business are mainly worried about the image of their own brand name and the associated increase in value of company equity (stock cost) and not always to help new sustainable innovations make a general development.
We understand from the past, that, if you provide a new technology that wishes to change customer behaviour sustainably, you require a broad approval and a large range of possible applications. Telecommunication provided us many examples. It was just when leading business agreed on particular requirements such as GSM, DECT, Bluetooth or Android, that wireless and mobile communication made its breakthrough.
Lots of customer brands are browsing for a new NIKE Air, Audi QUATTRO or Apple’s I-Cloud, however just a couple of have the brand name and marketing power to effectively develop such self-branded, proprietary services. Adidas (@Adidas) is one of them. Their cooperation with Parley for the Oceans (@parleyfortheoceans), an ecological organisation that addresses ecological threats towards the oceans, is of an exclusive nature and hence avoids at the same time a larger accessibility of the cause within the fabric market.
On the other hand, business such as the Austrian Lenzing, the Italian Aquafil or US-based Unifi rely on the ‘component brand’ design, making their sustainable materials offered to a large number of (non-exclusive) consumers.
This strategic technique results in many style companies using- -and actively communicating– their sustainable materials. This non-exclusive presence in turn generates the required consumer confidence, as customers and media start to see products such as Tencel, Econyl or Repreve in numerous applications by several brands. In the course of time, the ingredient brand establishes into a “seal of quality” and acts as an essential orientation aid for customers. A practice, that companies in the efficiency materials sector like Gore-Tex, Kevlar, Cordura or Lycra have actually been using effectively for years.
Which brand name and go-to-market design will be finally chosen by sustainable start-ups, likewise extremely depends naturally on their business objective. If a company is looking for a fast exit and wishes to offer business at an early stage, an unique arrangement with a strong brand may be just the best thing to do. Google, Cisco, Facebook and other tech giants are continuously purchasing start-ups at an early phase just to make sure that no one disrupts their company model. The same practice can be observed for the Fashion, Food or Movement Market.
If a sustainable or circular business actually desires to alter the world and change customer behaviour for the much better, then exclusivity offers are not the ideal method. Then it refers finding as many partners as possible, who can together bring this new technology to life. Just if customers discover over a longer amount of time that there is a brand-new sustainable or circular technology readily available and they can find it in the offering of multiple brand names, then and just then are they ready to slowly alter their consumer behaviour. Only in a few exceptional cases have private brand names such as Tesla or Apple alone handled to seduce people with ingenious technology and new, proprietary standards. This is extremely hard and very expensive.
This expert view becomes part of BMI’s spotlight week on bio-based fabrics. Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bio Market Insights’ editorial group and management.
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