Textile-to-textile recycler Circ is launching a new collective of brands and suppliers to scale and speed up the adoption of recycled materials.
It’s called Fiber Club, and brings together the brands Bestseller, Eileen Fisher, Everlane and Zalando, with suppliers India-based Arvind and Birla Cellulose and China-based Foshan Chicley in a four-phase process that will walk the members through sampling, pilot collections, and securing long-term offtake agreements.
The initiative was created in partnership with sustainable innovation platform Fashion for Good and Canopy, the NGO dedicated to forest conservation.
The club is designed to collectively remove the barrier of minimum order quantities that suppliers normally require. That threshold typically results in higher costs for brands working alone. The collective purchasing power of the Fiber Club will establish bulk pricing frameworks and ultimately make it cheaper and easier for brands to adopt recycled materials.
“We’re going to do this in a collaborative way. So it will essentially cut those two kinds of barriers to advancing scaling,” said Circ vice president of commercial strategy Kathleen Rademan.
“We were listening to our customers in the market and observing that for some of the other innovators in the space where they were having challenges was in connecting the dots for brands to understand how they can quickly get this into their customers’ hands,” said chief executive officer Peter Majeranowski.
The Circ process separates fibers.
Courtesy Circ
Circ has worked with high street brands such as Zara and high fashion designers such as Christian Siriano.
“Innovation without the supply chain can’t happen — that’s really where the rubber meets the road,” he added.
First up will be Circ’s Lyocell product. Instead of a top-down approach, Circ looked to the suppliers that were already familiar with their fiber to build a bridge to their brand partners.
Circ’s poly-cotton textile waste pulp will be sent to Birla, which will turn it into a fiber. That will be supplied to fabric mills Arvind and Foshan Chicley, which produce textiles. The finished fabric will then be sent to the garment manufacturers selected by the partner brands, and will eventually on to their sales floor.
The approach will help secure purchase and long-term offtake agreements. Having those types of agreements in place helps suppliers invest in research and development, and brands know they can use recycled materials as plug-and-play solutions that can easily integrate into their collections.
Fiber Club aims to not only shift the cost structure but to help align brands in a very fragmented and competitive industry.
“On a psychological basis, it feels better in an industry that’s so not concentrated to be doing something together with your peers. And so there’s an element to that as well, which I think is beneficial,” said Majeranowski.
The name is a tongue-in-cheek nod to “Fight Club,” but unlike the film, Circ wants everyone to talk about it. So much so that they envision the club as a blueprint that will be made available to other recyclers, suppliers and brands down the line to help accelerate adoption of recycled textiles.
“Let’s scale some of the other much-needed green fibers and materials in this world, because they all have the same problem,” added Circ’s Rademan. The plug-and-play, supplier-side solution was designed with brands in mind, so they can concentrate on product design.
“The decision-making factor is less, and that accelerates things,” said Rademan.
Peter Majeranowski
Courtesy Circ
Suppliers have expressed their enthusiasm for the initiative. “They work day in and day out with fibers, and they see that much-needed change was required. They’re big advocates of adopting green fibers or green materials,” said Rademan. “The big thing is they want to know that the brand will pull through and buy if they invest their time and energy in [research and development] capacity.”
Long-term offtake agreements are not only important for the suppliers, but also make the business case for next-gen and recycled materials to the larger market.
“There’s a lot of outside capital that wants to invest their dollars or euros into sustainable fashion solutions. They just want to make sure that there is a long-term commercial demand for that, and if the supply chain is behind it. So this helps unlock that as well,” said Majeranowski.
He added that despite the recent headlines of big-name banks exiting the finance climate alliance and overall becoming wary of ESG, there is still willingness to invest if they see long-term demand signals, such as purchase agreements.
“They want to ensure that the brands are serious about using this,” he said. Coming regulations in the European Union and its member states, as well as some U.S. states such as California, are also a driving force on the finance side. “Regulation and demand are the key drivers for the funding markets.”
There’s a four-phase roadmap that Rademan likens to a TV series’ unfolding seasons, with the collective eventually sharing their learnings and roadmap for other brands and suppliers to adopt. Circ hopes the blueprint will accelerate the next-gen materials market overall.
“It’s important that for innovators to succeed, they show some leadership within the industry and help connect the dots to make this happen, which is what Circ is doing here,” said Majeranowski. “Once those dots are connected and you can make the clear, compelling financial case to the financial community, I don’t sense a lack of interest at all.”
