The Impact on our Industry Customers' Patience Can Have.

In this blog post, we want to talk about the impact customers’ patience can have to help the fashion industry becoming more sustainable. 

With the traditional fashion business model, we are all used to receiving an order between 2-5 workings days. This has become the industry’s standard. This is only possible because products have already been made and are sitting in an inventory room when customers order them. 

And if this item has already been made before you even ordered it, what does that exactly mean? 

It means that somebody or a software has made, before the item is sold, an estimation on the quantity of products that should be made. This quantity is then sent to be made and only once made, it is put on the market to be sold to customers. This is only an estimation which, as we know in the fashion industry, often results in overproduction, and then discarding of the unsold products one way or another … To give you an idea, according to the Australian Circular Textile Association, 30% of all clothes being made are never sold. 

With our on demand business model, we only produce once a product is bought by a customer. No burnt unsold inventory, no overproduction and less waste.

TRADITIONAL BUSINESS MODEL:
Estimation > Production > Sold/Unsold Items > Polluting Discarding Process of the Goods

vs

ON DEMAND BUSINESS MODEL:
Sold Items > Production 

But yes indeed, this requires a bit more patience from customers since the production is happening after their purchase, rather than before. Instead of receiving the item within 2-5 working days, customers now have to wait for their item to be produced. For Atalyé, production can take between 2-4 weeks, depending on if we are producing a capsule collection, in batch, or just one piece. 

So yes, your patience can actually change the industry. This is a different shopping experience. Not as instant, but maybe worth the wait if it means a less wasteful way to consume and produce.