BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Luxury Retailers Flunk The Sustainability Test

Following
This article is more than 4 years old.

Getty

The righteousness of sustainability in the retail trade is now as abiding as motherhood and apple pie. Everyone in the business talks about it. Surveys find nearly all consumers are paying attention to what leading brands are saying and doing about it. Sustainability has become an element of brand value.

But I’ve noticed that luxury brands in particular seem to be so focused on the usual suspects—logistics, energy, Fair Trade, supplier transparency—that they’ve overlooked vulnerabilities in customer experience and perception, and thus loyalty. Leading brands of the future will be those which successfully redefine luxury in the context of sustainability. Easier said than done.

For example, there is the unboxing ritual. It can be so elaborate that consumers like myself who want to enjoy it find themselves cringing. Virtually all luxury brands face this dilemma to one degree or another. In this case, what provoked me recently was an order of dress shirts I received from Brooks Brothers.

First, there is a box inside the box—a quality, branded shirt box with the lid held on by a satin ribbon. Inside, the shirts are bundled in tissue that is held in place with three gold foil stickers bearing the Brooks Brothers logo. Rip that open and each shirt is wrapped in a plastic bag. Inside each bag the shirt is strapped across the chest with a band of bias tape embroidered with the logo.

Once reaching the shirt itself, there are a number of plastic clips to remove which keep the shirt tidily folded, celluloid to shape the collar, and cardboard to keep the crisp rectangular shape. When I got done, I had a trash bag full of packaging, none of which could be recycled. A cringe-worthy moment.

This is the same Brooks Brothers that a few years ago cut its ties to Chilean wool suppliers after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals exposed the inhumane treatment of sheep. This is the same Brooks Brothers that tried marketing “eco-friendly” neckwear made from recycled fabrics.

To be fair, as a retail veteran I know that what Brooks Brothers sells is a luxurious experience. And they get it just right. But I’ll bet the thrill felt by many customers is tempered by the feeling I had—that we are unwittingly complicit in sabotaging sustainability. This is not smart branding.

Some soul-searching, data mining, and packaging innovation would seem to be in order. Otherwise, younger consumers—tomorrow’s Brooks Brothers customers—may identify luxury with waste or, worse, wretched excess. Luxury brands have their work cut out for them.

Packaging is just one example of how retailers and brands send mixed signals. Last year we learned that British fashion label Burberry (Nasdaq: BBRYF) was dealing with the problem of unsold seasonal inventory by burning it. The BBC reported that over a five year period the company torched more than $90 million of clothing and accessories to prevent its products from ending up discounted on the secondary market. Burberry has since disavowed the practice.

Burberry is also just an example. Destroying perfectly good but unsold merchandise is an age-old ritual. My first encounter was in the mid-1980s, when I was a freshly-minted college grad, working my first real job as an assistant buyer for a division of the May company.

We were doing inventory one day when my boss summoned me to a basement stock room and pointed at a pile of brand-name china that had been removed from the shelves to make way for newer goods. He handed me a sledge hammer, saying, “Break it all up and put it in the dumpster.”

It seemed a little crazy at the time but it was my job, and kind of fun. For an hour and a half I reduced to shards all those plates and cups. Looking back, I cringe when I think that a group of proud workers somewhere had been paid to shape, fire, glaze, package, and ship all these useful objects—possibly on a ship across an ocean—only to have them end up in a landfill.

Ask anyone in retail and they’ll have similar stories to tell. Piles of discarded Eddie Bauer coats and blankets on a New York sidewalk with a scrawled cardboard sign marked “FREE”—except everything had been slashed with a shipping knife, rendering it all useless. Employees instructed to pour paint on unsold fashion shoes. One employee told reporter Gabriela Del Valle of The Outline, “They don’t want anyone to get it for free.”

While the debate rages about Amazon (NYSE: AMZN) and its ecommerce competitors overboxing America, the luxury market has some catching up to do. It can’t be done well by the usual trial and error method, introducing new products and packaging and waiting a year to measure the results. Technologies exist to test new ideas, to avoid committing capital on hunches.

For now, retailers at all levels should be paying more attention to the point of customer contact, whether it is online, unboxing, or in a store. Are you sending the right message to consumers who care about waste and sustainability?

We recently did some research on tagging of denim pants. On one brand we counted 14 tags that had been sewn, stapled, attached with sticky tape, or with plastic loops. The reason for some of those tags is so the browsing customer can see branding and other information no matter how the garment is folded or displayed. Fourteen struck me as overkill, and I suspect consumers ask themselves as they snip and remove it all, What is the purpose of all this?

All retailers and brands will do well to put time, money, and vigor into creating a more practical and authentic approach to sustainability, one that customers can see and touch, and which they can feel good about when making purchase decisions.