Made-on-demand clothes will stop wasteful fast fashion heading to landfills, say experts

HONG KONG — The dark side of fashion is a ravaged landscape of waste and environmental damage, but a retailing revolution could change that picture. On-demand manufacturing will eliminate oversupply and waste, proponents say, ensuring only those items that have already been paid for will get made.

Designers, manufacturers, retailers and logistics companies are championing the on-demand way to shop. 

Fashion designer Misha Nonoo, who has collaborated with Meghan Markle on a capsule collection, has instituted an on-demand, direct-to-consumer system for her label. Her customers order one of her classic pieces and then wait for it to be made and shipped.

Mr Brian Rainey, CEO of US-based production and logistics company Gooten, says the Covid-19 pandemic gave a huge boost to the e-commerce revolution already under way in retail, which in turn is aligned with on-demand manufacturing.

Consumers around the world will shop more online, he predicts, upending the world of retail and changing the way fashion is chosen and bought. 

“As everyone was able to go from work trousers to joggers for work, we had this massive oversupply because consumer sentiment seemingly shifted almost overnight,” he says.

“Right now there’s US$200 billion (S$269 billion) worth of inventory sitting in warehouses after the dislocation problem with the pandemic.”

Mr Rainey’s company Gooten uses a made-on-demand system to allow small and large retailers to order products with their own designs printed on them. The products include a range of fashion and other goods, such as T-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts and socks.

Gooten relays a customer’s order to a manufacturer located as near to the customer geographically as possible. The manufacturer computer-prints the chosen design on the item and ships it to the customer.

“At no time does anything actually hit a warehouse,” Mr Rainey says. “It goes directly from the production centre to the end consumer.”

This system essentially means, he explains, that only items ordered by customers are produced, which benefits the retailer, the manufacturer and the environment.

Mr Rainey says the system prevents the “massive overproduction problem within the broader fashion industry” which has released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, as well as eliminating warehousing and minimising shipping.

“There isn’t a hub and spoke system in that model, the journey is singular,” he says. “You really do need to be closer to the consumer.” 

Gooten has a number of partner manufacturing companies around the world, many with international footprints.

“We produce locally and ship locally, reducing underlying shipping costs but ultimately supporting local economies, taking the concept of nearshoring or onshoring to its logical terminus,” Mr Rainey says. 

Many in fashion believe this industry-wide shift to made-on-demand is likely to have repercussions for the so-called legacy manufacturing industry, which has a large base in Asia, where low labour costs have kept prices down.

Traditionally, garments made in a factory in Asian countries such as Bangladesh or Cambodia are sent to a retailer’s warehouse, then to a retail store before being bought by a customer. 

Mr Rainey insists this traditional manufacturing will not be entirely supplanted by made-on-demand fashion in the years to come, but rather made-to-order fashion will supplement traditional manufacturing.

“Asian manufacturers know what they’re doing,” he says. “(They) are actually incorporating the new digital technology to supplement what they have from a legacy standpoint.”

International fashion brands, he believes, will add more regional production to their Asian manufacturing foundations.

“Your output is already 40 per cent too high,” he says, comparing past output with consumption.

“If you perfectly predicted output, you’d call that a shift away from Asian manufacturing because you’re actually matching what the consumer wants.”

Fashion is a US$2 trillion industry, Mr Rainey says, and he estimates that in partnership with Gooten’s manufacturing partners, digital printing technology – either short-run or single unit technology – should now replace about 35 per cent of the total global textile output. 

“Digital print technologies can do small print runs or, in our case, a single order in a way that is economical and better matches the consumer’s taste,” he says.

Mr Rainey points out that US department store chain Nordstrom, which operates more than 100 stores in the United States and Canada, offers customers more than 350,000 individual items that can be ordered online, and it now wants to increase that range to 1.5 million different items. 

“The only way you can do that is by effectively extending the life of content by going to a minimal order of one on-demand production capability,” he says. “You’re not stocking 1.5 million units in inventory. As it’s ordered it can be produced.”

Fast fashion, which has roared in recent years with consumers buying pieces, wearing them once or twice and discarding them, is terrible for the environment but many consumers love it, he says. “Now it can be done in a way that’s much more sustainable,” he says.

Ms Christina Dean, founder of the Hong Kong-based environmentally conscious fashion charity Redress, says the made-on-demand fashion economy is definitely growing – which is a boon for the world. 

“Obviously excess inventory is a huge bane on businesses and on the planet,” she says. “It is estimated 100 billion new garments are made every year, which by the way has actually gone up. It’s estimated that 20 billion of those garments won’t be sold.” 

Too much fast fashion is worn once or twice and discarded, and it often ends up in landfill, she adds. Made-on-demand minimises that risk.

Ms Dean says the major players in the fashion industry are wise to the ongoing benefits of made-on-demand fashion. “The big, big players have already been, for a long time, putting investment into made-on-demand initiatives,” she adds. 

One of the drawbacks of made-to-order manufacturing is the absence of instant gratification. The delay between order and delivery can irritate the modern consumer, who want their choices to arrive within a couple of days, not weeks. 

She sees this impatience as short-sighted, part of a pattern that has led to massive environmental damage. “It’s so last century that we can’t wait,” she says. “We’ve sat at home all year, we can wait three weeks for something we really want.” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST