Conscious Luxury Business Skyrockets on Farfetch
It’s platform for the planet at Farfetch.
The e-commerce company, which connects brands and boutiques with online shoppers in a central hub, on Thursday released its first Conscious Luxury Trends Report.
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The report is based on data from the e-commerce platform and revealed a big change in conscious consumption.
Consumers are leading and Farfetch wants to help the industry follow.
“The sale of conscious products grew 3.4-times faster than the marketplace average over 2020 driven by Farfetch’s broader offering and increased consumer interest,” the company said. “Traffic to conscious pages on Farfetch.com quadrupled year-on-year and following the pandemic there has been a dramatic rise in the use of the sustainability filter.”
The most-dramatic growth came from Mexico, where gross merchandise volume in conscious goods jumped 341 percent last year. And Farfetch noted that Asian consumers are “demonstrating a forward-thinking approach to brands, often adopting emerging conscious brands before the rest of the world.”
Additionally, Farfetch’s data showed that circular fashion is resonating strongly, with its Second Life retail service growing 527 percent last year.
To be defined a “conscious” product on Farfetch, goods have to meet one of the following independently backed criteria:
• They must be made of independently recognized or certified materials, such as organic, recycled and upcycled fabrics or low impact cellulosic materials;
• have been created with a certified production process;
• be pre-owned,
• or come from a brand that scores well with Good on You, the ethical rating agency.
While eco-minded fashion has been gaining for some time, it is now a broad push across the industry.
Farfetch singled out small luxury brands such as Veja, Bode and Alighieri as “leading the charge in terms of conscious practice” while also noting Gucci, Prada and Burberry have launched successful conscious lines.
José Neves, founder, chief executive officer and chairman, said in a statement accompanying the report: “As a platform for the luxury industry, we are uniquely positioned to enable positive change in many different ways. We want to be the platform for good in luxury, one that enables and empowers everyone from our brand and boutique partners and customers to the broader luxury sector to think, act and choose positively.”
Thomas Berry, Farfetch’s director of sustainable business, told WWD that conscious luxury was “a global phenomenon.”
“Some of it will be driven by supply, where there’s more supply of conscious brands on the platform,” Berry said. “Some of it will be driven by demand. Some of it will be driven by marketing efforts. It’s happening everywhere. It’s just happening in different ways.”
Sitting in between consumers and merchants, Farfetch is in a position to help steer the industry toward more sustainability and to highlight those doing the most good.
“We talk about the things we can do to enable more positive choice in fashion,” Berry said.
Along those lines, the company is launching an enhanced version of its Fashion Footprint Tool with the help of Impakt_ID. The tool helps shoppers understand the impact of their purchase by pointing to, for instance, the environmental savings of using more sustainable materials.
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