What This Levi’s Exec Really Thinks of Your Resale Program

Jasmin Malik Chua
·3 min read

Paul Dillinger, vice president and head of global production innovation at Levi Strauss & Co., thinks many fashion brands use resale as a communication platform to “virtue signal.”

Speaking at the Global Fashion Summit: Boston Edition at the Revere Hotel Boston Common late last month, the denim executive said it’s “intellectually dishonest” for companies to present resale as part of their sustainability strategy unless they can “go in and literally materially quantify how resale can manifest as displacement reduction of first-generation goods.”

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“I think that smart business models need to be activated, possibly before the marketing campaign,” he said, stopping short of saying that this was, in effect, greenwashing.

Dillinger said that Levi’s considers its job to design a “great future vintage” product that will appeal to a second or third customer, not just the initial one. Taking a tack that prioritizes long-term value over the of-the-moment trend, he said, changes a lot of the decisions a brand might make around materials, construction and even aesthetics.

“It really takes into account what would a person on the secondary market be looking for in 10 years today, and bringing those two factors into the design process,” he said.

The idea that a company can either design for longevity or recovery and reuse is also misplaced, Dillinger noted, pointing to Levi’s Circulose-derived Circular 501 as an example of how the two concepts can coexist by pairing single-fiber materiality—in this case, cellulose—with high standards of quality and integrity.

It’s true that when you walk into any vintage shop, there’s a Levi’s section, piped in Andy Ruben, founder and executive chairman of Trove, the jean juggernaut’s recommerce partner. A recent study that the technology firm authored with impact intelligence platform Worldly, previously Higg Co, found that certain product types—a designer handbag, say, or a Levi’s T-shirt from the ‘80s—can retain their original value or even surpass it on the secondary market.

“That is an indication that there is value and demand beyond that first sale,” he said.

Ruben noted the need for a paradigm shift in the way companies think about profit. If revenue can be extracted from only the first sale, then “all the incentive for growth is only on the first sale,” he said. “Where models exist where brands make money the first time, the second time, the third time, then revenue growth can come across the life of a product in addition to new products.”

By doing this, brands can “bend that arc” in growth without rolling in commensurate emissions from new production.

All of the impact of making a product goes into that first sale, said J.R. Siegel, senior director of product innovation at Worldly, meaning that the resale product is inherently going to have a smaller carbon footprint. Short of producing less, shifting toward a resale model is an easy way of lowering emissions, he said.

Designing for the future isn’t just a matter of using tougher materials that can stand up to the vagaries of time and laundry cycles, Dillinger said.

“Instead of chasing the season‘s color or silhouette, it’s really [about] putting time and energy into what is my concept, what do I value, [what do I] go back to time and time again,” he said. “Less of what is that Instagrammable moment.”

Dillinger quoted a saying about how you should never use a pair of handcuffs unless you know where the keys are. In fashion’s current milieu, he said, plenty of design decisions are being made without recalling the location of those keys.

“There’s a lot of short-sighted thinking leading to the blending of fibers and components that can never be separated at the end of life,” Dillinger added. “In the case, [the product] damn well be worth something on the secondary market because you’re never going to be able to recover that value in a second-generation material.”