We just extended our Flash Sale by another 10 days. Why? How can sales be part of a sustainable surf bikini business? We want to share some thoughts on sales and our approach towards a slower fashion.
Overproduction is one of fashion’s biggest problems that has a huge impact not exclusively but mainly on our environment. The fast fashion industry is worth $1.2 trillion due to the world consuming 80 billion items of clothing a year. However, consumption of fashion comes at a huge environmental, social and human cost: up to 10 % of global emissions are produced by the fashion industry annually.* In particular, big companies are guilty of producing in excess, say experts, while others have been operating with balance all along.**
Oy takes a different approach and sees size and growth as tasks that must be approached responsibly. Time is a quality for us, which we put into the development of the products on the one hand and on the other hand should determine the age of these. We create slow fashion — sustainable surf bikinis & active wear that not only stay on but also last, for more than one season.
In addition to quality, quantity is not a purely economic but also an ecological issue for us. Through our experience from over 10 years in the bikini business and with the feedback from customers, we can estimate how many products of a collection we can likely sell. Going along this framework, we minimize the risk of overproduction. Nonetheless, sometimes small overproduction cannot be avoided. In this case our second strategy comes to account where we design products that are not fashionable for one season only but even two or three seasons.
As we are aware that our surf bikinis and other products are of such high quality in terms of design and material, we normally see no need to offer them at a reduced price. But at some point there are only a few pieces in a limited variety of sizes available. These products tend to become dead stock items, taking up space in our small warehouse. Therefore, we offer special prizes on these items once or twice a year during an exclusive warehouse sale.
For us, offering a sale does not mean getting rid of old things and the prospect of quick money, but is a step further towards a sustainable economy. Following our own standards at Oy, nothing in our warehouse is thrown away or declared as garbage: In the very rare case that we are not able to sell an item, we upcycle it to hairties along with defective or faulty items, cut-off pieces, old material swatches, or useless samples.
