Interview with Prof. Peter Schmies AMD Akademie Mode & Design about #fashion and #sustainabledevelopment

Interview with Prof. Peter Schmies AMD Akademie Mode & Design about #fashion and #sustainabledevelopment

Please let us know how you got in contact with the fashion industry and the topic of sustainability?

I used to work in various companies in the fashion industry for about 20 years, seeing successful business models come and go.

For another about 20 years I work now in academic research and teaching, seeing other successful business models come and go.

Sustainability became more and more relevant in these years – from individual touchpoints when visiting production plants in far east: rising questions like: how old is this employee? can I see the ID card, please? to a topic of overall societal significance – and therefore also for the business models of companies.

Please allow us to go a little bit deeper and try to answer the questions based on your knowledge and background.

1. What changes do you anticipate taking place in the fashion industry in regards to sustainability in the next five years?

Sustainability will more and more become a hygienic factor. Customers will expect fashion companies to care and to take responsibility?for the results of their business activities and the impact on environment and people.

2. How do you think technology will influence sustainable practices in the fashion industry?

It is not possible to work sustainable – at least on a large scale – without the use of corresponding technology. There are so many different possibilities and techniques to support the sustainable footprint of fashion companies:?

Virtual prototyping including color management could save a lot of resources spent by producing and transporting physical samples.

Digital product data includes all product relevant information to ensure transparency over the product lifecycle and enable circularity, blockchain technology could support that even more trustworthy.

AI-based predictive analytics can increase the ratio of market success in product development and production.

Production automation, smart factories and IoT is key to enable on-demand production to reduce overstock.

Digital marketplaces in B2B do already reduce environmental footprints and support better assortments, in C2C it does already allow to expand product use and product lifecycles beyond borders by supporting sharing or product reuse.

Just to name a few possibilities of what we know already. And there will be much more technology to come that we do not know yet…

3. From your perspective: How can fashion companies use sustainability as a marketing tool?

I don’t think that sustainability will be a great marketing tool for fashion companies – as I already mentioned is it more a hygienic factor which means, that it is a basic requirement from customers that won’t cause extraordinary exhaust. But beware of not acting accordingly. That means it will be a necessity for fashion companies to inform in an easy accessible way about what they are doing in terms of sustainability and how they deal with their responsibility.

4. Do you think that ethical and sustainable fashion is a trend or a growing movement?

It definitely is. However: For the majority of customers there will be stronger reasons to buy fashion…

5. What impact do you think governmental regulations will have on the fashion industry's sustainability efforts??

We already experience that the speed of change towards more sustainability would be much slower without governmental regulations. I expect that to continue, resulting in further, stricter, and more global coordinated regulations in the next years.

#fashion #futureofretail #marketing #sales #sustainable #futureoffashion #sales #retailinnovation