One of the key themes in retail in the last two years has been increasing awareness of the impact of ‘fast fashion’ on the environment.
Circular fashion startups such as Thrift+, Save Your Wardrobe, By Rotation and RESPONSIBLE are growing, reflecting the desire of younger generations to make ethical decisions for the good of the planet.
CEO Mark Dowds (main image, left) was so moved by the problem that he left his role as managing director of FinTech investor Anthemis Group to launch RESPONSIBLE in Belfast with COO Mitch Doust.
“My previous venture in the insurance industry led me to a greater awareness of the environmental impact on the world’s financial infrastructure and the need for an immediate response to protect our planet,” he tells TechBlast of on-demand insurance platform Trov, which he ran in Silicon Valley before joining Anthemis, where he is still a venture partner, in 2019.
“The more I researched about which industries had the greatest impact on the environment, the more I learned about the true cost of fashion and its disposable business model. It disturbed me enough to resign from work to solve the problem of circularity within the fashion industry.
“I recognised that the fashion industry had reached rock bottom from a pricing perspective and was ripe for disruption.”
Premium streetwear
The serial entrepreneur – who also co-founded Belfast’s tech community and co-working space Ormeau Baths in 2017 – analysed the financial model that most brands lived within and came up with an alternative structure that would drive circularity, increase profits and influence change in production.
“We chose global premium streetwear and outdoor as the first points of entry because of the tremendous aspirational influence those categories have on the fashion industry as a whole; and how outdoor and premium streetwear design and product quality appeal to a very conscientious consumer base – a customer that is committed to making responsible purchasing decisions that are positive for the planet,” he explains.
RESPONSIBLE aims to help premium fashion brands join the circular fashion movement in three ways: through implementation of ‘Buy Back’, a programme where customers can trade in used or unused past purchases in exchange for credit; through repairing, cleaning and preparing goods for future sale; and sales – both direct and via some of Europe’s biggest fashion marketplaces.
Brands featured on its own website include Stone Island, Carhartt, Patagonia and The North Face. Products include hoodies, sweatshirts, jackets, T-shirts, various bottoms, hats and bags.
Ethical creative studio RÆBURN was among RESPONSIBLE’s launch partners
Complex business
Dowds, an early seed investor in Uber and Twilio, has helped dozens of ventures off the ground over the last two decades through his Canadian and Irish-based incubators. He is utilising that knowledge and experience to manage the growth of RESPONSIBLE.
“Our business is quite complex: we need to balance the company’s three pillars, which involves a B2B business development effort next to the development of a B2C retail business,” he says. “Our greatest challenge is managing that complexity while the business is still relatively young, and it requires our team to be very flexible and focused on how we work and where we focus our efforts.”
The company has 15 full-time employees in four countries: Northern Ireland, England, Germany and America. A year ago it raised a $6.6 million seed round of investment led by Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital and Techstart Ventures.
Design data
RESPONSIBLE has also built a true circularity programme which allows its refurbishment team to capture and aggregate data from incoming products and institute a proper feedback loop with brand partners.
It analyses incoming products across 140 data points and offers valuable insights to its partners, which Dowds says often influences their design and development plans moving forward. “As a result, our greatest advocates are often product development teams because we provide data they have, in many cases, never had,” he adds.
RESPONSIBLE has seen 5x growth in both partners and revenue since its public launch in 2021. “We anticipate this growth will continue through 2023, which will keep us on track for a successful Series A to support our continued scaling,” says Dowds.
“We are focused on acquiring new fashion partners across the UK and EU… we [also] see great potential in the United States and expect to complete a launch pilot there soon before a scaled entry into North America.”
Asked for a nugget of advice for fellow startup founders, he answers: “Assume that your idea will not work and test everything obsessively before writing a line of code.
“And always be fundraising!”