Denim’s Fixation on Price Is Stunting Sustainable Innovation, Experts Say

Denim’s Fixation on Price Is Stunting Sustainable Innovation, Experts Say

Scaling sustainable denim may boil down to a simple game of supply and demand.

At Kingpins Transformers in Amsterdam last week, experts from the denim supply chain hashed out the financial impact of sustainable innovations and why after years of BCI cotton, organic cotton, laser technologies and more, it still costs brands more to make and sell environmentally-friendly jeans.

The cost of sustainability garment to garment is minimal, but for mass producers making millions of garments, Miguel Sanchez, founder of Gavilan AD, said the cost to go green is nominal.

“Increasing a cent is nothing, but multiply it by three million like some brands and retailers and it becomes a lot,” Sanchez said.

However, the reason why some good innovations are still relatively expensive is because critical mass hasn’t yet been reached.

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