John: Let me probe into that just a bit. Somewhere along the way, I heard this thing about a garment that would be fully set up for the circular economy, that could be polyester-based like a hoodie or something like that. Where the zipper is made out of polyester, the thread is, and the slider on the zipper, maybe everything except the label. Have you run into, for that thing when it’s done and the garment is finally worn out, it can go back in and – boom – it all just gets recycled. Is that in the cards?
Alex: Very academic and laboratory and small scalability. Yes, that is something that a few people can explore. There are challenges to it. And I’d say there are three problems. And the first one’s really easy. It’s COVID, which is that the supply chain right now is a disaster. So if you’re hanging your hat on that right now, as a brand, you’re screwed. So glad we didn’t do that.
Number two is the ability to make some of those components in a – lets just say that its polyester version at the moment – is a challenge, and partially because you need metal pins sometimes to make a zipper head work. Sometimes the polyester thread is not the right choice. You actually want to use a cotton-poly blend, because the cotton has more texture and friction as it goes through and doesn’t heat the needle as much as full synthetic yarn. So there are reasons why that can be a challenge. The label is another big one.
So the third thing, if you’re a small brand who wanted to say “Money is no object.” You work for Richard Branson – you are Richard Branson – you can say “I’m going to start a clothing company that only focuses on fully recyclable products.” Cool, you can do that. You would basically bake that into your ethos. But that also brings supply and demand into the challenge. And the supply of those kinds of materials right now are very, very low. And it’s very theoretical. So if you wanted to get to scale – Richard Branson is like “We’re gonna turn this thing into a $100 million dollar business in a year.” There’s not enough supply.
