Released in The Interline’s Sustainability Report 2024, this executive interview with Hyland is one of an exclusive five-part series that sees The Interline quiz executives from companies who are defining what the foundations and the frontend experiences of sustainability solutions will be.
For more on sustainability in fashion, download the full Sustainability Report 2024 completely free of charge and ungated.
Last year, it became clear that “sustainability” was still a useful term for capturing a very complex set of variables and conditions. This year, we want to look at how those different elements are being arranged and prioritised. Upstream visibility and traceability, for instance, is a separate piece of the sustainability puzzle from textile-to-textile recycling, or material science, or the circular economy. With all these different parts vying for brands’ and suppliers’ attention, and legislation adding time and compliance pressure to the mix, how do you believe our readers should be thinking about prioritisation?
We think brands should be prioritizing their sustainability initiatives based on the health of their business and the maturity of their operations. For instance, a brand that is fighting for its survival shouldn’t be thinking about upstream visibility or material science, they should be thinking about how digital product creation and more sustainable production practices can positively impact their market effectiveness and operating margins and how introducing circularity can represent extended revenue streams for their companies.
Compliance and industry legislation conformance shouldn’t be the exclusive driver of adoption of these practices. The prioritization should be based on consumer preferences, market share retention and over-all production cost reductions. Focusing on traceability with the intent of quality improvements is more practical than focusing on traceability for disclosure and compliance of statutes that aren’t widely mandated in all geographies and markets yet.
Over the last year, several brands have gone through staff reductions and restructuring. Unfortunately, sustainability departments have been significantly impacted by these market conditions. Attempting to secure budget and long-term investment commitment to multiple pieces of the sustainability puzzle is a fleeting effort. Sustainability directives and operational transformations need to be contemplated and activated in accordance to the strength of your business and the current state of your supply chain. Improvements must directly drive lower costs and increased revenue and not just represent cost centers.
However you stack those priorities, it’s clear that reaching sustainability targets is a long-term endeavour, and one that will encompass many – if not all – of the different stages in a typical product lifecycle. Which of those stages do you believe Hyland has a role to play in? And have your brand customers used your platform to get closer to their sustainability targets in any ways that have surprised you?
Hyland’s role is typically in the very early stages of the product lifecycle (planning and prototyping before manufacturing) as well as downstream distribution and promotion with traceability and supplier disclosure. As a Digital Asset and Data Management platform provider, we contribute data for decision making and visual reinforcement but we don’t play a direct role in the physical manufacturing activities.
We focus on virtualizing product development activities and activating data driven decisions in the end-to-end supply chain. The data and content can be harvested for process improvement, audit and governance as well as attestation.
Our customers continue to iterate and expand the role of their Nuxeo implementations in ways that inspire us vs. surprise us. A unique aspect of addressing sustainability targets that was mentioned recently is the holistic corporate view of being more sustainable and eco-friendly. Identifying conservation efforts beyond the product development supply chain and into the operational aspects of managing the business; measuring the reduction of paper based processes; attempting to reduce energy consumption and compute resources by mitigating redundant tasks and application demands.
When we think about the design, development, and production journey, can you provide some examples of where companies you have worked with are realising the most value, today, from their investments in sustainability? Because Hyland is an interesting case in that these gains will be coming from pure software and process change, rather than any direct mechanical or material innovation.
As you pointed out, Hyland’s sphere of influence is limited as a software provider. There are three ways in which the brands we work with are realising the most value.
First is related to physical sample creation and waste. By virtualizing material and texture libraries, design decisions can be made more easily without the creation, duplication and multiple versions of physical samples and prototypes. Sample reductions are a good place to start, but one could argue that sample reductions exclusively don’t have a dramatic effect on a company’s carbon footprint.
Second is with regards to the disclosure and data integrity. By standardizing and centralizing processes, data collection and operating procedures can be documented, audited, and published to ensure sustainable practice claims can be represented honestly and without the risk of litigation penalties and loss of consumer confidence.
Third is with regard to over-all decision accuracy. By enabling data driven decisions and fostering cross-functional collaboration at every stage of the supply chain, end-to-end cycle times can be reduced and more importantly production decisions can be trusted to result in successful outcomes leading to less over-production, inventory surpluses, and maximized linear value chain conditions.
Looking further downstream, what benefits can fashion brands and retailers realise from building greater confidence into how they communicate their sustainability initiatives to consumers? Digital asset management has become a key part of many companies’ toolkits when it comes to making sure their products appear in their best possible light, across a broad spectrum of channels, and this increasingly means demonstrating the impact of those products with clarity, accuracy, and accountability.
We often say that brands sell products not digital assets or photo-realistic renderings. Building consumer confidence is more multi-faceted than simply capturing a consumer’s attention with curated social media campaigns or promotional point of sale displays. Securing loyalty and customer acquisition is more than just communicating a brand’s sustainability commitment, but ensuring that communication and commitment is authentic and consistent with the brand’s voice.
The benefits are significant:
- Increased customer loyalty
- Positive brand identity
- Increased product margins
- Access to new markets or diversified channels
- Compliance with future industry and environmental regulations
- Improved employee satisfaction & retention
Beyond the internal benchmarks and commitments we’ve already talked about, the landscape for sustainability is being quickly reshaped by tightening regulations that target different regions and different challenges, and that have different enforcement mechanisms. What do you see happening next in legislation, and how are Hyland’s customers preparing for it?
The EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) is what immediately comes to mind. The DDP will impact most fashion companies in the coming years, particularly those companies that have a significant percentage of their sales in Europe. The DPP is a tool to enforce transparency to share product information across the entire value chain including data on raw material extraction, production and recycling.
Ambitious regulations like the DDP will undoubtedly capture the attention of company officials and serve as industry wide megaphone preluding more aggressive mandates to follow not just in Europe but across all geographies.
Hyland customers are preparing for these types of legislation by centralizing their data collection efforts. There are no established standards for supplier data so starting a consolidated repository is a natural first step in the disclosure and process improvement evolution.
With sustainability destined to bring sweeping changes to many different parts of the fashion value chain, it seems inevitable that some (or many) current ways of working will have a limited shelf life. Where do you see the industry changing the fastest and most acutely? What do we take for granted today that’s unlikely to be viable in the future? And how can fashion businesses get ahead of that shift?
Talent and change management continue to be the longest pole in the tent. Resources that have experience and the skillset necessary to lead these new ways to operating are not only in high-demand, but are also very selective in where they work and live. This puts brands in difficult positions to negotiate wage and cost of living benefits. Outsourcing is an alternative consideration but not a prudent long-term strategy.
Beyond securing and retaining the right personnel, introducing agile processes that dynamically evolve to address constant change requires resolved C-level sponsorship, lean project management, and continuous fulfilment which doesn’t naturally map to the traditional fashion industry perspectives that involve restrained budgets and seasonal delivery schedules.
We take for granted the “fail fast” mentality and the culture of experimentation. Those principles are ideal for circumstances where critical milestones are not mandated and performance outcomes aren’t so heavily weighted across the health of the business.
Fashion businesses must get ahead of the shift, by focusing on the foundational prerequisites. Unifying the source of truth data silos; standardizing tool sets as much as possible; providing templatizing form inputs for collaboration and data collection from external partners; and leveraging emerging technologies such as AI and Machine Learning. Don’t be distracted by the latest technology trends until the proper foundational capabilities are in place to take advantage of the advanced automations.
