In the middle of the United States in Sidney, Nebraska, there’s a 800,000-square foot factory where workers disassemble clothes and shoes for their next life. It’s one of two facilities owned by ReCircled, a startup that describes itself as the “infrastructure for fashion in the circular economy.”
Dve leti staro podjetje želi preprečiti, da bi oblačila in obutev prišli na odlagališča, tako da bi jih dlje časa krožili z deljenjem, izposojo, popravili in nadaljnjo prodajo ter že od samega začetka oblikovali za krožnost z uporabo materialov, ki so trpežni in jih je mogoče ponovno uporabiti.
Scott Kuhlman, izvršni direktor ReCircled, ima več kot tri desetletja izkušenj v maloprodajni industriji oblačil s prodajo in proizvodnjo oblačil – v industriji moških oblačil z blagovnima znamkama Hartmarx in Joseph Abboud ter kasneje z ustanovitvijo podjetja za nabavo izdelkov Masko, ki še vedno obstaja – in to uporablja kot skoki- izven točke na krožno stran mode.
During those decades Kuhlman has worked closely with three people: his wife Susan, his partner for 30 years in all of their businesses; Flavio Mauro in Prato, Italy; and Kuhlman’s daughter Audrey.
“Initially we drug her and her older sister through factories and fabric mills,” Kuhlman told me. Since those younger days, Audrey has pivoted with them on ReCircled and now serves as the company’s director of customer relations and vice president of marketing.
“We’ve spent a lot of time working on everything from the raw materials, the fibers, all the way up to finished garments,” Kuhlman said. “We’ve got a very broad knowledge of the process of getting raw materials into a finished product.”
ReCircled is already working with more than 50 brands, including footwear company Merrell, according to Kuhlman. (The rest are under NDA.) The company’s workforce in the United States fluctuates between 80 and 100 people from month to month. In Europe, the employee roster is about half that.
As more brand partners come aboard, Kulman expects ReCircled’s workforce and number of facilities to grow. “In the United States, there’ll be many ReCircled facilities,” he said. “In Europe, there will be many ReCircled facilities. It’s a given. But we just have to start with one, and then we’ll get to two, three and four.”
Prejšnji mesec sem se praktično srečal s Kuhlmanom in razpravljal o podjetju delo s podjetjem Timberland, stanje krožnega gospodarstva za modo in njegova vizija za ReCircled v naslednjem letu.
Ta intervju je bil urejen zaradi dolžine in jasnosti.
Deonna Anderson: Obstaja več kot peščica podjetij, ki opravljajo to vrsto dela. Kako vidite ReCircled kot edinstveno ali drugačno od drugih podjetij, ki zagotavljajo infrastrukturo za podporo krožnemu gospodarstvu v modi?
Scott Kuhlman: 30 let smo porabili za proizvodnjo oblačil, obutve in dodatkov – celo življenje smo delali na novem izdelku. In potem smo pred malo več kot dvema letoma ustanovili ReCircled, da bi res rešili problem krožnosti, z uporabo znanja, da moramo izdelati nova oblačila. In vprašanje, ki smo si ga zastavili, je, kako preprosto izvedemo obratni inženiring procesa?
I think we need to come together as an industry and make things more transparent about what’s possible today.
Vedeli smo, da morata obstajati sistem in proces, ki ju je treba razviti. Obstajajo kosi, ki jih lahko najdete za okroglost oblačil in obutve.
There’s processors. There’s textile recycling [which] has been going on for a long time. Rubber recycling, plastic recycling, that’s happened. The question is: Is it being done at its highest value, its highest properties, and do we have the opportunity to close loops and get that product back into supply streams? And the current system and the current recyclers of everyone we found, they weren’t working towards that goal.
Začeli smo s koncem v mislih, kot veliko ljudi, ki ni odlagališče. In vsak dan postavljamo to vprašanje: Kako lahko ta izdelek vrnemo našim partnerjem blagovne znamke, da ga bodo lahko uporabljali? In to je tisti, ki ustvarja razliko, mislim.
The second part of the equation we’re looking at is that we have the brand partners in mind because we know that for all of these circular activities, whether it’s upcycling or recycling, we have to find revenue streams. Because if we don’t find revenue streams, this isn’t gonna work. And so the first goal is to get this process to net zero for our brand partners. And then the second one is to actually find revenue streams.
I think that’s where we’re a little bit different … we’re not just recycling for a byproduct that then we can sell into that marketplace. We’re actually looking to build the process and system.
Anderson: Kako bi opisali trenutno stanje krožnega gospodarstva v modi?
Kuhlman: We always use the words, “It’s the Wild West right now.” And the Wild West is just that. Everybody’s interested in it, but there’s just not a lot of knowledge about it, a lot of facts. There’s a lot of things that people read that aren’t necessarily true. And so first of all, it’s demystifying all of that.
I think we need to come together as an industry and make things more transparent about what’s possible today. And there’s a lot that can be done today. Two years ago when we started this, we always mentioned that everybody’s looking for the magic pill for circularity just to happen. And that’s not gonna happen, so that’s where the status is. We need more people starting. We need more brands just starting rather than talking about it.
Move beyond pilots because pilots don’t work. Build your road map. Build your process. Because it’s hard to recycle at the pilot level. It’s hard to build a long-term future if we can’t build that road map. So my thought for everybody within it is, “Don’t think about a pilot to see what can happen because we can tell you what a result can be.” Let’s build a roadmap to 2030, and then hit the milestones for them as a brand, and start. And it’s entirely possible for every brand and retailer to start today.
Anderson: Ko sem delal Zgodba o Timberlandu, sem se spraševal, kaj je bilo potrebno, da sta se ti dve podjetji združili in dejansko zgradili program za prevzem, kot je Timberloop. Ali lahko opišete postopek zagona programa?
Kuhlman: The first thing I’d say is it takes a lot of faith among a big company like Timberland and VF Corporation. It takes faith in them jumping into the world of entrepreneurship and startups. We’ve got a proven track record in other businesses. But a year and a half ago when Timberland said, “Let’s do this,” we had no idea if we’re going to succeed or not. So they had the faith, and ability to say, “Let’s jump into this pool together and let’s figure this thing out.” They committed a lot of time from their side, not only just from a sustainability team, but they built into the DNA of the company to refinance through product development, through marketing. Everybody totally understood what the end game was. Now we weren’t going to get there on day one, but we were going to start, and they built a road map with that.
And so it took faith on their part. It took the entrepreneurship on our side to show them that we can solve the problems. Just tell us what they are. As entrepreneurs, that’s what we do. And then together through a collaboration, it’s not been pretty. It’s not been easy on either of our parts. There’s been ups and downs, hiccups and everything else. Frustration. But together, we can do it.
And I think if anything else that the partnership that we’ve built with Timberland, and now VF Corporation, is that it takes faith on their part and a willingness to make it happen.
Anderson: Omenili ste, da obstajajo izzivi. S tem v mislih, ali lahko delite kakšne izkušnje iz dosedanjega dela s Timberlandom in kako ste jih rešili?
Kuhlman: Yeah. I mean it goes back to, as I just said, it’s very important to have this built in the DNA of the company. So if you think of a big company with lots of people, where they’ve got a finance team, they’ve got a marketing team, they’ve got a sustainability team, they have to get a lot of people onboard. And they ought to understand exactly what we’re trying to do from beginning to end. And sometimes doing things by committee, it’s hard [to get everyone’s buy-in].
The other challenge is just getting stuff done. It’s the time lag because even just starting what you think is a small little take-back program, there’s just a mountain of detail to do that because we’re tagging onto their system, their technology system. So with security issues and so on today, that’s a hard lift for everybody. And so that’s where just getting through the to-do list is a challenge because there’s so many to-do’s.
In zdaj, ko to začenjamo kot globalni program, kjer ga začenjamo v Evropi in Združenem kraljestvu, ustvarja povsem nov sklop izzivov od vseh jezikovnih ovir do logistike. Ampak spet stvari, ki se dajo rešiti. Potreben je le čas in pripravljenost vseh, da se usedemo in rešimo.
Anderson: Želim se malo podpreti za več konteksta. ReCircled je bil ustanovljen leta 2020. Podjetje je sodelovalo s podjetjema Timberland in Avery Dennison. Kaj vse ste še počeli, da bi se uveljavili kot del infrastrukture za krožno gospodarstvo?
Kuhlman: When we started, we heard two words. One, it’s complicated, and the second, it’s expensive. We knew that for anything to be successful, it can’t be complicated for either the brand or the retailer or the consumer. We had to make it simple and user-friendly.
We looked at what’s available today, what’s not available today. And, again, it’s this process that we knew we had to build out first. We built the process for becoming circular regardless of if you’re super luxury or if you’re fast fashion. And quite frankly, it’s very interesting to see that it doesn’t matter what space you’re in — luxury, fashion, outdoor, whatever it is — the process is the same for everybody. There’s little nuances to it, but the process is the same.
The second thing we knew is we had to build the technology to drive this. And so we spent a lot of time and energy and investment in building a full technology stack that’s completely integrated that literally allows a brand to become circular overnight, starting with this take-back process all the way to our internal systems for cleaning, repair, for disassembly, for recycling through to resale and re-commerce, white label platforms, and all the reporting and data collection needed for moving this forward. So it’s a quite powerful technology stack that we built.
Then there’s facilities themselves. To do this work, it’s gonna take buildings and people. So we’ve been opening the spaces. We have two, one here in the U.S. and another one in Italy to handle Europe and the U.K. And we had to open the spaces not knowing really what we needed or what we needed to do. And so that’s where we built this flexibility into them.
We’re adding to them every single day with new processes, new things we’re able to do that we discovered along the way. So it’s really those three pillars over the last years that we’ve built a very solid footing for process technology and facilities.
Anderson: Zakaj je bil Prato v Italiji dobro mesto za objekt?
Kuhlman: [Prior to ReCircled], we’ve had an office in Prato, Italy for 25 years. If you don’t know Prato, Prato is the center of textile recycling. They’ve been doing it for decades. And they figured it out a long time ago. I think it’s almost 100 years ago when they figured out how to recycle textiles, and they did it out of need. But we’ve worked with fabric mills in the Prato area on product production, on new product production using recycled fabrics, yarns, et cetera for a long time just because that’s where we’re at.
To be very transparent, we’re familiar with Prato. We have an office. We had people, so it was easy to do. It’s also turning out to be the right move because as we got into footwear and accessories — Tuscany and Florence and Prato and Empoli and Lucca, that area is the bastion of leather and footwear production, as well.
Dobavitelji nam zdaj dobesedno izumljajo nove stroje za razstavljanje obutve. In zato je bila z naše strani odlična poteza, da smo bili na pravem območju za to.
In zelo jih zanima iskanje teh načinov za zapiranje zank, za izvajanje raziskav in razvoja glede tega, kaj moramo storiti za recikliranje gume. Iznašli smo način, kako uporabiti gumijaste podplate in ustvariti nove gumijaste podplate. Uspelo nam je z — ustvarili smo prvi postopek predelave usnja, pri katerem uporabljamo usnje po uporabi za ustvarjanje novih zvitkov usnja. Vse to je bilo razvito v Italiji, zato smo prav tam zelo srečni, da so naši partnerji pri tem.
Anderson: Zdaj bi rad šel v Prato, da bi videl, kako vse deluje.
Kuhlman: Povem vam, da bi bili navdušeni nad tem. In kar je zanimivo, je [krožnost] tam samoumevna. Za nas je vse to novo in fascinantno. Zanje je to tako kot način življenja. In to je fantastično, ker imajo to bazo znanja.
Anderson: Kot izvršni direktor ReCircleda, kaj si predstavljate za podjetje v naslednjem letu?
Kuhlman: Vizija je, da imamo samo več blagovnih znamk in trgovcev na drobno, ki rečejo da temu načrtu. In da več [ljudi v C-suite] razume proces, ki mora potekati. Obstajajo ekipe za trajnostni razvoj. Obstajajo ekipe za izdelke.
You and I and everybody involved understands what we have to do. But as a CEO of a clothing or footwear brand, they have to look at the number of units they’re producing, and they have to raise their hand and say, “We’re gonna take care of 100 percent of those all the time. What is the process and system we have to get involved with to do that?” And I don’t think they have that understanding. And it’s an education process.
To je moja vizija, le več C-stopenj, ki skočijo in rečejo da, ter opolnomočijo ljudi, da naredijo tisto, kar je res potrebno, da se to zgodi. In če se to zgodi, bomo nadaljevali.
In je, počasi. Veliko blagovnih znamk sodeluje z javnimi podjetji. Njihovi odbori se vključujejo. Pri telefonskih klicih in Zoomih opažamo več ljudi na ravni C. Torej se začenja. Toda narediti moramo več.
