Brands’ new sustainability missions – How Lectra solutions help to deliver, efficiently

Job descriptions change over time. The same goes for fashion brands: while they still sell clothes, their responsibility now extends beyond the counter or the click. They are held accountable for each step before and each potential step after. And for a good reason: sustainability! And good news: there are tools for this!

Over the past few decades, the fashion industry has become more complex, with shifts occurring on all fronts. Creation is now limitless and multidimensional, supply chains are more intricate and global, sales are multi-channel and multi- and customer expectations now reach beyond a product’s benefits, with claims for information on the hows and whys of its making. Fashion companies now need to monitor their sustainability targets throughout this complex ecosystem from design to online sales and to stay abreast of a demanding legislative wave. Brands need to address three main issues upfront: traceability, their products’ environmental impact, and regulatory compliance, while remaining profitable — a whole new job description!

The answer to this is digitalization, using industry-specific tools. Lectra, a pioneer in Industry 4.0, supports fashion players by providing best-in-class technologies that help achieve environmentally friendly production, supply chain transparency and sustainability due diligence through straightforward and cost-effective collaborative tools.

Slashing the waste pile and piling on savings

Materials account for over 90% of CO2 emissions generated during the entire lifecycle of a cutting room. This means savings and waste reduction can start here: AI-powered software help rationalize purchases upstream and sell online. Retviews, an automated competitive analysis solution, is capable of analyzing competitors in real time providing brands with clear benchmarks, positioning, and pricing information to launch what will sell. By centralizing and sharing product information for multiple online marketplaces in one location, Neteven makes it simple to sell on marketplaces. By combining both Lectra’s solutions, brands can avoid overstock while increasing profitability and control over their environmental footprint.

Aligning agility with sustainability

To achieve sustainability - a long-standing pillar of Lectra’s strategy – production processes need to be digitalized, with targets that are visible for all partners, at every stage of a product’s creation and throughout the supply chain. With Kubix Link, a fashion-specific collaborative cloud-based PLM platform that helps smoothen and optimize data-access and teamwork covering the entire design-to-sale process (design, PLM and PIM), Lectra supports brands in their digitalization journey with a way to consistently share, monitor, meet and display their CSR targets.

Achieving Traceability & Regulatory Compliance

With textiles accounting for 10%* of global greenhouse emissions and only 1%* being recycled, its ecological impact can no longer be suppressed or concealed. Who and how our clothes are produced significantly affects global issues. In this context, regulators worldwide are passing a wave of ambitious legislations that hold brands accountable. Traceability is the key enabler of these assignments — which is why Lectra supports brands with its TextileGenesis platform: a scalable fiber-to-retail digital traceability platform for sustainable textiles. It offers complete transparency, not only to brands, but to the entire textile ecosystem throughout its value chain. Enabling responsible production with transparent supply chains helps reduce social and environmental impacts, but it also creates a more efficient and reliable process that benefits all fashion stakeholders.

For over 50 years, Lectra has boldly pioneered in the fashion industry with leading solutions that help design and drive CSR strategies. Because there will be no fashion without sustainability - sustainability is the future of fashion.

Care for more information? Contact Lectra’s team of experts and learn more about their solutions.

*The state of fashion 2024 McKinsey & Company