Queen of Raw: sustainability as a solution
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As the industry becomes increasingly concerned with environmental protection and sustainability, a platform called Queen of Raw is using its unique model to inject new energy and possibilities into fashion sustainability. Recently, Between Conscious Program had the honor to interview Ms. Stephanie Benedetto, founder and CEO of the platform. As an expert in sustainable fashion, Ms Stephanie Benedetto highlighted the issue of waste in the apparel industry and explained how Queen of Raw transforms unused, new and second-hand fabrics into sustainable fashion products, giving us an insight into how it is promoting environmental protection and circular economy in an innovative way.
"Every year, approximately $120 billion worth of unused and unsold fabrics in the fashion industry are incinerated as industrial waste or buried in landfills" Ms Benedetto said in an interview, "and this is minimized through the continued use of stock fabrics as a source of production; and hopefully unlock the powerful innovative power of the whole chain from sourcing to design and efficient production through the platform, thus promoting a circular economy model for the fashion industry". Through the interview, we gained a deeper understanding of how Queen of Raw promotes the development of the sustainable fashion industry in an innovative way:from concept to implementation, from technology to practice, and finally to talents'cultivation. With the growing awareness of environmental protection, Queen of Raw's concepts and practices provide more practical solutions for the whole industry.
How did Queen of Raw get born？
After learning about my great-grandfather's story, I found one thing, the traditional way of doing business will have a lot of excess fabrics.As things have changed in supply chains since my great grandfather's day, there was a lot of excess fabric that would sit in warehouses collecting dust or being burned or sent to landfill. And so that's the problem that my company Queen of Raw decided to address: How do we get all of this beautiful high quality deadstock excess fabric, from the warehouse into the web and to buyers hands.
How does Queen of Raw balance supply chain profitability with sustainability by adopting a software?
Companies who participate in our software and our platform, brands don't have to worry about anything. We take care of everything for them, from finding the buyers for their deadstock fabric to all the payments and the logistics. We really try to make it quick, easy and cost-effective, so that anybody is able to participate in our solution. Our customers don't have to worry about the software and the tools: it is our job to help them see what they have saved and made both in terms of dollars and of environmental impact, quickly and easily, in the palm of their hand.
What is the measurable impact of your work?
Not only we can show clients how much money has been saved and made, but we can also measure and report for them: the water, the chemicals, the carbon emissions and the waste saved by them keeping this beautiful fabric circulation longer, instead of going out and buying new fabric. And that's a very important thing to be able to talk about today: Regulations around the World are changing, companies need to find solutions that are more responsible, for their excess and their deadstock fabric. Our customers don't know how to do their own measuring and reporting, so we take care of it for them. This way, they have all the books and records to prove the good work that they did, and they are able to get credit for it.
This is not just about them being able to show their customers and their community what they did: by talking about it publicly and confidently they can reach new customers who share the same concerns. Such customers take pride in being aware about their efforts in the circular economy and strive to become more responsible and sustainable. One of our customers, just by talking about what they were doing with us, actually saw the conversion rate growing 3 times in their online B2C business. This means tripling the volume of customers that come to you, because you can talk about all the great things that you're doing, and actually back it up with data records.
Can you share any outstanding case study?
One of our big public case studies that we were thrilled to have this year was with Ralph Lauren. Their CEO was so proud of the work we did, he actually mentioned us as point No. 2 in his cover letter in his ESG report. And by coming on to our software, and uploading the spreadsheet of what they had in excess fabric across Asia, they were actually able to take action on over 11 metric tons of excess inventory and deadstock fabric. So it's not just one yard at a time, this is tens of metric tons at a time. Working with us, they were able to divert over 92 percent from landfill and incineration. And they put that in their ESG report, it was audited by their internal auditors and got a very positive reception.
So I think one of the things that we're really excited about is that these types of solutions are applicable not only to processing one yard of fabric at a time, but also to processing larger volumes of metric tons of fabric at a time. Solutions like ours are not only suitable for small pilot projects, small eco-conscious collections, but they can also be made scalable and implemented around the world. Our partnership with Ralph Lauren actually took place across seven venues in Asia, and I'm proud of what the team has done, proud of our software, and proud to be able to share this case study.
Do you think there is still a lack of environmental education in the industry?
When we first started looking at this issue, in 2018 we quantified the amount of excess fabric and deadstock out there, and we saw it was around 120 billion dollars worth of unused fabric. In the meantime I think that there's been a lot more education in the world. People have woken up to why these issues matter, and if any good can come out of everything going on in the world and of the challenges, it's how we can turn them into opportunities, to do better for our children. So a big part of what I do of course is getting out there and educating people about why this matters. We speak a lot with our customers, we speak a lot at trade shows and events around the world, always to provide guidance as we share data and reports, so that others can understand why this matters, and we will continue to do so. I think the world has grown in its understanding of these issues, and how important they are, but I think there's still a lot of room to continue to educate and support our community, especially on a global scale.
"Very proud to be able to share a little bit about what we do on the Between Conscious Program. This kind of platform brings together so many important voices from around the world. That is how people are going to learn more about who we are, and what we do, and by being able to share that voice, we connect with an even stronger network."
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