The team that was behind Lost Stock to support 113,000 garment workers during the Covid-19 pandemic is back. As they want to create term change in the fashion industry, they are now launching This Is Unfolded.
This Is Unfolded is offering a new approach to clothes shopping, an approach that will be better for our planet, workers, consumers, and society. The brand wants to remove the wastes that we can find in any retail so it can use the saving made to pay garment workers improved wages as well as create a long-term positive impact by funding children’s education in India.
They intend to do all this while delivering us sustainable clothes at affordable prices.
Last year, a lot of fashion brands canceled over $2 billion of completed clothes orders in response to Covid lockdown. Because of this, the garment workers who produced them received no payment. In order to give support to these people, a team in Scotland came together and launch Lost Stock. They sold all these clothes as mystery boxes and the money generated was donated to support garment workers in Bangladesh.
This initiative had an important impact, indeed in seven months, they helped 113,000 people in Bangladesh for over one month each. They also built a community of over 100,000 impactful shoppers in 10 countries.
However, the team is not ready to stop here. They choose to go on a new mission, and they now want to build a new way to shop and create a new fashion industry in the process. This is what will become This Is Unfolded.
This Is Unfolded has created a new factory to consumer model, which is combined with a unique community driven approach and data insight, so they can reduce product wastage and industry inefficiencies in a remarkable way. With the quantity of waste reduce – and even removed – they will be able to create their clothes in a more sustainable way as well as improving the lives of their workers and their local community.
With their brand, they ensure that their garment workers are paid better through the Unfolded Worker Fund but also that every purchase will directly fund children’s education in Inda through their Indian NGO partner Pratham. They also wish to be as transparent as they can be and in order to do that they will publish reports highlighting the results of their collection.
Their first collection was launched in March 2021 and in three weeks, they were able to support 550 children in education for a year through their partner. Furthermore, only 1% of the orders made on this collection were returned. In the fashion industry, we normally see 30% of returns.
Their second collections launched on May 6, and feature a range of dresses, jumpsuits, tops, and basics. By shopping the collection, we are able to see the support provided by our purchase because we can find it detailed alongside product costs in the checkout process. The prices are set at £35 per jumpsuit, £24 per top, and £13 per basic. This is 20% lower than clothes with similar quality from traditional brands.
The CEO and Co-Founder of This Is Unfolded, Cally Russell, shared: “It’s clear the retail industry is totally broken, what we saw last year with billions of dollars of orders being canceled with little or no regard for workers shows it’s time to re-balance the system. This is Unfolded is on a mission to create a new model of retail that’s better for the planet, society, workers and for consumers.
We do this by removing the waste from the bloated system to fund improvements across product and our supply chain. Our work with Lost Stock showed us that consumers are ready for something different and we can’t wait for them to try This is Unfolded and join our mission.”
In the high profile supporters that are adopting this new approach offered by This is Unfolded, we can see Martha from Great British Bake Off, Sian Lloyd, Sophie Porley, and Alexandra Liyanage to name but a few.
Here is some glimpse of This is Unfolded’s new collection:
#Peace.Love.ThisIsUnfolded
