A Revolution in Fashion Industry
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/fashion/extinction-rebellion-fashion-protest.html
https://gallantway.com.au/blog/allbirds-growth-marketing-case-study/
The above two articles concern about how consumer choice could stirs up the fashion industry. On the final day of the London Fashion Week in September, the most important event of the fashion industry in London, hundreds of Extinction Rebellion activists were protesting against the industry for emitting too much carbon with the “Boycott Fashion” posters. This protest, undoubtedly, has made the fashion brands and retailers very upset — it not only disrupted the event but also tarnished the brands’ reputations. On the other hand, there has been a rise of numerous eco-friendly brands lately, and one of them is Allbirds, an shoe brand making shoes from wool and whose supply chain has committed to carbon neutrality. Allbirds has established its name and quickly competed over other brands like Adidas and Nike in some conscious consumers’ eyes because of its core dedication to environmental protection. In today’s era of “woke consumer” era, consumers have been more and more aware of the carbon footprint embedded in their choice and more prone to choosing the more eco-friendly brands and products. Although most consumers are not directly participating in protest movements, the fact of being conscious consumers plays a big part in promoting the industry’s shift from huge carbon emitter to being more carbon-conscious, and I’m glad to see people are taking actions against traditional fashion brands to encourage production activities that protect the mother earth.
This closely related to the topic of network effects in this class. The underlying mechanism that make the fashion industry especially susceptible to consumer choice is the network effects: trends don’t become “fashionable” the moment they come out; they become trendy only if enough people are already adopting the trends or expect enough people to adopt this trend, which later attracts many other consumers. The reason why customers might decide to adopt a certain fashion trend is that there’s an added value to it because other people are also wearing it and they don’t want to fall behind. If one sees a large-enough fraction of customers don’t agree with their carbon-heavy practices or values and switching to the more eco-friendly brands, he might just also decide to choose other brands that are more eco-friendly. Thus is the way that consumer choice could impact how fashion industry produce and market their products.