In our blog post Steps to Circularity, we outlined five steps that a company can use as a guide to incorporate Circularity into their business. We will follow up with a deeper dive into each of the steps with the hope that your company adopts them.
Vision is critical because it is meant to push the company toward something new, innovative, and unique.
Part 1 - Set a clear vision
Establish a vision of circularity for your company. Once this is set everyone can be trained on what this means and have a single point of reference of why they are doing the work to change the business.
Often an idea comes to a brand out of interest, someone reads an article or speaks to someone and learns about a new process or innovation in the industry. That idea gets bounced around to a few people, some research is often done, and at some point the decision to move forward on implementing that idea needs support. If the idea stays in the pilot stage or testing stage, it never gets the attention it needs to be a success for the company. This is why we focus on VISION as the first step.
If a company is going to benefit from the promises of Circularity it must be set from leadership with a clear articulation of what will be achieved. Vision is critical because it is meant to push the company towards something new, innovative, and unique. Doing business as usual with a side pilot program on resale isn’t visionary. It doesn’t inspire creativity, buy-in, or belief that the company wants to change.
I share our vision within Bleckmann to share how we are approaching Circularity.
In the future, the apparel and textile industry will use resources wisely, less of them, use products multiple times and at their highest potential, and the companies and supply chains that make these products will be designed effectively and inclusively for circularity.
To capitalize on this vision, Bleckmann bought The Renewal Workshop in 2022 to accelerate the expertise, technology, processes, and systems needed to offer Circular services. Staff within the company started looking at existing services through the lens of Circularity and identified new products that could be offered to clients to support them in their Circular journey.
Each year at Bleckmann’s leadership offsite, this vision is shared. The commitment to the vision is articulated in our annual Leading Circular Report. This continuous sharing of the vision and its belief within the leadership of the company creates the foundational work for the execution of Circularity to occur.
