The sustainable fashion supplier Bleed clothing GmbH is again in financial difficulties due to the adverse market situation. The Heimbrechts-based company fears “not being able to close this year because our situation has deteriorated extremely in a very short time,” admitted Michael Spitzbarth, the label’s founder and CEO, in an open letter that the company sent on Monday shared with FashionUnited. “Only an investor can now help to turn the situation into a positive one,” the letter says. If no new investors are found, Bleed will “soon be out of business”. The industry magazine Textilwirtschaft had previously reported on the company’s situation.
As a reason for the unfortunate situation, Spitzbarth cited the deterioration of essential framework conditions in the past few months: “Unfortunately, the force of the crises has now hit us completely,” he explained in his statement. “It is more the sum of many serious influencing factors, such as price increases, changed payment terms on the part of suppliers, high interest rates, capital-binding inventories and an extremely changed purchasing behavior, which have contributed to the fact that we got into this difficult situation.”
In view of the rising cost of living, customer preferences have recently changed significantly, explained Spitzbarth. “We see that real sustainability hardly plays a role in purchasing decisions anymore and that at the moment, if at all, only price-conscious purchases are made,” he explained. In addition, “the market is further diluted by the ‘greenwashing’ of large companies”.