When it comes to beer bottles and crates, it’s the most normal thing in the world: a deposit. Anyone who buys a few bottles of beer or a bottle of soft drink in the store pays a deposit of ten to twenty-five cents, which is refunded when the bottles are returned to the supermarket. In this way, consumers are encouraged not to throw away reusable materials, but to return them to the manufacturer so that they can be recycled.
Why isn’t there a deposit on clothes yet? Xander Slager and Nelleke Wegdam, the founders of the Dutch clothing brand New Optimist, asked themselves this question. Since launching the brand in 2021, Wegdam and Slager have been working towards a fully circular chain. In terms of design and production, the company has already come a long way: for example, it only uses natural mono-materials that make recycling easier, and instead of throwing away trimmings, it turns them into labels, appliqués or new garments.
But that’s not enough, Slager knows. “Designing and producing for the circular economy is not the same as circular economy. Circular economy is part of the whole business model.” That also means thinking about recycling clothes after wear and reusing materials. With their own deposit scheme, which will be rolled out at New Optimist from September, Wegdam and Slager want to take steps in that direction.
Xander Slager: “You only borrowed the material with a deposit”
When New Optimist clothing was sold directly to customers, returning the clothing wasn’t that complicated, Slager says. He’s sitting at a round table in New Optimist’s brand new store and showroom, located in a former school building in Amsterdam-West.
The company moved to the new location at the beginning of December. New Optimist has grown rapidly in recent years, from a D2C brand with its own store on the Bilderdijkstraat to a wholesale label sold at more than 20 retailers in the Netherlands. The company needed more space for production and a range of other activities – but more on that later.
In the past, Slager always had direct contact with the customers. “I could just tell them myself to come and return their clothes,” he says. “But now that we’re doing more wholesale, that’s not possible anymore.” Wegdam and he thought about different ways to get customers to return their clothes. “We thought of a rental, but we can’t organize that ourselves, and we couldn’t involve our distributors,” says Slager. “And we thought of giving discounts in exchange for returned products, but then you assume that customers also want a new piece of clothing, and that’s not always the case.”
The solution was a deposit system. From September, a fixed deposit of three euros will be added to the retail price of each New Optimist garment, to be paid separately at the checkout. Retailers continue to buy New Optimist clothing at wholesale prices and transfer all deposits to an independent foundation account once every six months. The deposit is “kept” there until the customer returns the item of clothing. Customers can return worn garments to a New Optimist retailer or to the brand itself and get the three euros back. These are then settled by the retailer with the pawn foundation.
The three-euro amount was set in consultation with New Optimist supporters, says Slager. “It’s not an amount that anyone would let a garment hang for, but it represents something: the natural value and to some extent the monetary value of the garment’s material. If you return the material to us, you’ll get your three euros back.” Slager is silent for a moment. “You buy the garment, but you’ve actually only borrowed the material that way.”
With the deposit system, New Optimist not only wants to motivate customers to return their clothes, but also to remind them that they are buying a circular product and are part of a clothing cycle. “It’s a pretty technical story,” says Slager, “that we don’t want to bother people with during the buying process. Then it’s down to other things: how does the garment look, how does it feel. The checkout, on the other hand, is an excellent one Place to talk about it. The pawn is a good trigger.”
Everything local: sewing, dyeing and recycling
The collected textiles are recycled by New Optimist in cooperation with an external partner. This partner has not yet been found. Fortunately, the brand still has some time to look for that partner, says Slager. He would prefer to work with a local company but does not yet know if that will be possible.
Working locally is an important second pillar for New Optimist alongside the circular economy. In recent months, the company has made strides in this regard on other fronts as well. The move brought almost all parts of the production process under one roof, with the exception of fabric production and dyeing. But New Optimist has also brought the latter area closer to the company. Recently, the company hardly bought any dyed fabrics, instead working with white cotton. The garments are not dyed until they are sewn. This is now happening in a factory on the other side of the border, in Germany, where the garments are driven by van.
By being in control of the dyeing process itself, New Optimist can work more efficiently and flexibly. “Because only white fabric needs to be sewn, it’s easier to cut,” explains Slager. “There’s also no need to keep threading a new color of thread in the sewing machine, and there’s less waste.”
Dyeing after sewing the garment, too Garment Dye
called, has another effect: the garment becomes a little darker at the seams or cuffs, for example. This gives the color depth. The first New Optimist collection dyed in this way is already hanging in the showroom. The collection is larger than before: new materials and silhouettes have been introduced, such as jackets made from recycled denim, blouses made from linen and hemp and pants made from ribbed cotton. The collection will be sold through the redesigned webshop and, since February 20th, in Amsterdam’s De Bijenkorf department store, where New Optimist has a pop-up store.
“We want to invite people to come here”
You’d think Slager and Wegdam would have their hands full with this, but there are a number of other developments going on alongside it. At New Optimist, for example, last week the first group of students with practical training at MBO-1 level [ein
Einstiegsprogramm zur beruflichen Ausbildung in den Niederlanden; Anmerkung
der Redaktion] began. New Optimist has always had a social workplace in Zaandam, but wanted to expand this aspect of the company as well. From now on, five to seven students will be prepared for the tailoring profession every six months in the workshop in Amsterdam-West. After six months, when they have received their certificate, they can pursue an MBO training or work at New Optimist or another company.
Since the beginning of March, before the official opening of the factory, the general public can also visit the factory to learn more about the garment production. New Optimist will then offer workshops on making clothes and dyeing textiles, as well as organizing other theoretical sessions on circular economy. This is not only a good way to spread knowledge about craft and sustainability, but also an opportunity to introduce the ateliers to the public, as New Optimist no longer has a shop with an atelier where customers come and go can. Slager: “We want to invite people to come here and see what we do and what can be done.”
All in all, New Optimist is becoming an ever-expanding ecosystem in which both materials and people can circulate. Wegdam and Slager are now dreaming of expanding their concept to a second city, either at home or abroad. Slager: “We created a blueprint for a different kind of fashion company. Everything we do – the move, building a team, the social component, the depot – we’ve learned so much from it that it doesn’t seem that difficult to do the same thing in – say Rotterdam or Berlin – anymore.”
They would also like to work more with other brands, be it in production or as part of the deposit system. “It’s not hard to get involved,” Slager says of the deposit system. It’s all about registering with the deposit foundation, setting an amount, and developing a campaign to make it clear to customers that the clothes are deposit. New Optimist has opted for labels with an asterisk, a typographic asterisk. In text, that asterisk indicates a footnote. That’s what the pawn on New Optimist will soon be, explains Wegdam. “A footnote, but a very important footnote.”
This translated post previously appeared on FashionUnited.nl.