How To Make Excess Garments Not Cut And Burned?

How serious is the waste problem produced by the garment industry? A documentary made by TV Tokyo in Japan may have opened the tip of the iceberg.

The documentary went deep into the scene of garbage disposal, and contacted the workers on the front line. They have to deal with tens of thousands of garments every day, and a large part of them are brand new clothes. Here, cartons with new clothes are transported to the garbage disposal plant. There are about 1500 clothes in each cardboard box. Their fate is no longer sold in stores, but is cut and burned.

An industry insider said, "customers have rules. To prevent the decline of brand value, they can only be disposed of as garbage." The production process of the clothing brand is: the brand direction producer orders, then produces in the overseas factory, the production clothing then sells by the brand, the cancellation and sells the rest goods to be handled by the producer.

Data show that Japan produces 2 billion 900 million garments annually, and more than half of them will be sold for about 1 billion 500 million pieces. Most of the remaining clothes will be discarded because of "protecting brand value".

Such a waste of clothing has become a major problem in today's society. Out of the original intention of reducing the waste of clothes, Colors, a discount shop in Japan, has sold its brand clothes at a very low discount. The largest discount is 90 percent off. Most of the new clothes are priced at 1000 yen (64 yuan), and sometimes they can buy 100 yen (about 6.4 yuan).

Founded in 2014, as of now, Colors has 10 stores in Tokyo, Osaka and other cities, and has expanded to overseas markets such as Malaysia and Kampuchea.

Why can we achieve "jumping prices"? Yamamoto Masahito, founder and President of Colors, pointed out that none of the products sold by stores are "waste products" caused by overcapacity of manufacturers and delayed delivery. They can get about 1000 products from CO producers every week.

"If you enter 1000 pieces and sell 1000 pieces", "since it is a business created to eliminate the waste of clothing, it will be sold out", Yamamoto Masahito said. Prior to Colors, he founded an e-commerce website selling second-hand clothing in 2000. He began to help brands clear inventory in 2004, and Incorporated Company Shoichi was established in 2005. He withdrew from the second-hand clothing market in the same year and focused on clearing inventory business.

Yamamoto Masahito's way of doing business is to sell the clothing purchased at the same time as the producer wants, while selling it at a low price. Of course, all brands sold to consumers are scissors without brand names. At the same time, every Wednesday, the goods that are not sold before will be further reduced, for example, the price of the previous 2000 yen will be reduced to 1500 yen after a week. In 2015, Shoichi's annual sales exceeded 1 billion yen. Now, Shoichi's cooperative enterprises have reached 2300, with annual sales of about 1 billion 600 million yen (about 100 million yuan).

In terms of customer acquisition, new customers can get a product of less than 1080 yen for free with Colors Line (similar to WeChat's communication tool).

In terms of cooperation with brands / factories, once there is backlog of stock, Colors will be ordered by box, "second days will be able to fight the money, so that the factory will be very happy," Yamamoto Masahito explains. The documentary shows that Shoichi's warehouse in Osaka has about 1 million stocks, basically all new products.

In the future, Shoichi will open up overseas markets. Yamamoto Masahito said: "our goal now is not only to become a clear stock company in Japan, but also to become a clear stock company in the world. After all, the global waste of clothing is also growing.

At the end of 2019, Yamamoto Masahito went to Bangladesh, the second largest exporter of clothing in the world. The shops there were full of clothes, and the idea of purchasing began. "Immediately went to visit the local factory. After confirming the quality, he proposed the idea of purchasing excess stock with the other party, but was rejected by the factory by" do not want the brand to know how to deal with inventory ".

After that, Yamamoto Masahito negotiated with factories in Bangladesh for several times, but encountered multiple problems such as transportation cost and purchase price. On the fourth day of Bangladesh, things changed. At that time, a dealer heard of a Japanese wanting to purchase inventory, and wanted to see him. The two sides agreed to cooperate, but the question of whom the clothes were sold to was undecided.

Even Japan's fashion group WORLD, which owns 55 brands and operates 2530 stores, is also worrying about clothes. In order to catch up with the delivery date, it is necessary to predict sales volume six months in advance, and produce new products to the factory. Even if the latest trend is forecasted, it is difficult to guarantee that all products will be sold out.

Usually, the number of goods produced by the garment industry is several times that of the goods sold at the original price. If stores do not put a certain number of goods, it will not be the same. But this kind of thinking mode has led to an increase in the number of unsalable goods to a certain extent. Kamiyama Kenji, President of WORLD group, said that the new business model was being considered. "We must find ways to solve the problem of oversupply."

On the other hand, with the enhancement of consumers' awareness of environmental protection and sustainable development, clothing waste is bound to become one of the issues of public concern in the future.