Every Tuesday morning The Nest management team has a group meeting to debrief business affairs, upcoming events, goals, etc. Our meeting this morning was completely derailed by the news of Everlane, a once-beloved mission-driven brand, selling to Shein. Yeah, that’s right…Everlane, the company built on the idea of “radical transparency” and keeping Earth clean is now selling to what is arguably the worst polluter in the fashion industry. While I could go on a rant about how sad it is to see all these millennial-coded “sustainable” brands either fail or sell, I think the more interesting conversation here is the dissection of growth.
Everlane was about $90 million in debt when they sold to Shein for $100 million. Why do so many of these “sustainable” fashion brands end up completely forgoing their mission statements and/or in hundreds of millions of dollars of debt? The answer is basically that it’s not very sustainable to be sustainable. It is not economically viable to implement business practices centered on sustainability if you are also trying to grow your business to a global level. Things like made-to-order production models don’t scale very well. It made us question if it’s ever possible for large-scale fashion businesses to stay true to sustainability standards.
