Earlier in the day, on their panel ‘Luxury’s New Value System: How Changing Consumer Behaviors Are Reshaping Brand Priorities’, Mosseri and Ripley also discussed the importance of knowing their customer. The two New York staple brands were built in very different ways: Still Here is all-in on physical retail, while Christopher John Rogers’s brand world is built through runway shows, wholesale relationships, and collaborations — but both stay extremely close to their customers.
“Over the past 10 years, our consumers have been marketed so much more product. They’ve gotten smarter,” Mosseri said. “Over the past few years, we’ve really locked into what our customer wants from us, understood our brand pillars, and been very honest and authentic to what Still Here is and what product we want to bring to our customers and what they want to see from us.”
Ripley echoed this ethos, espousing the importance of talking to a specific consumer, rather than everyone. “We were growing with the customer as they were becoming more invested in the stories behind the brands they were buying, the product they were buying, really wanting to make sure that it had that emotional appeal — and the longevity of it being something really special that you want to treasure and own,” she said. “[We were] slowing down the fashion industry in that way of extending the product lifecycle.”
These talks were bookended by presentations by the eight Circular Fashion Fund finalists, all of whom shared their business plans and company ethoses throughout the day. The line-up featured winner Mathot, Woody Lello of Truss, Patrick White of Ragpiq, Oscar Rundqvist of Ecomid, Courtney Holm of Circular Sourcing, Brandon Steidley of Silhouet, Seda Domanic of Refabric, and Carl van Heijst of It Goes Forward. Each finalist received $50,000.
The judges were Indré Rockefeller, founder and CEO of The Circularity Project, Vogue senior archive editor Laird Borrelli-Persson, head of eBday Ventures Henri Jaanimaegi, Tersus CEO Peter Whitcomb, GFA CEO Federica Marachionni, Ellen McArthur Foundation CIO Joe Murphy and eBay’s Hoopes.
