When Hasna Kourda was growing up in Tunisia, her grandmother would walk her through every step of making a garment, from the sheep whose wool she turned into yarn to how to brush the knit and reinforce a sweater with virgin wool. Sustainable, long-lasting clothing wasn't a premium trend – it was just a normal part of her childhood.

But when she moved to Europe, she realized that education was far from standard. Garment repair was something reserved for the rich as fast fashion made it easier to give away clothes rather than maintain them – an impact felt in her home country, which has become a destination for Europe's secondhand clothing castoffs. How, she wondered, could she make it so that no one ever had to buy a new item of clothing again?

From D2C to B2B

That question, plus a background in economics, led her to launch Save Your Wardrobe, a business that works with fashion brands to offer repair and eco-friendly cleaning services. She's one of a handful of emerging business owners (including Sojo, Hemster and Fix That Shirt) focusing on the B2B side of what's traditionally been a very direct-to-consumer service – incentivizing brands to build long-term wear into their business models.

Hasna has no problems with people buying fast fashion – but she believes that the onus should be on brands to help people wear clothing more sustainably.

‘[Brands] are the ones pushing [clothes] to market, they're the ones using polyester, they're the ones choosing the materials,’ she says. ‘So it feels right to get them to be responsible for not just the afterlife, but the whole life cycle of clothing.’

But that calls for a new business model. Save Your Wardrobe partners with brands, creating personalized websites where customers can place an order with service providers (online clothes retailer Zalando is an early customer), including tailors and eco-friendly dry cleaners. Save Your Wardrobe and the brand both take a cut of the commission – creating another incentive for brands to get on board with repairs.

Damage control

However, bringing a fragmented industry online has been slow going. These repair apps typically not only have to partner with brands, but they also need to coordinate with courier services, onboard service providers and ensure quality. That makes launching in new cities expensive – last-mile logistics are costly and, for initial rollouts in Berlin and Düsseldorf, Hasna and her team had to visit businesses in person to confirm that services were top quality. 

That said, Hasna says that many service providers – often family-run businesses – have been eager to keep up with what customers want and have increasingly come to Save Your Wardrobe to share what they offer, providing quality control in advance, which is useful as the brand launches in new areas. She's also exploring options with brands where the repair costs are built into the initial price of the item or there's the option to add repair insurance.

Building up the technical backend is key. It's also something that other brands are focused on. Fix That Shirt has developed an algorithm that assesses the quality of services, hoping to onboard local tailors quicker.

Getting them to hem

The other big hurdle is the one that inspired Hasna in the first place – repair education. Save Your Wardrobe offers a consumer-facing app that allows people to track the clothing in their closet, providing suggestions on how to repair, reuse, maintain or donate items, rather than buying new. Eventually, her aim is to integrate this into the brand side, so long-term wear is a value built into products.

‘There [are] a great deal of data points that could be captured in this new experience and could be used to enhance or hyper-personalize the transactions between brands and customers,’ she says.

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Luke Pearson, founder of chocolate brand Wnder, is winding down his ethically sourced cocoa business. While there have been lots of challenges – dwindling margins, expensive import charges, long production times – the final nail in the coffin was something that most people would think of as being good for business: a listing with major UK department store Selfridges. Here's why getting a big retail listing might not be right for every business.

01. Loss of control.

You'll probably be forced to grow to accommodate the increase in orders. ‘Normally, an average order would be 30 to 60 bars from a wholesaler. [Selfridges] ordered 150 bars and 220 jars of our drinking chocolates,’ says Luke. Despite calling in favors from friends and family to pull it off, running a production run of that scale was stressful and unsustainable. The solution – hiring someone to take the reins on production – wasn't something Luke was ready to do.

02. Too much, too soon.

‘I admire Selfridges greatly, but it was clear we were too small for them,’ says Luke. According to the chocolatier, the past few months were pretty intense. As the business grew, he had less time to focus on production, marketing or admin. As a result, everything took a hit and he felt unable to maintain the high standards that he'd set for the business. Plus, he wasn't at a point where he wanted to invest any more money in the business or bring on new employees.

03. More paperwork.

‘As a small producer, you can't just knock on [a customer's] door and hand over some bars of chocolate,’ says Luke, ‘There [are] paperwork and distribution companies that you have to deal with.’ These accredited distribution companies, who he'd have to work with, tend to charge a hefty fee for their trouble.

04. Opportunity cost.

Luke also runs Pear & Sons, a creative consultancy in the food and drink space. Taking on a major retailer meant he could no longer focus on his enjoyable (and better-paid) consultancy work. Plus, the physical demands of his chocolate passion project were taking their toll; during a six-week production schedule to fulfill big orders, days in the factory easily stretched from 6am to 10pm. Once he's formally wound down Wnder, Luke will be refocusing on his consultancy work.