NEW YORK: Encouraging customers to mend worn clothes instead of buying new ones might seem like a self-defeating sales strategy. But in-store repairs and sewing workshops are becoming essential retail services for clothing brands as they try to appeal to young consumers who want to save money and the planet.While luxury fashion houses and select specialty retailers like Patagonia have offered product repairs for decades, the concept has caught on. Jeans giant Levi Strauss & Co., casual wear chain Uniqlo and budget retailer Primark are some of the apparel companies hoping to win over Generation Z shoppers with a needle and thread.Levi’s created a handstitching course for high school students after determining that many Gen Zers lacked the sewing skills to match their interest in thrift store shopping and sustainability. Employees spend 90 minutes instructing teenagers on four tasks: sewing on a button, hemming, patching a hole and fixing a tear.The Wear Longer programme, which the San Francisco-based company is expanding across the, US builds on the repair and customisation services Levi’s offers at hundreds of stores worldwide. “We think it’s important to empower the people who buy our clothes with the skill sets to maintain them, to get them to that second life,” Paul Dillinger, Levi’s head of global design innovation, said.The evolution of mending from an economic necessity and traditional craft to a method for cultivating customers didn’t happen overnight. The fashion industry as a whole has come under intensifying pressure to reduce its contributions to environmental pollution and climate change.Researchers broadly agree that repairing and reselling clothes can reduce a garment’s environmental impact, especially if it delays or replaces a new purchase. But many caution the practices remain too limited to offset continued growth in clothing production and consumption.Clothing production roughly doubled between 2000 and 2015, while the average number of wearings per garment declined by 36%, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The sustainability nonprofit estimated that less than 1% of discarded clothing material got recycled into new apparel.Enter Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012. It’s the generation that grew up with fast fashion and e-commerce, then had school years and young adulthoods shaped by the coronavirus pandemic and post-pandemic inflation. Whether due to limited budgets or a rejection of materialism, Gen Z has helped the pre-owned clothing market grow much faster than retail apparel sales in the US, independent market intelligence firm GlobalData estimated in a report with resale platform ThredUp.The question facing the industry is whether repairs can evolve from niche service to commercially viable. Sweden’s H&M Group, which has presence in over 80 countries, has been candid about one of the biggest obstacles: the economics. The company has argued that repair and resale are desirable goals, but manufacturing new garments costs less than keeping existing ones in use. Making mending work in retail is challenging as it’s labour intensive and must be priced low enough to entice customers, Saunders, of GlobalData, said. AP
