StudioSG

BECAUSE LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WEAR BORING CLOTHES

A lot of women I meet have lamented that they don’t have the time to upcycle their clothes. Although a refashion can be a quick project (think embellishments and dyeing), I do believe that a certain level of commitment is needed to transform your entire wardrobe when it comes to using needle and thread. I must admit that it has been a long journey for me but I have found it to be a very creative and enriching experience (not to mention rewarding) so far. But if you really can’t set aside some time to reconnect with your clothes, why not explore other options that give you new clothes but in a sustainable manner? Enter StudioSG.

I met Mirte Gosker and Sacha van Ginhoven, the lovely co-founders of StudioSG at a Connected Threads Asia talk. Based in Singapore, they founded the online wardrobe portal as an alternative to the fast fashion industry malaise that is harming the environment.  What caught my attention was their snazzy tagline “Because life is too short to wear boring clothes, but too long to ruin our planet.”  It’s true, many of us yearn to have new things to make us feel better, but our obsession with accumulating possessions is harming our planet.

Mirte and Sascha

Mirte explains that the fashion industry is “an old-fashioned industry which has made very little use of the tech developments. With our backgrounds in tech, operations and design thinking, we thought of an innovative concept to actually change the industry. With StudioSG we give women access to an online wardrobe filled with high-quality, well-produced and super fashionable clothing. Obviously women around the planet love fashion and like to change their style regularly.”

Mirte and Sascha want to give women access to amazing yet well-produced designs, and they “hope to eradicate the urge to buy cheap and poorly-produced clothing“.

As a member of StudioSG, you pay a monthly subscription fee of $199 SGD and choose 5 items from their wardrobe.

“We deliver the items, the women wear and love them and exchange them whenever they feel like. The can keep the items as long as they want and even buy them in case they really fall in love with it. We take care of pick-up, delivery and drycleaning. While we can’t guarantee that we will from the beginning, we strive to be a zero-emission company. ”

Why Online?

“There were two reasons to go for an online concept instead of a brick and mortar variant. First of all, retail space in Singapore is too expensive for a startup. We’d need to raise a lot of capital to get started. Secondly and more importantly, we feel the fashion industry is in dire need of technology. We focus on independent women who care about more than fashion. Women who are busy fulfilling their dreams, working, traveling, raising children. These women don’t have time to shop and actually most of them feel they have more important things to do. But while they live their lives, they do want to look good. So we will enable them to focus on the important things in life while we take care of the ‘looking good’ part. They simply select the clothing items they want via our website or app and we make sure they arrive in near-new status at their doorstep or office. We plan to even ensure they have access to clothing while traveling, so they never have to travel with a suitcase again. Our online service will bring convenience and a solution for the future of fashion.” 

 

Why Singapore?

“We chose to start in Singapore as it’s the perfect test market. Women are super fashionable and the city-state is compact enough to set-up our logistics. The all-year-round summer season is an extra benefit, it means we won’t have to deal with summer and winter collections. So far, the reactions have been very positive. We have already a long waiting list of women who want to join. We work hard to onboard them as we speak. The biggest challenge right now is to get enough inventory to get onboard all those interested women. Industry-wide a third of all fashion produced is never sold. We are discussing partnership deals with fashion labels and distributors to get that one-third of clothing in our wardrobe. And we’re talking about the newest collections here! We dedicate 20% of our collection to independent and upcoming designers to stimulate their route to market. We really enjoy to work with these young creatives, their vision on the future of fashion is refreshing as they all focus on sustainable supply chains and bringing back the art in fashion.”

 
 

Who is Your Inspiration?

“I find Leilah Janah a very inspiring entrepreneur. She was only 26 years old when she set up Samasource (now part of the Sama Group), a social enterprise which alleviates poverty in Africa and Asia through outsourcing project management for companies like Google and Microsoft. It’s a smart business plan and very effective. Her courage and ambition to tackle such a large problem, while probably many people thought ‘this girl is dreaming’, earns my deepest respect. It’s really cool to ‘just do it’. She’s a perfect role model for young changemakers with dreams.”

So if you’re keen on revamping your wardrobe but are not keen on hitting the stores, StudioSG might just be for you.

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Written by: Agatha Lee, Founder of Green Issues by Agy 
Source: www.greenissuessingapore.blogspot.sg

In January 2016 Sacha van Ginhoven and I decided to set up StudioSG as an alternative for the fast fashion industry. The fashion industry is the 2nd most polluting industry (after oil) in the world and very old-fashioned. Tech innovations have been neglected in this industry and simple things as rapid prototyping are almost unheard of. This means that the fashion industry is still a push industry, which doesn’t adapt its production to the market need, resulting in 1/3 of fashion produced, being never sold. And then we’re not even talking about all the fast fashion which is sold, but only worn once or twice. Fashion is so cheap, it has diminished from art to a commodity.
 
By giving women access to fashion we hope to eradicate the urge to buy cheap and poorly-produced clothing. Our members pay a monthly subscription fee and enable themselves to have unlimited access to high-end, high-quality and well-produced clothing. They choose 5 items when they start and swap whenever they want. Our collection exists of 80% luxury labels and 20% upcoming designers. The luxury labels we need for three reasons: (1) To change the industry from the inside-out, we’ll need the big players on board; (2) These established labels have the volumes we need to grow so that we can really make a difference; and (3) To convince members who are still on the fence that sustainable fashion is the new “cool”, we’ll need the established labels to set an example. But we also care for the upcoming designers who are often struggling in their route to market, while they are the ones with the brightest ideas about the future of fashion, sustainable consumption, up-cycling and wearable tech. We think a nice mix of the two brings out a vivid collection for our members, who can express their identities through our high-end and high-quality fashion, experiment with new designs and designers and contribute to a sustainable future of fashion.
 
Posted on April 20, 2016 by . This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.