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For Peter Comisar and his team at Story3 Capital Partners, sustainability in the fashion industry is a number one priority. Led by Comisar, Story3 has funded the likes of Lands’ End, Perry Ellis, Harry’s, FIGS Scrubs, and The Black Tux, all brands that embody the firm’s values and vision for the future of the fashion industry.
However, environmental sustainability isn’t the only thing on Comisar’s mind; he’s also equally concerned with how scalable each company’s strategies are. Comisar and his partners at Story3 want to see the giants in the fashion industry responding to the current climate crisis in a way that is both sustainable and scalable — but what does that look like?
For Comisar, the question of scalability is, “how will these strategies pan out when demand increases and circumstances change?” In other words, the effectiveness of a company’s sustainability strategy depends on how well it will work in the long term.
Finding a Balance Between Scalability and Sustainability
One way that Comisar and Story3 have found to make companies both sustainable and scalable is by embracing circular fashion. This concept is best embodied by Recover, a company for which Story3 is the majority shareholder.
Recover is changing the textiles industry as we know it with its innovative recycled cotton fibers. Their goal is to source materials to big-name fashion companies that are made entirely from recycled clothing — and they’re succeeding. One of Story3’s other investments, Lands’ End, now sources cotton fibers from Recover.
The materials science company is over 70 years in the making, and it’s run by the fourth generation of a family-owned Spanish textile business. After acquiring a recent $100 million investment from Goldman Sachs, Recover reached a valuation of over $1 billion.
The textile industry produces a staggering amount of waste. Thanks to the rise of “fast fashion,” around a full garbage truck of textile waste gets incinerated or deposited in a landfill every second. Most of this waste is made up of low-quality, cheap products that don’t last long enough to meet any real needs of consumers.
As an answer to the fashion industry’s waste problem, Recover aims to take all that waste and do something with it. Their goal is to transform the clothing manufacturing process into something fully circular, in which materials can be recycled and reused ad infinitum.
Why Sustainability in Fashion Matters More Than Ever
The increase in concern about the sustainability of the fashion industry didn’t appear out of thin air. In fact, the UN recently met and agreed unanimously that dramatic changes need to occur in numerous industries to avoid potentially disastrous consequences in the next decade.
The UN covered several different aspects of its sustainability agenda in its Transforming Our World document, which includes all of the following commitments:
- The UN is determined to end all hunger by 2030.
- The UN is determined to protect the planet by limiting the use of non-renewable resources.
- The UN is determined to push for economic and social progress for the good of all mankind.
- The UN is determined to reduce overall violence and push for peace worldwide.
- The UN is determined to create and sustain global partnerships for the sake of both people and the planet.
Comisar and his team base their investing ethics on a similar agenda. They want to see real change occurring in the fashion industry, not only for the sake of brands’ success with consumers but also for the sake of the planet.
Sustainability and Ethical Fashion
Another key aspect of Story3’s investing agenda is to work only with companies that are committed to ethical labor standards. Too long has the fashion industry been dominated by titans with substandard labor policies.
There are too many stories to count of major fashion companies relying on child labor, maintaining unsustainable working conditions, and grossly underpaying workers. Instead of simply investing in whatever the biggest name in the game is, Peter Comisar and Story3 want to support companies with the highest ethical standards.
In addition, consumers are more concerned than ever about the ethical standards of the clothes and personal care products they buy. According to Comisar, millennials and Gen-Z are the generations with the strongest convictions about purchasing sustainably, ethically-made clothing.
Investing in a Greener Future
In addition to working tirelessly to change what the fashion industry looks like and how it operates, Peter Comisar recently participated in Source Magazine’s “Investing in a Greener Future” panel. On the panel, Comisar spoke about how investors should direct their funds toward companies that prioritize sustainability and scalability.
