Case Study: A Product Line Analysis for Eco-Designed Fashion Products
1. Introduction
Fashion and textile is one of the most polluting industries in the world. Every stage of the fashion and textile supply chain threatens our planet and resources. For example, more than 20,000 L of water are consumed to produce one kg of cotton, many chemicals are used in manufacturing fabric for dyeing and finishing processes, and large amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted to produce one t-shirt. Consumers are aware of the importance of sustainability and are willing to purchase sustainable fashion products even though they are more expensive than conventional ones.
Sustainable fashion is developed through an eco-design approach. Eco-design is defined as a variety of design aspects that relate to a product's environmental impacts. Eco-design is an important part of sustainable supply chains and significantly influences the entire supply chain processes, including eco-material selection, process design, production, distribution, and retail. With the increasing awareness of sustainability, many fashion brands such as Nike, Adidas, and The North Face have incorporated eco-design elements into new products. The global outdoor sportswear brand Patagonia develops its sustainable product line by using eco-friendly materials such as recycled down, organic cotton, and traceable down. Earlier studies have indicated that design processes influence decision-making in the fashion supply chain; as a result, eco-design is critically important for sustainable supply chains. However, literature that examines the impact of eco-design on product line development is rare.
In this paper, we conducted a product line analysis for eco-designed products. Our aim was to explore the impact of eco-design on product line development. We collected product line data from a famous outdoor sportswear brand, Patagonia. Patagonia is an American outdoor sports brand founded in 1973 that mainly sells sustainable outdoor clothing. Patagonia enjoys a great reputation for selling sustainable fashion products. Learning the practices of Patagonia is beneficial for providing managerial insights to other fashion firms and supplementing the theories of sustainability in terms of eco-design. In this paper, we attempted to answer the following questions:
- How does eco-material usage influence design elements such as product weight, product fit, pattern design, and color choices?
- How do sustainable fashion firms manage eco-design in the supply chain?
- How will online consumers evaluate eco-design?
To address these questions, we collected the in-season product line data from Patagonia's official website. We analyzed data through descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and correlation analysis to identify patterns regarding product weight, product fit, pattern design, color choices, and online consumers' opinions in relation to fashion eco-design. The organization of the rest of this paper is given as follows. We first show the related literature in Section 2; Section 3 describes research methods; Section 4 summarizes our results; Section 5 discusses managerial insights, and Section 6 concludes the paper through providing limitation and future research.