Why is it so hard for next-gen materials to scale?

Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here. Every year, the Future Fabrics Expo descends on London, with hundreds of exhibitors all hoping to secure commercial partnerships that will help them scale and shift the dial on fashion’s material footprint. This year, the expo had a different energy. The recent news of Renewcell’s bankruptcy — and eventual acquisition — shone a harsh light on the lack of support for material innovators and the challenging reality of disrupting the mainstream. The industry is paying close attention. Just one day before the expo, a new report backed by Kering and The Laudes Foundation detailed the barriers to growth, including limited investor knowledge of the fashion industry, oversaturation with little differentiation between startups, and the lack of long-term commitments from brands and feedstock providers. Vogue Business invited startups exhibiting at the Future Fabrics Expo to weigh in on the barriers to scale and how to overcome them. Hannes Schoenegger, co-founder and CEO, Bananatex Bananatex, which produces a fabric made from abaca banana fibres, has collaborated with brands including Stella McCartney, Balenciaga and H&M. The extraction of banana fibres was an existing industry in the Philippines, so everything was already set up for manufacturing at scale. The only bit that wasn’t market-ready was the price point. There is a lot of manual labour involved in the extraction of banana fibres and there is no way to automate or circumvent it. One worker can produce one kilogram in an hour or 10 kilograms in 10 hours — the economies of scale don’t apply. That has been challenging for brands, because Bananatex costs twice as much as organic cotton and more than four times the cost of polyester. It’s slightly easier for luxury brands to manage the price, because they tend to have higher margins, but the real issue is that brands do not pay the real cost of unsustainable materials. The rules of the game need to change, so people trying to work responsibly aren’t punished. We need taxes on unsustainable materials and incentives for the alternatives. Tina Lemke, marketing and brand experience manager, OnceMore OnceMore is an offshoot of Sweden’s largest forest owners association Södra. The material uses chemical recycling to combine poly-cotton textile waste with wood from Södra’s forests to create an alternative to viscose. More often than not, we reach out to brands [rather than the other way round], so we have already researched their sustainability credentials. The things we look out for are: how much data they ask for, what kind of questions they ask, what their criteria for sourcing materials looks like, and whether they are willing to form a long-term partnership rather than just a capsule collection. The other big challenge is helping them understand what the final product will look and feel like. Design teams are very visual, so having examples from other brand projects to show them — even if the material they end up with is slightly different — is crucial. If we just show them the raw material, it looks like cardboard, so it’s hard for them to imagine. André de Castro, marketing director, Beleaf Beleaf is a plant-based leather alternative made from the Alocasia Macrorrhiza or ‘elephant ear’ plant by Brazilian company Nova Kaeru, which has been used by brands including Loewe, Botter and Christopher Esber. Sometimes it is hard to work with brands, because there is so much bureaucracy and so many people who need to sign off on everything. But the challenges are also what makes the brands great. These companies want the best product with the greatest performance, so partnerships can be really important for a startup’s development. Brands will often suggest ways to evolve the product — different backings to make the material more flexible, or adaptations to the formula that make it more versatile. That’s why we now have a range of materials that look more like bovine leather, as well as our signature line that keeps the shape and texture of the leaves. The only challenge there is staying true to what you believed in when you first developed the material, which — for us — was about creating a product from leaves that embraced their natural shape and style. Mira Nameth, CEO, Biophilica Biophilica produces Treekind, a plastic-free leather alternative made from leaves that is home compostable. The company won the 2024 Cartier Women’s Initiative, ‘Forces for Good’, which comes with a €100,000 grant. Brands often want to redesign a product to make it a perfect offering before they start integrating it into their products, but we would urge brands to consider how they can start embedding material innovations today, and finesse them over time. This could also help on the investment side. A lot of investors are looking to fund innovators in the same traditional ways — looking to identify and hedge their bets with a single ‘unicorn’ innovator. The venture model in particular seeks returns within five to seven years, which is not a realistic horizon for hard-tech companies working in the materials science space. The way funding happens needs to echo the complexity of finding climate solutions in fashion, and be split across a catalogue of innovators who can work towards research and development within their individual areas, and then share the collective learnings to drive broader and quicker change. The worst practice we’ve seen is being ‘ghosted’ by brands who seem keen for weeks or months (even years), but then disappear without providing any explanation or feedback. Clare Lichfield, co-founder, Sequinova Sequinova makes sequin textiles from cellulose, which it says can biodegrade in fresh water in less than eight weeks. The startup is currently running a production trial with a sequin factory. Governments could support material innovation startups better by giving easier access to early grant funding and incentivising brands to adopt more sustainable materials. Any way that the ‘green premium’ can be offset would be a huge help. From the brand side, a considered effort to combine purchasing power to bring down the cost of raw materials would be very advantageous for all involved. We’ve noticed that many brands are afraid to be the first to adopt a new material. They can play a bit of a waiting game, which delays impact. Stephanie Downs, co-founder and CEO, Uncaged Innovations Uncaged Innovations makes leather alternatives from grain proteins, which the company says emit 95 per cent less greenhouse gases and use 93 per cent less water than traditional animal leather. It can be quite difficult to find manufacturing partners. They’re often pumping through mass amounts of product every day, so when you ask them to disrupt that and pilot something new, there can be resistance. You have to kiss a lot of frogs. The other challenge is funding. Venture capitalists are receptive to this type of company, but there is more scrutiny now, because a lot of the first-movers in this space — who really paved the way in generating interest and demand — have faced challenges. Investors see pilots here and there but they’re looking for bigger commitments to prove that brands want this and will do what is necessary to support it. We look for brands with innovation dollars who are willing to ink off-take agreements and who understand what it takes on our side. One brand asked us to do 20 different prototypes, each in a different colour and texture. It would have been over 100 hours of work. Paying for samples or custom prototypes could help. Lacey Davidson, director of marketing, Ecovative Mycelium technology firm Ecovative, founded in 2007, was originally behind the production of Mylo mushroom leather by Bolt Threads. The company is now working with manufacturer Veshin Factory to bring its signature mycelium material to market. The main barrier to scale is iterating on the material enough to reach brand standards. What solved that for us was the Fashion for Good co-operative, which we started with Bestseller and PVH Corp to create an open feedback channel with multiple brand partners at once. It has since expanded to include Reformation, Vivobarefoot, Pangaia and Wolverine Worldwide, among others who prefer to remain unnamed. Until a couple of years ago, it took the lab team upwards of 12 months to complete experiments that would make impactful performance changes; now that can be completed in a matter of days. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

Make better business decisions

More sustainability stories from Vogue Business

Make better business decisions