Scaling Circularity & Launching Clique
Ella Hopton (Gould) is a Fashion Circularity Expert. She is the former Head of Sustainability and Innovation at Selfridges and is currently Director of Circular and Sustainability Solutions at Avery Dennison, a global materials science and digital identification solutions company.
We asked Ella about scaling circularity, career transitions and having conviction in your ideas.
What are your thoughts on how brands can scale circularity profitably?
I am so energised by all the amazing partners who have emerged in this space, both from a tech and operations perspective. It’s never been easier for a brand to experiment and launch circular initiatives. That said, there is still a challenge getting brands to move beyond a proof of concept and integrate this into their core business.
The only way to make it work is firstly, to look at your inventory as a whole,
new/returns/repairs/rental/resale etc to optimise sell through and ongoing revenue from your products. Managing bits in isolation is where I think it falls down.
Secondly, your business and leaders have to be prepared to move away from how you traditionally measure success (ie: sales per day/week…. and pure % margin) for circular to work.
The value it brings to a business goes beyond pure sales and cuts across marketing and customer. Circularity is fundamentally linked to loyalty over
time as much as it is value of a product over time, but it’s a longer term play which I think our industry struggles with.
What is it like moving out of luxury following such a successful run?
Working for a luxury retailer and partnering with some of the most iconic brands and maisons was an incredible experience. However, I definitely began to feel frustrated at the low uptake from key players in the circular space.
I believe that resale in particular is so aligned to luxury’s ethos of quality, product timelessness and customer loyalty, so to not see any of the major players actively engaging was disappointing. I started to feel the pull to have a bigger impact and always felt that change was going to come from tech and data as key enablers.
The opportunity to potentially drive change at an industry level with Avery Dennison was too great a challenge to turn down! I’m really excited to be working with them and their partners across not just the fashion value spectrum but also across the supply chain as well.
Tell us about Clique and what makes it different to other solutions on the
market.
After spending time building in this space, both at Selfridges and My Wardrobe HQ, Charlotte Fairbarn and I felt strongly that there was a gap to digitise a behaviour that exists offline and stuck in multiple Whatsapp groups etc.
Let’s face it, luxury prices have increased significantly in recent years which makes purchasing a bag for example a serious consideration for the vast majority of people, let alone growing a personal collection. The average person in the UK has over 100 pieces of fashion sitting in their wardrobe which they don’t wear all the time, but equally don’t want to sell.
That represents billions in amazing but idle inventory just sitting in closets. Our aim is to change how people shop by making it less about what you own and all about who you know.
Clique gives you access to unlimited options through your network,
meaning you can have more and buy less without compromising style. It’s super flexible, longer term and lower cost, and crucially within your trusted network which I think is often a barrier for lots of people, particularly when it comes to your designer pieces!
What is your advice to leaders in sustainable luxury on positioning themselves to
start their own thing?
I don’t know what it was that finally made me ‘go for it’ and actually start building. I’ve tinkered with the idea for Clique for at least 5 years. I think as women we often feel like we need to be over-qualified to do something and there is definitely an element there for me where I waited to have experience in this space before feeling confident enough to do anything about it. I knew that if I didn’t try I would regret it.
Secondly, by working more in the start-up space through the innovation side of my role at Selfridges, I realised that founders have lots of different profiles and make adjustments for where they are in their lives.
Joining groups like Mums Building Companies and understanding that many people build a passion project on the side for a long time gave me confidence to just try. Last year I started building Clique, grew a human and started a new job that I absolutely love.
I’m under no illusion that it will not involve making sacrifices, but I really hope I can continue to blend all three.
What inspires you about the execution of ReSelfridges?
One of the biggest things we did during my time at Selfridges and that I’m most
proud of was rebranding Sustainability both internally and for customers. This space has changed so much in a short space of time, once being associated with greens and browns to designate earth.
But what we realised was that customers wanted everything to do with this space and ‘buying better’ to feel as special and fun as buying new. They also wanted it to be easy, and we had over complicated it with different terminology and look and feel. Bringing everything under the RESELFRIDGES umbrella, with the ‘RE’ standing for re-invention, was a huge cross functional undertaking and it took time, but it was absolutely the right thing to do.
The creative play on relationships and the sexy imagery makes it cool and dare I say ‘sexy’. Giving over store windows to the campaigns and now having them throughout Bond Street tube is a really bold move from Team Selfridges and it makes me smile to see it live on stronger than ever.
Submit your questions for Ella and we’ll arrange an AMA session.
