Sustainability Newsletter 6

Greetings from Istanbul!

Gaia Sourcing Seminar with Supply Chain

As Gaia Sourcing, we always aim to strengthen our partners and environment.

On 15.01.2019, we had the great opportunity to bring our supply chain together for our presentation of “Gaia Sourcing targets for sustainability”. As well as all Gaia Sourcing family, our partner manufacturers and fabric suppliers were together that day.

Our objective has been to be able to communicate our approach and efforts for sustainability, to create an environment to discuss their point of view, illustrate the changes towards sustainability in the industry and to encourage them for sustainable production processes and material usages such as recycled or organic materials knowing that as Gaia Sourcing, we will be supportive and always open to partnership in their actions.

We focused on Turkey’s promising position in near future for sustainable production, as well as fashion industry generally and the importance of measurement systems for improvements of social and environmental issues. The effects of this meeting exceeded our expectations and we received many positive responses from our suppliers which gives us hope for the near future.

We aim to repeat these meetings for sustainability to be able to create a mutual mindset and target through our supply chain.

 

Neonyt Trade Fair Berlin

We’re delighted to inform you that we joined The Neonyt Trade Fair (15-17 january, Berlin) as a participant and had the chance to observe industry and its future from a closer point of view. The fair itself was impressive as the world’s biggest B2B event for sustainable fashion, there was a comprehensive portfolio of 150 national and international sustainable fashion brands from 26 countries. It held two very important conferences during, FashionTech and FashionSustain.

 

On 15.01, Fashiontech was held which is the leading conference on digital transformation, innovation and disruptive technologies. Fashion and tech professionals from all over the world came together and discussed the future of collaboration between different industries, areas and even departments, how our way of doing business has to change rapidly due to quick development of technology to be able to keep up and the importance of networking and network thinking. “Collaboration”, “change” and “network” were the words of this day, and we cherish these words for our future plans of changing the fixed mindsets and our environment for the better, creating a long lasting network of sustainability focused firms, and creating collaborative projects in this network.

 

Fashionsustain was held on 16.01, promoted the whole sustainability movement further, raising awareness of a fairer and more environmentally conscious fashion industry. Under Neonyt’s overarching topic of “Water”, Fashionsustain brought together high-profile speakers from companies including WWF, Tchibo, Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Blue Ben, Greenpeace, We are Spindye, Remei AG, Goodsociety, Pure Denim, Circular Fashion, Sympatex, Swedish Stockings and Langbrett. How to approach the water scarcity and pollution issues, the importance of water impact measurement and the management of water sources, way of thinking for new waterless production techniques or the ones with less water usage and how educating the final customer can cause a big change in demand for sustainability.

However the people most amazed us were from the younger generation who stepped forward and created change in their countries and on the planet, Make a Change World, Bye Bye Plastic Bags Bali and Plants for the Planet had inspirational stories to share. They were the living proof that Y and Z generation is going to revolutionize the way we look at businesses or simply at nature itself. This is why how the demographical change in the final customer is affecting the brands’ marketing & communication techniques was a big subject of the fair as well.

 

You might see some of the videos of FashionSustain in the link and please let us know your thoughts about the subjects.