Companies selling alternative materials are looking for partners in the furniture and automotive industries to make progress. Is fashion missing out?
Next-gen material startups need scale and speed of adoption to succeed. Not finding that with fashion partners, some companies are looking to new partners in the worlds of furniture and automotives to diversify and drive progress.
It’s a path that experts are increasingly recommending to startups, or that startups are recommending to their peers. If successful, it could help an area of innovation that has been teeming with developments but lacking the support necessary to bring those innovations out of the lab — or out of the capsule collection — and into the market. While the pivot could benefit fashion brands, it could also put them at risk if they stay on the sidelines for too long.
Last month, Herman Miller, an American furniture brand known for its cult-favourite chair designs, released a lounger made with a plant-based leather alternative from material innovation company Von Holzhausen. Von Holzhausen has had its own fashion accessories and footwear line, but also partners with furniture brands, automotive companies and electronic brands to supply accessories like laptop cases. The multi-channel focus has been deliberate, says founder and CEO Vicki von Holzhausen, because each brings their own benefits and challenges to a partnership.
“We work with many different clients across industries, fashion being one,” says von Holzhausen. “It’s important because fashion is such a great vehicle for storytelling. It’s so important that we get into people’s imagination — that these materials are not just trying to copy the old, but they provide a totally different perspective.”
The furniture and automotive industries have longer development times because the performance standards are so high, but they also work with larger order volumes, she says. Fashion can offer a faster turnaround, but it doesn’t provide the volume of demand, especially at first, that a material production company needs to be able to significantly increase production capacity.
von Holzhausen, which has deliberately worked with multiple sectors from the start, hopes that diversification can be a win-win for startups and brands alike. Maybe showing a startup’s promise and potential in other sectors — maybe seeing bamboo-based leather on an $8,000 Herman Miller Eames chair — can remove some of the risk lurking in fashion executives’ minds. “Maybe the fashion industry can use that as a way to realize that iconic things can be made without traditional materials,” says von Holzhausen.