5 Years of Sustainability at Adore Me: What We Learned and Where We’re Heading

Five years ago, Adore Me launched a revolution— a bold attempt to transform fashion through sustainability. We didn’t have a perfect plan or deep expertise at the time, but we knew we had to start somewhere. We set the bar high, just as we did in 2012 when we disrupted the lingerie industry by introducing more inclusive practices.

This post reflects on our journey so far — what we’ve learned, some key milestones, and where we’re heading next. Like our sustainability journey, this reflection is a mixed bag. We’ve had successes, learned from failures, and discovered that even the missteps were valuable. Honestly, a full book would be more appropriate to capture everything, but here’s the summary (and a video capturing our journey).

Ground Zero: From Chaos to Clarity

At the beginning, there was… chaos. My bold call to arms, which I thought would spark excitement and rally the team, kind of backfired. Many colleagues thought I had lost my mind. They were genuinely worried that my polished consulting slides had been replaced with radical slogans.

To be fair, Adore Me — a fast fashion company selling affordable lingerie made in Asia to middle-class Americans — wasn’t the obvious candidate for leading sustainable fashion. Compared to brands like Stella McCartney or Patagonia, we seemed like an unlikely player. That perceived mismatch is actually part of the broader challenge facing the industry: how to engage companies outside the elite circle of sustainable fashion pioneers.

Initially, we looked around at our peers for inspiration. What we found didn’t impress us. There was a lot of superficial marketing, fancy sustainability reports that felt meaningless, and an overwhelming focus on style over substance. Internally, we called it “the look” — a polished front with little real impact behind it. Even today, a quick search for “sustainable fashion” often shows models wearing green with green trees behind them, rather than a real plan to combat climate change.

So, we went back to what we know best: data. One of Adore Me’s core values is “Eat, Sleep, Data,” and it became our compass for navigating sustainability. When we couldn’t find an external tool that met our standards for measuring progress, we created our own: the AIM Index — an internal product sustainability score. It’s far from perfect, but it allowed us to quantify and operationalize our sustainability efforts.

We were upfront about its limitations. The initial score was embarrassingly low (0.06 out of 5), which is in line with most of the fashion industry at the time. Over the years, we’ve refined the index with help from external experts, reaching its fourth iteration. Today, AIM still helps us track progress, and most of our products now meet sustainability standards. I secretly hope AIM could become a foundation for a smarter industry-wide tool someday.

Failed Pilots and the Myth of the Green Premium

One of our early strategies was to launch capsule collections and even entire brands with distinctive sustainability features. We had high hopes for projects like Gentrue and ReApparel — both of which were fantastic for the planet but never scaled. These failed pilots taught us an important lesson: betting on the “green premium” is a dangerous game.

What’s the green premium? It’s the idea that consumers will pay significantly more for sustainable products because they’re “better for the planet.” It sounds great in theory, but in practice, the data paints a different picture. Studies show that while most consumers are willing to pay a bit more for sustainable goods, it’s typically only 3–5%. Anything beyond that becomes a hard sell.

Especially in times of economic uncertainty or inflation, expecting customers to shell out a 10% or higher price premium is unrealistic. And let’s face it: most people care more about buying what they need than saving polar bears. It’s a tough truth, but it shaped our strategy.

We realized that if we wanted to make a real impact, we couldn’t rely on higher price tags. We had to provide better products at similar prices. Was it easy? Absolutely not. But it’s possible. In fact, many of our improved, more sustainable products now have comparable costs of goods sold (COGS) to their less sustainable predecessors.

Any serious sustainability strategy must address COGS. Without affordable costs, you can’t offer products at prices that appeal to the mass market — the very place where most of the world’s fashion consumption (and pollution) happens. Tackling a massive problem like this by focusing only on high-end, niche products misses the point entirely.

Collaboration: Hard but Essential

If we’re going to transform the industry, collaboration is key. But it’s easier said than done. Fashion is a fragmented industry with thousands of players, and most brands rely on multiple tiers of suppliers — many of whom are also working with direct competitors.

The result? A vicious cycle where progress is limited by the slowest, least ambitious players. Even when a company makes the extra effort to innovate, there’s a risk that their competitors will benefit without investing anything themselves. Some new players, like Commonshare, are rethinking the incentive structure, but it’s a beast of a challenge.

At Adore Me, we took a different approach. We focused on deeper integration with key suppliers — not just Tier 1, but also venturing into the Tier 2 “jungle” that most fashion companies ignore. This wasn’t about demanding lower prices and threatening to walk away; it was about building long-term relationships through joint initiatives, shared data, and multi-year commitments.

One of our proudest achievements in this space was launching the a Sustainability Accelerator, a dynamic ecosystem of climate-tech startups. The goal? Scale sustainability through strategic partnerships. The accelerator serves as a testing ground for startups, giving them an ideal first customer to refine and integrate their solutions. We’re especially focused on digital sustainability infrastructure and industrial innovations that can tackle the industry’s most urgent climate challenges. Beyond this initiative, great new way to joint forces to transform fashion from inside are happening like Enamoma that combines Academic excellence from different fields (design, math, etc) and various players from the fashion ecosystem that share values and interest to find alternative models.

Fashion Sustainability Will Be a B2B Game

Why do I believe the future of sustainability is increasingly B2B? It’s simple: while only a minority of direct consumers care enough to pay a significant premium for sustainable products, businesses operate under different rules. They face regulatory pressures, board-level strategies, long-term planning horizons, and an increasingly engaged employee base pushing for change.

If a business today completely ignores the climate crisis, I wouldn’t bet on its long-term survival. These pressures will open new opportunities for startups, legacy companies, and entirely new ecosystems of collaboration. The most exciting part of sustainable fashion’s future is happening behind the scenes — far from the catwalks and glossy PR campaigns.

We have developed a set of criteria to evaluate which ideas are worth investing time on. If a project lacks one, we might still consider it. If it’s missing several, we pass as we fear it will be not land fast or strong enough.

The never ending quest: what to do?

At the end of the day, there are many great projects available within Fashion, some sexy, some geek, some easy, some complex, etc . That’s said, the more interesting ones share generally those characteristics.

1) They target Scope 3 emissions. These emissions — everything from raw materials to logistics — account for over 85% of the industry’s carbon footprint. Tackling them is hard because they happen deep within the supply chain, but they’re where the real impact lies.

• Example: dyeing, one of the most carbon-intensive processes in fashion that represent 1/3 of the total scope 3 emission of fashion (versus 1% for transportation)

2) They have a medium-term timeline (2–3 years). Quick wins are great for PR, but they rarely deliver significant impact. Long-term “moonshot” projects sound exciting but often fizzle out due to cost, complexity, or too many stakeholders.

• Pro tip: Some projects labeled as “long term” should actually be achievable in the medium term — they’re just moving at a snail’s pace due to internal or external roadblocks.

3) They focus on real carbon reduction. Avoiding air shipping or improving inventory planning delivers immediate, measurable impact on both the planet and the business.

And to expand on carbon offsets. They’re often presented as a silver bullet for achieving carbon neutrality, but they should never be the main lever of a sustainability strategy.

Offsets are a fine complement to real carbon reduction initiatives like switching from air to sea shipping or optimizing inventory management. But relying solely on offsets is considered greenwashing and is increasingly scrutinized by regulators. In short: reduce first, offset second.

Note that other metrics than carbon do matter a lot (eg biodiversity, chemicals impact): i’m just simplifying to make to make my point clearer.

Pick your battles: prioritizing for impact

When it comes to sustainability, it’s tempting to try to do everything. But resources are limited, and not every initiative will deliver the same level of impact. Prioritization is crucial. The hard part is that metrics are often unclear, emotions can influence decisions, and it’s nearly impossible to predict which solutions will prevail.

At Adore Me, we follow common sense rules

1. Take bold bets if you’re sure about the impact. Bold and Sure: not half bold or half sure…
2. Don’t spread resources too thin.
3. Don’t be fooled by shiny projects that can’t withstand deeper scrutiny.

For example, when we launched our collaboration with EverDye, a multi-year project focused on revolutionizing textile dyeing, we asked our production team to assess its carbon impact independently. Once we had their green light, we brought in the marketing team. We didn’t co-decide based on which solutions would ultimately be easiest to pitch to customers.

This approach helps us avoid the trap of focusing on surface-level wins and ensures we’re investing in projects that truly move the needle.

Eat, Sleep, Data: The Compass for Real Impact

One of the biggest challenges in sustainability is deciding what to measure and how. Should you prioritize carbon emissions, water usage, chemical impact, or social rights? Ideally, it’s a mix of everything — but balancing these factors is anything but straightforward. Hence the importance of mastering metrics to adapt to a specific objectives. E.g. to report, team A will use this aggregate KPI. To decide which products to favor, team B will breakdown a specific product per components. To assess financial performance of a category, team C will cluster specific products.

This sounds nice in theory but not straightforward in practice, and requires a top notch data infrastructure. My recommandation is simple: integrate sustainability data into existing systems rather than creating a standalone “sustainability data platform.” Why? Because a separate system is costly, disconnected from day-to-day operations, and ultimately ineffective.

The purpose of collecting this data is not to generate a fancy report on a yearly basis— it’s to improve and continuously optimize the business across its multifaceted and complex metrics on a daily basis. The data needs to be reliable, consistent and actionable across the entire business, not just limited to a one-off pilot project or a small subset of products. Otherwise, you risk collecting data that are not useful over time.

We’ve learned that you need real business data — sales, COGS, inventory performance — to make sustainability insights actionable. For example, a PR-friendly pilot is nice, but what’s truly valuable to leadership is an in-depth analysis of how sustainable products impact customer behavior and margins over time.

In a nutshell, the complexity and standard of data infrastructure, capture and usage in sustainability should be higher (and not lower as often the case…) that other financials or operating metrics. And as genuine sustainability will be fed and increasingly rely on GenAI (to help take smart decision, automatize complex stuff with AI agents, reports, etc), the data quality will soon be the differentiator between the leaders and the rest. Expect a big reshuffle in the years ahead as fancy brands without data understanding will struggle…

Organization corner — the unspoken Sustainability biggest challenge

Compliance: The Boring But Essential Ingredient

Let’s start by this and be honest — compliance isn’t the most exciting topic. But it’s a powerful driver for change. Smart companies treat it as more than a box-checking exercise. “Smart compliance” can even become a competitive advantage.

Start by truly understanding the regulatory landscape. Don’t settle for quick summaries from consultants; go deep and anticipate where future regulations are heading. Sometimes you should aim to just meet the minimum requirements. Other times, it makes sense to go above and beyond, depending on factors like complexity, cost, and risk.

Incorporating compliance into your sustainability DNA from the start is crucial. It saves you from last-minute fire drills and tedious audits that add little value. Done right, it’s an opportunity to create healthier standards for the business while staying ahead of competitors.

Team Play: Breaking Down Silos

If you want your sustainability strategy to succeed, organization matters as much as the strategy itself. According to McKinsey, most transformations fail due to organizational issues. For sustainability, this challenge is even greater because it touches every part of the organization — from Product Design, raw material, Sourcing teams to Marketing, data sharing, Tech or Logistics.

Silos are the silent killers of sustainability initiatives. They create longer timelines, complicated decision-making processes, and information gaps. In traditional transformations, silos are a drain. In sustainability, they’re catastrophic. Sustainability requires cross-functional collaboration at an unprecedented level.

At Adore Me, our approach evolved over time. It started as a bottom-up push by a few passionate people. Then we formalized a escalation process through an ESG committee, which helped create more coordination and ressources allocation. Most companies stop at this stage, sometimes building a specialized sustainability team that operates somewhat on top from the rest of the business. This unfortunately lead to new challenges like extra staff or mismatch between teams and individuals objectives.

We took it a step further to avoid this common pitfall and we moved from the bottom-up approach to a more decentralized model. Rather than build a large, specific sustainability team, we empowered internal champions within each business functions. These weren’t full-time sustainability experts — they were leaders from Product development, Sourcing, Logistics, Data infrastrucure, Social Media and any other functions in the company. These champions represent roughly a quarter of our total headcount, get specific trainings and visibility to drive sustainability initiatives in their own areas, while our small central team supports and coordinates efforts on demand from the champions. This distributed model has made sustainability a core part of how we operate — not an isolated side project.

The result? Every business function owns part of the sustainability journey, making it much harder for the initiative to get siloed, deprioritized or disconnected from the others goals of a teams.

Skills for a VUCA World

We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, and, as you should get it by now, sustainability is one of the most VUCA topics of all: many pitfalls, unclear landscape or KPI, shifting solutions or stakeholders. The skills required to navigate it are the same ones needed for any successful transformation: adaptability, strategic thinking, and cross-functional collaboration.

My advice? Don’t staff your sustainability projects with B-players. This is not the place for second-string talent. Top performers should be involved, not just because it’s good for the planet, but because working on sustainability sharpens their skills and prepares them for other high-impact roles in the future.

Seizing the opportunity

I truly believe the fashion industry can change faster than insiders think. Yes, it will require a mindset shift for this traditionally slow-moving industry. But the path forward is clear:

• Leverage technology and data to improve everything from inventory management to raw material sourcing.
• Collaborate more deeply across the supply chain to create long-term solutions.
• Focus on real impact, not shiny PR-friendly projects.

The good news? The landscape is evolving fast. Internal and external pressures to change are growing, and new B2B ecosystems are emerging, driven by passionate innovators. In just a few years, the winning arguments have shifted from “do this for the planet” to “do this because it’s good for your bottom line.” This change may feel less altruistic, but it’s far more effective in the long run.

I’m proud of the steps Adore Me has taken to help accelerate the adoption of the sustainability S-curve. As for me, I’ll continue supporting the 9/19 Fashion Revolution in new ways (more to come!). This unique beehive of change-makers continues to inspire me.

Let’s challenge the status quo, push past the empty long-term commitments, and create real, lasting change.

We’re in this together.