… But Our Blue Week Sales Are!
Each year, when November rolls around, we are faced with the same dilemma: buck the trend and shun sale season or find a way to put our own spin on it, to try and reach sustainable fashion goals by harnessing what we call, Blue Friday/Blue Week.
Depending on the approach we take, our friendly customer service team is faced with one of two varieties of constructive feedback from our ocean loving community. They read a little like this:
Ocean Lover 1 (Received when we do hold sales):
“Why, as a sustainable slow fashion brand, are you adopting fast fashion practices like sales that encourage overconsumption?”
Ocean Lover 2 (Received when we don’t hold a sale):
“I would love to buy all my clothes from TWOTHIRDS and build a sustainable wardrobe, but why do your clothes cost more than fast fashion brands?”
These common, contradictory queries perfectly highlight the most testing issues that an eco-minded company like ours faces on a daily basis:
How do we run a successful eco brand while tempering the negative aspects of consumerism that drive climate breakdown?
&
"How do we make sustainable clothing available to everyone, without compromising our mission of protecting the ocean?"
Below are the honest answers we give to questions like those sent by Ocean Lovers 1 and 2. Rest assured, we are constantly looking for ways to better tackle these issues, along with the rest of the sustainable fashion industry.
Sales Reduce Impact of Overproduction/Excess Stock Storage
This is our most common response to Ocean Lover 1’s critique. Far from being a way of dodging the question, it explains precisely how Blue Week sales are a necessary part of the sustainable pre-order service we operate.
By pre-ordering eco-friendly garments, members of our community accept that waiting patiently for their sustainable clothes means we are able to better plan, and only use the raw materials we need. It’s a system that reduces TWOTHIRDS’ C02 emissions by 27.6%, as evidenced in our 2021 Eco Report.
We were pioneers of this type of online system back when we launched it in 2015 and have been fine tuning it ever since. Unfortunately, even the most full-proof of systems is susceptible to market and socio-political fluctuations, which are tough to plan for.
This means that despite our best efforts, we do still have some eco-friendly clothes returned to us and occasionally overstock items by accident. Blue Week sales are about finding a home for these high-quality and sustainably made garments, which would otherwise be left behind.
Whereas other fashion brands use sales as an excuse to ramp up production and sell vast quantities of low quality clothing (much of which lasts a matter of days) we use sales in a more sensitive and eco-conscious way.
Another way in which Blue Week sales help us lower our impact on the environment is by reducing our reliance on storage facilities, which have damaging carbon and water footprints to consider.
Fair Prices - Fair for the Planet, You & Workers
Ocean Lover 2 will be delighted by our 2022 Blue Week sales, with many discounts pushing close to or beyond the half-price mark, but this is certainly not the TWOTHIRDS norm.
It is worth mentioning that some Blue Week sale items will not be as heavily discounted as others. This is because we insist on striking a delicate balance between offering appealing prices, but not slashing prices to the extent that our other ethical commitments suffer, such as paying all our workers and suppliers a living wage.
Fair prices also ensure our sustainable clothing continues to be made to the highest of standards, so it lasts a lifetime, rather than being trash-bound by the time people see in the New Year.
At the same time, we realise that our regular prices sometimes exclude people with budget constraints from joining the sustainable fashion revolution that we’re trying to spark.
The hope is that our Blue Week sales enable those people to get a taste for high-quality slow fashion and that this may encourage them to change their shopping habits – to ditch fast fashion for good – and join our journey to protect the ocean and safeguard the planet for future generations.
It’s for these reasons you can shop our Blue Week discounts and know that in supporting TWOTHIRDS you are doing your bit to change the fashion industry for the better.