Mid-season sales. End of season sales. 70% off sales. You literally cannot walk the high street without hitting a sale sign these days... and that was before COVID ravaged the retail sector!
There's no other event in the calendar quite like EOFY for a sale and this year it's compounded with mountains of unsold inventory thanks to the pandemic / shutdown, adding even more pressure to a system already at bursting point.
Indeed, retail analysts are predicting “wall-to-wall” sales for the rest of this year to clear unsold stock - because price is one of the few levers that multibrand retailers can pull.
But price and value are not the same thing.
PRICE ≠ VALUE
"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." - Warren Buffet
The Sage of Omaha has it right and his sermon extends well beyond the stock market – you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that buying something cheap that you know is going to fall apart is the exact opposite of value.
We've all bought something mostly because it was a bargain which has ended up in the back of the wardrobe. Why? Because buying on price alone lacks an emotional connection, unless of course you're an accountant with an emotional connection to money. So when the wardrobe invariably overflows, all those unworn clothes get sent to charity shops and/or landfill and the cycle starts again – like some demented parody of The Lion King without the fun music.
Here at Citizen Wolf, we use a different calculus to the rest of the industry in almost everything we do and that extends to after-sales care. Because we believe passionately that value is a function of usage measured in years not wash cycles.
FREE REPAIRS FOR LIFE.
Firstly (and most importantly) every Citizen Wolf T-shirt is custom made to fit your body using our Magic Fit® technology. Producing on-demand is unequivocally better for the planet than over-producing by 30%+ just to get your unit costs down – but the real value in custom made is usage.
Because when something fits properly you wear it more often. Simples.
And when you wear something more, you end up loving it more, such that if/when it wears through you rush to repair rather than replace. Which is exactly why we offer free repairs for life.
A MORAL OBLIGATION TO REPAIR.
From our accountant’s perspective, free repairs is a terrible business decision. But we do it because a) we’re not accountants and b) it’s the right thing to do both for the planet and for you.
It’s been estimated by WRAP UK that we can reduce the carbon footprint of our clothes by up to 30% for every 9 additional months we keep wearing them. Considering Australians send 23 kg of textile waste to landfill every year each, we'd go so far as to suggest that we have a moral obligation to repair rather than replace if we care even one smidgen about climate change.
And then there’s water.
We live on a continent defined by drought and reckless climate policies which is only going to get worse. There's around 2,700 litres of water embedded in any conventional cotton Tee (less for organic but cotton is not known for it's water efficiency) and 7,500 litres in your jeans – water that doesn’t need to be used if there’s reduced demand for new clothes.
TL;DR BE LIKE VIVIENNE.
"Buy less. Choose well. Make it last." - Vivienne Westwood
If you remember only one thing from this rant make it this - next time ASOS / The Iconic / Every Legacy Fashion Brand pings your phone with yet another sales notification, channel Vivienne Westwood and ask yourself if you really need that thing just 'cause it's 70% off?
And if you do? Great! Go bananas and nab that sweet deal... but we hope that'll be the exception rather than the rule.