Ep 72: The End of the Everlane Experiment

In Episode 72’s Andrew’s Take, Andrew reflects on the sale of Everlane, one of the most visible transparency-focused brands of the last fifteen years.

For years, Everlane tried to bring sourcing, factories, pricing, and production into the consumer conversation. Whether you agreed with everything the company did or not, it stood apart from most apparel brands by making transparency part of its identity.

The discussion looks at what the sale might tell us about sustainability, consumer behavior, and the economics behind doing things differently. Not whether consumers care about these issues, but whether they care enough to change how they buy.

At the center of it all is a larger question. If transparency only works when consumers are willing to pay for it, what happens when they aren’t?

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Transcript

Andrew 0:00

I was more than a little bummed out when I heard that Everlane had been sold to Shein. Not because the company got bought and sold, that happens every day. And not because I think Shein is going to delete all Everlane's transparency pages, sustainability claims or factory stories. I'm guessing they're going to keep it, maybe even paint themselves into the picture. They paid for the brand, they paid for the image and a customer that they don't currently have. They're not going to destroy what they bought. Well, not in the first few weeks. That will take more time. Although if anyone wants to bet with me that Everlane stays as it is for long, I love gambling. Please write me or call me. What saddened me was that Everlane represented an idea I loved, which has lived in me for wow, gosh, a really long time. They liked and they believed in transparency. I mean, they actually showed their vendors, they made their vendors famous, the public, because they were proud of them. For many years, I produced a course at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where students created gene brands. It was two classes per year, about 35 students a year for 15 years. That's about 535 students in all. During these years, the students asked, when they were making their brands, for specific vendors seven times. Seven. Twice they asked for cone fabric to be used in their projects, and five times for Saitex. The five times were caused by Everlane, who ran an incredible video about Saitex. The students loved it, and we talked about them in class. Everlane was admired by my students, not because it was fashionable, not because it was luxurious, not even because it was cheap. They admired it because Everlane seemed to be trying. Trying to tell consumers where products came from, trying to explain pricing, trying to discuss factories, trying to make sourcing part of the conversation. Whether you agreed with everything Everlane did or not, it stood apart from most apparel brands, and five students out of 25 sounds like nothing. But Everlane only appeared in year 13 of our class. For nearly 20 years, the apparel industry has discussed transparency, sustainability, responsible sourcing, traceability, ethical production, circularity, and environmental impact. Thousands, thousands of conference presentations, tons of blah, blah, blah about this or that being sustainable. Generally marketing junk consumers can't understand. But Everlane influenced students. The only brand that really, aside from Patagonia, that ever came up in any school conversations. In the end, sadly, they were $90 million in debt, sold for $100 million, another wow. Something obviously was wrong, and I guess from a financial point of view, people will blame their cost of goods or brick and mortar strategy or execution. If one of the most recognizable transparency-focused brands in America struggled to make the economics work, what exactly is there to learn? For years we've asked whether consumers care about transparency. Perhaps we're asking the wrong question. Maybe consumers do care, sort of. The evidence suggests many do. The students I taught did. The question is whether consumers care enough, enough to change purchasing behavior or even to pay more. And the answer really upsets me. Because if consumers don't care, then the solution to sustainability is not commercial. It's political. And if that's the case, nothing will happen in the sustainable arena for a very long time. And that's what makes the story sad. For 15 years, Everlane tried to move sourcing, factories, and production into its consumer conversation. For 15 years, many consumers applauded, but clearly not enough. I really thought other brands would copy Everlane's model, but they didn't. And that tells another story. The Everlane sale is the end of a test. A 15-year experiment designed to discover how much transparency consumers were willing to pay for. Lastly, and kind of importantly, Michael Pressman, one of the founders of Everlane, who served as CEO for a very long time, said after the sale, without mincing words, this is not what we wanted. And then he said he was starting a new company called Still Radical with the same principles as Everlane, but with no venture capital or private equity. That says a lot. The idea is still alive.