ForeverFashion

20th August 2022

We chat with Dr Tracy Cassidy from the University of Huddersfield about her venture ForeverFashion, which centres around fashion sustainability. This project is part of the ARC 2022 Cohort.

Q: What is your academic background and what are you currently working on?
I’m a Reader in Fashion and Textiles. I have a fashion design background, but I actually teach more on the fashion business area. Currently, much of my research is around fashion trend forecasting and colour forecasting, and, at the moment, I’m working on trying to develop a theory of colour forecasting.

Q: How did you come up with your venture idea? Why did you decide to focus on this idea? 
The venture comes from my PhD, albeit my PhD 20 years ago. The concept that I developed in my PhD was quite a bit before its time, it was needed, but the technological infrastructure wasn’t really available as it is now. Over the years, I keep coming back to that main concept to say, can I take it further, and the ARC programme just seemed like the ideal opportunity to try to explore that. I think it has been about timing more than anything.

It has always been something that I wanted to do, but it has been tweaked since 20 years ago, because the research that I have done more recently has linked very much into sustainability. So, I have shaped that original concept into sustainability and the need, as we all know, for more sustainability in fashion and textiles. This focus is there because it is needed. Recently, the government and the Prime Minister have started speaking to various people in academia that are working on sustainability, so it is really timely in that sense as well.

Q: What does your venture aim to achieve and how does it tackle the issue?  
It is multi-faceted in some respects. The business aspect is about the generation of big data that can then be used for trend forecasting purposes. It is to gather consumer insights in real time of consumer behaviour in relation to their fashion consumption and post-consumption habits. That is what will be hidden away in the system, but that is the thing that is really going to be generating money.

The layer above that is more visible and will be consumer-led. It is educating consumers around fashion sustainability, and it aims to improve the purchase and post-purchase decisions for consumers, and add value to pre-used garments, re-fashion and hopefully have a big impact on the planet. That is the more social enterprise aspect and the thing that consumers will be engaging with as this is the bit that will be visible. 

Q: Who would be your ideal user?
The ideal user will be both consumers and sellers, resellers or makers. It can be engaged with by big brands, SMEs or micro businesses. It is free for all and it is there for the purpose of buying and selling fashion, but in a more sustainable way.

Q: What stage are you at with your venture right now? 
At the moment, I’m obviously still in the market validation stage and trying to unpick all of the pieces. It is quite interesting to learn about how much information people in industry feel that consumers need, and fitting all of these pieces together as a jigsaw. It is quite exciting!

I am hoping to be able to create a mock up, originally it was thought that it would be an app, but now I believe it is going to be an interactive website, because that is more fitting for the way consumers from my survey prefer to engage with educational information. It is also more fitting with the concept of slowing down fashion through more considered purchase decisions. 

Q: How is the ARC Accelerator supporting you in bringing your venture to life? 
I think it is useful in that it has given me a structure, so that I can work through market validation in a systematic way. I do that as a researcher anyway, but I think it is quite nice to have somebody else feeding in little bits of knowledge and telling you to start thinking about specific aspects of business start-ups that I would have not normally thought about. That has been quite helpful and, I think, it is pushing it forward.

Q: What has been the most useful part of the ARC programme so far?  
So far, it is actually the previous two weeks, where we have been exploring the social enterprise aspect. It is something that I have not really come across before. I have been aware of it, but I have not really looked at it in detail. I think one of the problems that I had early on with my concept is that it has that business aspect and the enterprise aspect of it didn’t make sense in my head. I couldn’t explain it, because I didn’t understand what the social enterprise aspect was.

It was quite enlightening, over the last couple of weeks, to realise that yes, that really makes sense. It has helped me to be able to separate the two core aspects, and to then think about what the impact is, so that has been really valuable. I think it also really timely in where I’m at in the development process.

Q: What have you learned through the programme that you will bring back to your work or research? 
The commercialisation aspect, most definitely. Being able to look more critically at my research and understand that there are different routes to impact that are good.

In terms of research methods in themselves, I’m now using a grounded theory approach that I have not used before, so it has developed another practical research method for me, which is quite interesting. I think those are the key things.

Q: Where can we go to learn more?
You can get in touch with me via my LinkedIn profile here.

 

Photo credit: Liza Summer via Pexels