Apparel brands may be losing customers over faulty garments without seeing the evidence in their returns volume, according to a new survey from Samsara Eco.
The Australian enviro-tech startup’s Circular-Conscious Consumer Report, released Oct. 8, found that 27.7 percent of respondents selected leaving a brand as their response to a “garment failure,” denoting an issue with quality or a flaw in the item, compared with 5.9 percent who selected returning the item.
Samsara conducted the online survey from July 22 to Aug. 23 among 5,208 members of its Sam for Change community across 120 countries. It was a self-selected sample of people interested in circularity, with 86.7 percent aged 18 to 24 and 75.8 percent identifying as female.
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The brand departures included 15.8 percent who said they never buy from the brand again and 11.9 percent who switch to a competitor. Just 2.3 percent selected replacing the item with another from the same brand. More than 64 percent chose repairing the garment or continuing to wear it with the flaw.
“Durability has always been a question of quality. It’s now a retention question and, in Europe, it’s becoming a compliance one—both showing up on the bottom line,” said Lars Kissau, general manager at Samsara Eco.
The European Commission has begun preparing rules for textiles under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation , which provides a framework for developing requirements for individual product categories.
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