How Bronte Campbell’s Earthletica is raising the bar for sustainable activewear
Olympic gold medallist Bronte Campbell’s sustainable activewear brand Earthletica is taking a priceless not-purchased approach to Black Friday by hosting a free community event at Bondi Pavilion on November 29 to promote connection over consumption.
“Black Friday has become a symbol of over-consumerism,” Bronte Campbell, Earthletica founder, told Inside Retail.
The future-fit activewear brand has the vision to resolve three key problems in the activewear market and more broadly the fashion and textile industry, with high-performance, low-impact activewear.
Campbell and her co-founders Chris Raighleigh; an intellectual property lawyer and Libby Babbet; a pillar in the health and wellness industry joined forces with a shared passion and goal to disrupt the industry for a better world, inline with the triple bottom line.
Green Friday
A growing number of Australian retailers are choosing not to participate in Black Friday over concerns about the environmental impact of encouraging consumers to purchase products they may not need, simply because they’re discounted.
In addition to Earthletica, Australian footwear brand Twoobs has made its stance on sales known.
“At Twoobs, we don’t do Black Friday, and we don’t participate in sales in general,” the brand wrote in a recent blog post.
“Why? It’s simple. We offer you our best prices all year round, rather than hiking them up only to slash them later to coax you into buying them.”
Transparency and offering the best price to customers year-round are also the reasons Australian swimwear brand Ark does not host sales; even on Black Friday.
“We talk to our community all the time and think about what they want, which led to this ‘Green Friday’ event,” Campbell said.
“It’s really just a way to say thank you to that community because we’re nothing without them and their feedback and product input.”
Customer feedback is how the brand has shaped and innovated its product design since its launch in March 2023. This includes everything from fit to how the customer cares for their pieces.
“We all know we’re not supposed to tumble dry activewear, but realistically we all do,” Campbell said. “So we’re talking to customers about how they care or don’t care for the products, as the case may be, to see how it wears over time.
“Constantly being on the ground with the customer is key when designing the next series, we’re taking those little pieces on board.”
In entirety
“Brands like Lululemon make great activewear, they really do, but their entire supply chain is based on unrecycled plastic, and it’s a big pivot for them,” Campbell said.
“If they decided tomorrow their whole strategy was to use completely recycled fabrics, it would take them a really long time to get there.”
Earthletica was founded on a non-negotiable commitment to sustainability from day one, and this has been built into every aspect of the business, so that as it scales, it will continue to reduce its impact with a continuous improvement methodology.
The business is open about the areas where it is seeking to improve, whilst acknowledging the ground it has made in little over a year.
Its goal is to only produce high-performance activewear from 100 per cent recycled materials, offer a more inclusive size range beyond its current offering of sizes 6-14, introduce further innovations in garment fibres and recycling and maintain its zero-waste inventory practices as the business scales.
“When you think about a company like Patagonia, that’s a very similar ethos to them,” Campbell said.
While Campbell acknowledged there’s an inherent “push and pull” around creating new garments, which require resources to produce, and not contributing to the fashion industry’s output at all, it’s about figuring out how to do so more responsibly.
“We always talk about raising the bar— for quality, innovation and sustainability,” Campbell said.
“There’s always going to be further to go, and there’s always more things to address, but we’re starting niche.”
Reducing the use of unrecycled plastic in all of the brand’s garments is one step Earthletica is taking to minimise its environmental impact. As it stands under 2 per cent of fibres used in Australian fashion are recycled.
“We’ll start from there, and keep getting better as we go,” Campbell said, emphasising that there is “so much in sustainable fabric tech out there, with institutes researching it all over the world.
“You just have to have the motivation to bring it to market.”
In June, Earthletica released the first jacket in the world to have a tapeless zipper, which Campbell debuted on the world stage at the Paris Olympics swimming trials. The jacket also featured a bio-alloy to make it waterproof, rather than a plastic membrane.
“That’s the Bronte jacket,” said Campbell, who recently wore the jacket again to the Melbourne Cup.
“The jacket’s zip has no plastic tape, so that’s a big chunk of waste cut out, which means you can separate it to be recycled—with normal tape, you can’t.”
The zip itself is also made from recycled plastic, which Campbell said is a world-first.
“We’re a small company, but we’re the first people in the world to do that because we’re chasing it, constantly looking for innovation, and bringing it to market fast,” Campbell said.
“We can make these changes and prove they work.”
Earthletica is about creating clothing that doesn’t require a compromise on style and quality for the sake of sustainability, so whether a consumer prioritises conscious consumption or not, they can still make a difference.
“We want to make pieces people want to wear and engage with, not compromise,” Campbell said.
“You can look cute, and feel good knowing you’ve reduced your impact on the environment as well.”
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