Tommy Hilfiger has set an ambitious goal: by 2030, all its products will be designed according to circular economy principles. This means creating garments that are made to last longer, designed for recyclability, and produced using recycled or renewable materials.
Circularity is just one part of the broader sustainability strategy overseen by Thijs Maartens, VP of sustainability at the PVH-owned brand.
Tommy Hilfiger has become the first European apparel company of its size to be certified against six leading sustainability standards. The company is also making significant strides in sourcing more sustainable cotton, transitioning to renewable energy, and incorporating innovative circular technologies into its collections.
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These include solutions such as Recycrom, Circulose, and regenerated fibers from Infinited Fiber Company.
Speaking at Bluezone in Munich last week, Maartens shared key insights and strategies for scaling sustainability efforts for long-term impact.
On defining circularity: For fashion brands that want to sell more but better products, Maartens said the best way to reduce overall environmental impact is to reduce virgin resources. “We want to increase our regenerative materials, design simple and durable products, and then at the end of life, we want to make sure that we provide opportunities to our consumers to return these products so that we can repurpose them,” he said.
On customer engagement: Interacting with consumers and bringing them along that circular journey is part of a brands’ responsibility as well. Circular business models such as takeback programs, where Tommy Hilfiger collects, cleans and repairs pre-owned garments for resale, allows the brand to engage with customers. Still, Maartens said it’s critical to make sustainability as simple as possible and to build trust with customers, so they feel confident that Tommy Hilfiger is taking “care of sustainability” for them.
He added there are different success measures for a circular business, including consumer engagement, attracting new consumers and retaining them so there’s profitability.
On digital passports: Digital product passports (DPP) will open the lines of communication between brands and consumers, not just related to sustainability. Maartens envisions a future when DPPs are used to help authenticate resale products or be used to manage inventory in a smarter way.
“There are many different use cases for digital product passports,” he said. “Although it starts with compliance, we want to create transparency toward our consumers… to [provide] accurate and available information. In the end, it opens an opportunity to really evolve as an industry.”
On pilots: Testing and “creating proof points” to get a business or project is necessary, but Maartens said it’s critical to keep evolving. “We want to avoid saying that one story of that one pilot,” he said. “In terms of scaling innovation and scaling pilots, you need to continuously iterate because the world around us is also evolving.”
One example of this is when Tommy Hilfiger ran a pilot for its own resale platform. “It did start with one pilot, and we did have in mind that we wanted to scale it across the globe. And for that to happen, we needed to be more flexible,” he said. Pivoting to partnerships with third party resale companies in different regions, like ThredUp in the U.S., proved to be more scalable.
Progress “moves faster if you collaborate more intensively frequently with the stakeholders around you,” he added.
On the business benefits of regulation: Maartens said the “tsunami of regulations” coming for the fashion industry makes it easier for him to make a business case for sustainable actions. “It’s much easier because I don’t need to constantly repeat the why. I don’t need to explain the implications… I can basically overstep why we need to invest in sustainability internally, and that helps to accelerate our journey,” he said.
Though regulations can be a catalyst to make more sustainable business decisions, speed is just one part of a long-term solution. In a large corporation like Tommy Hilfiger and PVH, he said sustainability is a transformative journey.
“You need to go from awareness to engagement to activation, and then do it again. I think the awareness piece, letting things sink in, takes a lot of time and a lot of intensive interaction,” he said. “And if we can have regulation as one of the business drivers behind sustainability that helps us step over that first awareness of the question in a much faster way.”
On building a team: The Tommy Hilfiger organization encourages its employees to spend one hour every week getting to know a person from another department. Maartens said this allows him to understand different roles and how sustainability can be applied or enhanced in their respective departments. “Our mission is to make every job a sustainability job,” he said.
