Need to know
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UK – In response to growing interest in sustainable fashion, Kair has launched a range of specialised detergents, fabric softeners and garment fresheners. While many traditional laundry formulas are unsuitable for fabrics like silks and delicate cottons, the brand is enabling such products to be washed at home.

By offering solutions for specific purposes, with one cleaner for activewear, for example, Kair is also expanding the lifespan of people’s wardrobes. Sally Hughes, founder of Kair, was inspired to create the brand while hosting a pop-up for fashion brand Rixo. She says: ‘In the space of six months… I saw more customers coming in and asking about clothing care, fabrication and sustainability than I’ve seen in five years.’ This growing demand for more sustainable approaches to clothing is therefore requiring more targeted solutions for Conscious Aftercare.

As demand for sustainable fashion solutions continues to grow, brands must take responsibility and support consumers through products and services that allow garments to be kept for longer.

US – With traditional methods of booking travel experiences proving largely inefficient, travel app Elude is disrupting the sector with its budget-first search engine. Allowing users to discover curated tourism suggestions based on their price range, Elude provides access to flights, nearest airports and accommodation.

Its highly personalised approach also offers future travel itineraries and encourages users to explore global destinations they may not have previously considered. By elevating the pre-departure customer journey, Elude appeals to some of the ideas we explore in Before & After Travel. ‘Shopping for travel is broken, and we are modernising an archaic system by supercharging the way people plan their vacations,’ says Alex Simon, CEO of Elude. ‘People deserve to feel emboldened to explore, and we want our users to have access to the transformative power of travel more often.’

With the travel and hospitality sector entering a phase of recovery post-pandemic, brands must cater for new demands from consumers – prioritising safety concerns alongside personal budgets.

Young people in the US are consuming concerning amounts of heavily processed foods as a core part of their daily diets. According to a study conducted by JAMA over a 20-year period, this behaviour has grown and continues to affect the health of children and teenagers.

The research reveals that, in the US, two-thirds of young people’s calories come from ultra-processed foods like chips, biscuits, microwaveable meals and frozen pizza. The study, which examined the diets of children aged 2–19, shows that the percentage of energy consumed from ultra-processed foods rose by 5.6 percentage points between 1999 and 2018.

In terms of demographics, there was a significantly larger increase in the estimated percentage of energy from consumption of ultra-processed foods among non-Hispanic Black youth (from 62.2% to 72.5%) and Mexican American youth (from 55.8% to 63.5%).

This presents food brands with an opportunity to address the needs of different consumer groups and to make high-quality products accessible at fair prices. Discover more on this idea in Affirmative Fractions.