Daily Signals 04.12.2023

Signals

Adidas and Jerry Lorenzo unveil streetwear collaboration, textiles made from human hair and why flexible working is fuelling revenue growth.

Adidas and Jerry Lorenzo team up to create Fear of God Athletics

Adidas and Fear of God Athletics

Global – On 3 December 2023, Fear of God Athletics, the collaboration between Fear of God founder Jerry Lorenzo and Adidas that was three years in the-making, finally hit the market.

Fear of God launched its mainstay label in 2013 and the popular Essentials sub-brand in 2018. Athletics marks the brand’s third venture and Adidas’s third permanent fashion partnership, following in the footsteps of Stella McCartney and Y3.

The brand aims to provide a functional evolution of the existing athleisurewear genre, creating luxury sportswear that is fit for a professional athlete. ‘Fear of God Athletics is post-collaboration, post-hype, post-heat. Instead it’s about asking what is the next step to new functional ideas?,’ Lorenzo told Vogue Business.

The luxury footwear and garments are designed with basketball, baseball, running, football, American football and hiking in mind, and will be released incrementally. Among the first releases will be a translucent-soled basketball sneaker featuring Lorenzo’s spin on the 1990s Adidas Predator stripe.

In our report, The State of Streetwear, we unpacked how authenticity is the key to standing out in the lucrative yet crowded streetwear market. By taking a slower, more-thoughtful approach to fashion, Fear of God Athletics is doing just that.

Strategic opportunity

Fashion brands should embrace Jerry Lorenzo’s post-hype mentality and seek authentic partnerships with aligned values that fill a gap in the market rather than feed into its over-saturation

Textiles made from human hair to be commercialised in 2024

Human Material Loop, The Netherlands Human Material Loop, The Netherlands
Human Material Loop, The Netherlands Human Material Loop, The Netherlands

The Netherlands ­– Would you wear clothes made with human hair? While the idea may initially repulse you, Human Material Loop wants to flip the narrative and normalise the use of abundant human hair waste to craft better-for-the-planet and surprisingly compelling textiles.

Dutch company Human Material Loop has found its niche in turning hair into new materials that require minimal land and water use after collecting hair cuttings from participating hair salons. Thorough research and development led the company to create yarns with similar properties to that made from sheep’s wool, but significantly slashing carbon emissions from greenhouse gases.

‘Throughout history, we’ve utilised a variety of animal fibres in textiles, yet our own hair, composed of the same keratin protein as wool, often goes overlooked,’ explains the company’s founder and CEO Zsofia Kollar. ‘Why not treat human hair as we would any other valuable textile fibre?’

Human Material Loop will launch a commercial pilot in 2024, starting by targeting the architecture and interior design markets. Find out more about designers rewriting the negative tropes around materials in Material Matters 2023: Designing Tomorrow’s Narratives.

Strategic opportunity

Beyond textiles, several industries have untapped opportunities to explore within unlikely waste streams. From food to beauty, experiment with sustainable solutions even if they sound uncomfortably unfamiliar at first, and consider how to reframe the narrative and make it your USP

AmorePacific makes vegan leap into ingestible beauty

Builders Club for Helena Rubinstein’s Powercell Skinmunity campaign, UK Builders Club for Helena Rubinstein’s Powercell Skinmunity campaign, UK

South Korea – Capitalising on the burgeoning nutricosmetics market, South Korean beauty titan AmorePacific’s Vital Beautie brand has unveiled a ground-breaking retinol-based dietary supplement, Super Retinol C, intended to enhance beauty from within. Designed to be gentle even for retinol-sensitive consumers, this vegan-friendly product is poised to redefine ingestible beauty standards.

Super Retinol C is enriched with L-cysteine, curcumin and green tea – ingredients known for their health benefits. Offering a daily dose of 1,000mg of vitamin C in two convenient sachets, this supplement dissolves easily in water, allowing for a refreshing drink with the added zest of citrus extract and mango juice.

With the global nutricosmetics market projected to soar to £11.8bn ($15bn, €13.7bn) by 2033, according to Future Market Insights, Vital Beautie is strategically positioned to lead the way with its innovative approach. By catering for the growing beauty-from-within category, it is also feeding into consumers’ appetite for evidence-based healthification of beauty products, as we revealed in Accredited Beauty.

Strategic opportunity

In a crowded beauty marketplace, brands should define their USP by amplifying the voices of experts – researchers, lab teams, scientists and doctors – to show their credentials and authenticity

Stat: Scoop report suggests flexible working fuels revenue growth

Lyonesse Pictures Office, Kii Inc, Japan Lyonesse Pictures Office, Kii Inc, Japan

US – A ground-breaking US report released in October 2023 by hybrid work management start-up Scoop, in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, challenges the narrative about remote working policies and revenue growth. Analysing data from 554 public companies, the study reveals that those offering employees flexibility in choosing their work environment outperformed their counterparts by 16 percentage points in revenue growth between 2020 and 2022.

Scoop CEO Rob Sadow expressed surprise at the substantial gap in a press release: ‘That gap was really surprising to us – and larger than expected.’ The report counters the prevailing scepticism about remote working, shedding light on its potential to drive higher revenue.

The report distinguishes between companies with ‘fully flexible’ policies, boasting a 21% industry-adjusted revenue growth rate, and those with more restrictive policies, with only a 5% growth rate. While the report doesn’t claim causation, it highlights a correlation between flexible policies and forward-thinking, purposeful, and engaging work environments.

Sadow believes the data debunks the notion that flexibility hinders performance. He said: ‘The data suggests that not only is that not true in terms of underperformance, but you might actually outperform.’

As explored in our Work States Futures macrotrend, flexibility and wellbeing are now crucial to retain talent – especially Gen Z workers who might not have experienced the reality of a full-time job in an office before.

Strategic opportunity

Recognise the importance of flexibility and wellbeing in retaining talent, particularly among Gen Z workers. Implement initiatives that prioritise mental health, work-life balance and overall employee satisfaction

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