WeDressFair, a mission-driven company

Alternative ways of eating are already well established, and today it is relatively "easy" to find local or organic products.

The question turned out to be much more complicated for clothes. Not because ethical fashion brands are hard to find, as they do exist, but because they are much less easy to find than the textile giants.

And how do you make sense of all the terms used: eco-friendly, recycled, ethical, responsible, environmentally friendly, fair…

We decided we wanted to restore the balance. To give visibility to those who should have the most. And to unify definitions and dig into the questions, so that everyone has the power to choose. Because we are sure of it: we don't really choose when we don't know.

So we defined our main missions:

• Help every consumer (who needs to) find clothing that suits them, in terms of both style and values.
• Showcase brands built around strong values of respect for workers and the environment.
• Put the common good and everyone's personal fulfilment at the heart of our business model.
• Make the textile industry more transparent by making information easier to access.

From the start, we felt that a company's mission was of course to solve a problem, but also to serve the community while contributing to the fulfilment of the people who work there and of its stakeholders.

We wanted to fulfil these missions by writing them into our articles of association. Since 2014 and the Hamon law, companies can include the principles of the social and solidarity economy in their articles of association, putting the common good and people at the heart of the business.

There are four of them:

• Pursue a social purpose.
• Reinvest at least 50% of profits in the company.
• Apply democratic governance: one person, one vote.
• Cap salaries: the highest salary must not exceed the lowest by more than a factor of 10, and the average of the 5 highest salaries must not exceed 7 times the French minimum wage (SMIC). And that still seems huge to us.

And when you look at it more closely, shouldn't every company have these articles of association?

We created WeDressFair so that fashion and the world change for good. For us, that means being consistent in everything we do.

Legal status, governance, energy, transport, funding, packaging, support organisation, support for charities.

Our choices are certainly not the best in each of these areas, but we're committed to sharing our decisions with you.

Our shops and offices run on renewable energy from the supplier ENERCOOP.

In our e-commerce business, logistics is the area with the biggest environmental impact. Today we have chosen 100% recyclable and compostable packaging.

We receive the clothes in plastic bags: recycled, reused, and some simply plastic. We have chosen to remove them before sending you the pieces. Why? Because we reuse a large share of them, and in our beloved Lyon region the sorting rules are extended: we can recycle them.

For transport, we currently use Colissimo. This carrier measures its impact, reduces its emissions and offsets the rest.

Antoine Coulaud, the project's initiator and co-founder, holds 45%. Marie Nguyen, co-founder, holds 35%. Kévin Chavanne, technical director and partner, holds 20% of WeDressFair.

Quite a few questions are still unanswered:

• Growth and the social and solidarity economy: where do we draw the line?
• Can companies have calculated, measured and finite growth?
• Measuring our impact: how, and by whom?