Fast fashion is an trade ensnared in labor points and copyright issues, and it has an immense environmental impression due to its wastewater and carbon emissions. It additionally occurs to have the potential to make some huge cash, fast.
But regardless of all these points, VCs received’t cease loving the sector.
On Wednesday, my colleague Manish Singh wrote a scoop a few potential Accel funding into Newme, a fast-fashion startup based mostly in India. Newme is an app-based retailer that produces 500 new gadgets per week with a mean price ticket of $10. This information comes only a week after the corporate closed a seed spherical.
Accel and Newme didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Newme appears to be like very very similar to many different VC-backed fast-fashion startups like Shein, which has raised $4 billion, and Cider, an Andreessen Horowitz–backed startup valued at $1 billion. Cider says it’s on-demand stock makes it a extra moral fast-fashion possibility. That’s up for debate, although.
Accel’s potential funding into Newme stood out to me for a couple of causes, the biggest of which is that I’m simply not likely certain why VCs again these firms.
Fast-fashion firms gained speedy recognition and huge followings due to their capability to convey garments from the runway to your native division retailer in document time. But the very fact is that usually, they’ll solely churn out garments so shortly by reducing corners. The solely method to make this technique work is through the use of low cost supplies and low cost — and sure underpaid — labor, and in lots of instances, by copying designs.