Turning a world-changing concept into a real business

FiberTrace; on a mission to make the textile supply chains more sustainable, they had to understand the needs of fashion brands, manufacturers and customers to turn their patented technology into a viable business.

The Challenge: FibreTrace is a patented technology that allows cotton to be instantly scanned, tracing from field to shelf (and even beyond, as part of a circular economy). The challenge was to turn this raw technology into a suite of tools and products that can be used by manufacturers, retailers and customers. FibreTrace promised to bring traceability to traditionally murky fashion supply chains, but in order to turn the technology into a viable business, the team needed to understand the wants and needs of fashion brands, manufacturers and end-customers.

Will customers actually pay more for traceable products? Where do brands see the value of traceability and are they prepared to make the investment?

The Approach: The FibreTrace team spanned throughout nations, different disciplines and various points on the global supply chain which they planned to disrupt. From Cotton farmers, through to denim manufacturers and counterfeit experts — the team had the reach and expertise to develop a groundbreaking business. We started by bringing everyone together for an intensive two day workshop. Sanjeev Bahl, CEO of Saitex Denim from Vietnam joined counterfeit experts and owners of the largest cotton farm in the world to tear the idea apart and rebuild it into a viable, desirable and feasible business. After two days of debating, sketching and uncovering key assumptions we were ready to kick off the work to turn this big idea into a disruptive business.

We used a combination of in-depth research interviews with major brands and direct experiments with manufacturers and end consumers to uncover the motivations of users and customers across the cotton supply chain .

To test both desirability and viability of the proposition with end-consumers, we ran a social media ad campaign to see whether consumers would pay more for a traceable item of clothing. The A/B test put a £58 pair of traceable jeans up against a £48 pair of generic, but visually identical jeans. The ads directed consumers to the landing page of Truth Jeans, a fake brand we created for the experiment, where customers were able to sign up to pay for the jeans at a future date — would they put their money where their mouth is? Through the experiment we found that over 50% of customers were willing to pay £10 more for traceable jeans, providing strong evidence for an end-consumer desire to pay more for traceable clothing.

We continued to run tests to bolster the evidence we were building for the proposition’s desirability amongst end-consumers.

This led us to create a FibreTrace pitch deck and start testing the business model — how could we tell the story of FibreTrace to brands and what was the best way to charge for the service? We created a prototype app to bring the experience to life and pushed the proposition to a point where it felt like a real, functioning business. The MVP for FibreTrace was ready for testing.

We went and pitched to M&S, Paul Smith, G-Star and Everlane. Through the meetings we learned about the needs and motivations of brands. We gathered direct feedback from customers and made iterations. Brands were keen to sign up to trial FibreTrace with their products — this was the evidence we needed to take the idea to the next stage of development.

By getting close to customers through interviews with brands and small-scale experiments, the team were able to build the business around what customers really want.

The Result: Magnetic delivered a business model, brand, product vision, product UX designed around true customer need. The positive response from brands when testing the MVP proposition gave the team confidence to move into the ‘tech build phase’. Fast forward to 2021 and FibreTrace has now successfully launched and has partnered with big sustainable fashion names such as Reformation to produce traceable denim lines, and launched its traceable denim capsule collection with Nobody Denim last year. Building on their success tracing cotton, they’re now also branching out into other materials such as viscose and recycled polyester — and are currently running trials with wool and leather.

Want to know more? Have a chat with Tom Whitwell.

Magnetic is a design and innovation company that helps design better futures. We’ve worked with global businesses to build capabilities and transform organisations. If you’d like to find out more about our work drop us a line.