Episode 6 of The Impact Fashion Podcast covers fashion rental and hygiene concerns. For this episode, we did something different, for the format, and had PhD researcher, Rebecca Clube on.
Rebecca conducted research to understand how contamination affects the use of fashion rental services. This research was carried out at Imperial College London and can be found in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
On this episode, Rebecca shares ways that fashion businesses can address customer concerns around hygiene in clothing rental. She provides practical tips that businesses can apply as the end of lockdown draws closer and we begin the venture out again (hopefully) & perhaps restart renting.
Learnings from the episode
Rebecca shared a number of things that rental companies can do. This includes ensuring that they:
- Provide a consistent service to their customers
- Pick your laundry service or approach well, for example ensure that the detergent being used is not to hard on the nose
- Are transparent about your cleaning process; share this widely
- Make unboxing a lovely experience
- Avoid hard to launder fabrics (like light coloured silks) where possible
- Partner with designers to develop durable collections that are suitable for renting
- Collect feedback from customers and users of the service to enable improvements to be made
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