Cai Jinqing: Turning fashion sustainable development into a "sport"

In China, fashion sustainability has not yet become a “sport”. But Cai Jinqing wants to change everything.

Cai Jinqing, who served as president of Keing Greater China in September last year, immediately started the sustainable business. At the end of December last year, under the leadership of Cai Jinqing and Kaiyun Paris headquarters responsible for sustainable development, Kaiyun and Plug and Play teamed up to set up the K Generation Award in China, and this year's fashion cycle was held. This is the topic of innovative materials forum. “China is still at a relatively early stage of sustainable development. Kaiyun’s concept of bringing innovation and sustainable development to China can really promote this 'sports'.” Cai Jinqing told BoF. “China is a hot land full of innovation power, which is also more obvious in other industries. I feel that if you can bring Kaiyun’s leading expertise in sustainable development to China, it’s true to connect entrepreneurs and companies here. Will accelerate the progress of sustainable development in China," she added.

"This award is the first step. This is an open award. I hope to attract everyone to participate. I feel that there is such an open source platform that can promote new ideas first, so that everyone can have real recognition first. There are real changes," she said.

"Shanghai as the first game, we want to focus on the material, except that the impact of raw materials is the biggest, the material is also the first part of the designer and the consumer." The forum's planner, modern communication group fashion Editor-in-chief and Yehyehyeh founder Ye Xiaowei told BoF. “Before discussing with them, China’s investment in this area is relatively limited, but there are already many foreign countries, so I want to know why,” she added.

This is the second time that Kaiyun has held a sustainable development forum during the Shanghai Fashion Week. EP&L is a tool to monetize the environmental impact of fashion products such as clothing or accessories. Its calculation standards are traced back to the source, including raw material production, group operations, logistics and store operations, and the impact on store operations. The measurement dimensions of EP&L include water use and pollution, waste, greenhouse gases, air pollution, and land use.

EP&L is still the focus of this time. This is developed by Kaiyun and its brands need to be uniformly used. At least it can fill the industry's many years of sustainable development data gap.

The goal of the Kaiyun Group is to establish a fully transparent and responsible supply chain by 2025. Kaiyun said last year that it has completed 95% of its target. To achieve this goal, most of the Kaiyun Group's China operations need to adjust, clarify and quantify the complex systems of upstream factories and suppliers, which account for about 25% of the total raw material production in the world.

Cai Jinqing cited an example of a single raw material, organic silk. In China, Kaiyun is helping six or seven organic silk manufacturers to optimize their production processes, providing some changes to these manufacturers through Kaiyun's material innovation laboratory at the European headquarters, and helping these companies through third-party audit companies. Measure EP&L.

Kaiyun Group's Materials Innovation Lab (MIL) | Image Source: The other party provides

“Organic silk is actually a raw material that is in short supply. There is not enough supply in the world, but we hope that this will become a deeper cooperation. This will enable manufacturers to efficiently produce high-quality raw materials afterwards. Can make them more competitive as a supplier," said Cai Jinqing.

Kaiyun plans to reduce the carbon emissions generated by the Group's business by 40% by 2025. But the changes brought about by Kaiyun, or the production that can be completely digitized, account for only 7% of the fashion industry. Therefore, in order to really promote sustainable development, fashion companies need to send out in addition to emotional stories and good-looking figures. Effective signal. At the event, many designers talked about the application of innovative materials. “As for whether their products are sustainable or not, we don’t know, but they make this sustainable topic less boring, or let everyone listen. It’s not beautiful, it’s useless. Ye," said Ye Xiaowei. As Wu Di, founder and CEO of Lianlian Design Group, who participated in this forum, said, “If luxury goods should redefine what is 'perfect', designers also need to re-examine what they are doing, if the brand can build a system The inner loop, this may be a more feasible approach as a first step," she said.

Cai Jinqing also realized that in addition to changing product ideas, the industry should also change its communication ideas. “In fact, consumers are now looking for such a luxury, not only the product itself, but also the values ​​and social responsibilities it represents, and the brand spirit behind it.”

BoF = BoF Fashion Business Review

CJQ = Cai Jinqing

BoF: Your work background involves art auctions, business consulting, etc. Why did you decide to join Kaiyun Group last September?

CJQ: In fact, the initial process is quite natural. Kaiyun is also a sister company of Christie's. It is an investment fund of the Pino family. It is also related to Kaiyun, some cooperation and so on. Before joining, I was also providing consulting services for Kaiyun during Brunswick, so Kaiyun is not a completely new organization for me, and this decision has a certain continuity. In addition, before I came, I also did a lot of inner exploration. I agree with Kaiyun’s values: it is not a quick opportunity to look at China’s market opportunities, but to integrate into local culture and interact with consumers. These are attracting me. The reason for coming. After I came, there was no particularly long transition period. Kaiyun’s performance in the past two years has been very fast and very successful, and it is growing rapidly.

BoF: What is the biggest change you have made since taking office?

CJQ: When I came in, I found that a lot of things could be carried out immediately. Of course, I think that the most important and most optimized, and what can be done successfully in China is sustainable development. This is exactly what the Chinese people want to do now, what the people want to do. Kaiyun is so leading in this respect, we can bring the best practices, Kaiyun global network and knowledge to China, to cultivate sustainable fashion in China's soil.

BoF: Is there any team dedicated to sustainable development in Kaiyun China, or is it intentional?

CJQ: Kaiyun is a global company with more than 50 people in the sustainable development department. In addition to this, there are more than 20 experts working together. We also maintain cooperation with external experts in China, but with the domestic There are more and more business cooperation, and we will certainly pay more attention to how to support and carry out sustainable business in China.

BoF: As a very important brand, can Gucci share with us the sustainable development strategy of the brand?

CJQ: Kaiyun will have a sustainable development requirement for the brand. All brands should implement such standards, and we will also evaluate the brand. And how each brand operates sustainable, or how it designs special promotional content, it is up to the brand itself, such as Gucci is active and active in this regard, it has a special explanation for sustainable development, the website also has a "cultural" Purpose ” Interpretation of this entire sustainable concept. Gucci has stopped using fur since 2018. This is a very important signal. A global brand like this can make such decisions decisively at this time, and it will actually promote and influence the trend of more consumption, or Affect other brands.

BoF: You just said that China is still at a relatively early stage. Do you think the brand should strengthen its propaganda or use other methods to infiltrate this “sustainable development movement”?

CJQ: I think everyone has a very urgent experience - China's environmental problems have reached a moment of non-solvency, so we have a strong motivation. What we can bring is that we have already been internationally Establish a system of knowledge for many years. By sharing it with everyone, we hope to bring benefits to the whole of China. At the same time, we support start-ups through the establishment of sustainable innovation awards, attracting more people to focus on this field, whether it is cognitive or technical and commercial to solve this problem. Today we are mainly discussing new materials. For example, just in the forum, Chen Feng of Chenfeng (Chen Guoxin, Chairman and CEO of Chenfeng Group) also said that the sustainable development solution may be a printing process without water. . We can also explore from the new business model, how to recycle clothes, how to consume, our definition of K Generation Award is more extensive, not to say that we must only accept solutions for new materials in technology, but we I hope that all innovative ideas will emerge and be promoted through this platform. When you are a company to create a new business model, it is very challenging, but putting everyone together can speed up the final implementation of this business model solution. This is what we want to do. .

BoF: I used to feel that technology companies are doing more and there are fewer luxury goods.

CJQ: This is the style of Kaiyun. We hope to bring this subversive, innovative, special adventure and bold style to the fashion luxury industry. I think the fashion industry is indeed an industry that needs more innovation breakthroughs. We are going to graft this high-tech, Silicon Valley, young people's unlimited imagination to come here.

BoF: Just now you also said that you want to change the definition of luxury brands in the fashion industry?

CJQ: I think that luxury is the first thing that is sustainable, because it is the highest level of human creativity: it chooses the highest quality raw materials from nature, designs and produces them through human creativity, and hopes that each piece They are not ordinary products. Each piece is a creative expression of attitude and personality. I think this is art in itself, and it is a very natural and sustainable concept. This innovative concept of the fashion industry is sometimes ahead of consumption. Just at the forum, Suzanne Lee, the founder of bio-manufacturing, also said that this development process sometimes takes a long time. If there is no market size support, it can't be done. But we feel that this is a good investment, and it will ultimately have a very creative and disruptive return on the entire business model. We have actually done it for more than a decade and have gradually seen such a result.

BoF: Should we change the way we look at ROI? After all, re-development, regardless of products or materials, need to invest more manpower and material resources, and this reflects the financial report, may also have some impact?

CJQ: In the short term, we will also ask suppliers to make some changes in practice and ask them to meet our cloud standards. Many suppliers may initially feel that the cost will increase a bit, but in the long run, they also realize This is a better model for long-term stable development and good for business development itself.