Quick vogue is an trade ensnared in labor points and copyright issues, and it has an immense environmental impact attributable to its wastewater and carbon emissions. It additionally occurs to have the potential to make some huge cash, quick.
However regardless of all these points, VCs received’t cease loving the sector.
On Wednesday, my colleague Manish Singh wrote a scoop a couple of potential Accel funding into Newme, a fast-fashion startup primarily based in India. Newme is an app-based retailer that produces 500 new objects per week with a median 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 very very like 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 number of causes, the most important of which is that I’m simply probably not certain why VCs again these firms.
Quick-fashion firms gained speedy reputation and enormous followings due to their skill to deliver garments from the runway to your native division retailer in file time. However the reality is that always, they will solely churn out garments so rapidly by slicing corners. The one technique to make this technique work is by utilizing low cost supplies and low cost — and certain underpaid — labor, and in lots of circumstances, by copying designs.
