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TOWARDS
A MORE
SUSTAINABLE
ESSENTIEL
ANTWERP
TOWARDS
A MORE
SUSTAINABLE
ESSENTIEL
ANTWERP
MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDERS
“Sustainability has become an important part of the design choices we make, while maintaining our DNA. We constantly look for better, more sustainable materials, yet it remains quite challenging. Organic cotton, for example, is scarce at the moment and innovative fabrics need to meet our standards and require new development processes. Luckily, we have fantastic suppliers who are thinking along with us to find qualitative and more responsible alternatives. Together we're taking significant steps forward.”
INGE ONSEA
Co-founder & Creative Director
“Traceability and ecology have become increasingly important. Three years ago, we made the switch towards more sustainable business practices. We are now also looking at our production from a sustainability perspective. We still face major challenges, but we are off to a strong start. We have already begun to work on the ethical aspect with our producers, and now we’re also taking a close look at our fabrics and designs. Most of all, I’m really proud to see that a shared sustainability mindset and commitment have grown throughout the whole company, in every decision we take. It’s amazing how we’ve reshaped our way of working from the past 20 years to now looking forward to even more change.”
ESFAN EGHTESSADI
Co-founder & CEO
SHOW YOUR
TRUE COLORS
We know that the fashion industry has a major environmental and social impact on the planet. That’s why we believe it’s so important to keep on questioning ourselves and our way of working. We want to be part of the solution. Sustainability is now a core value guiding us in our next steps and working processes.
We want to be transparent in what we do, what we don't do (yet) and where we can improve, because we want to do better. We have one clear goal in mind: creating a greener and more socially responsible Essentiel Antwerp.
ANOTHER YEAR OF CHALLENGES AND CHANGES
Where 2020 was a year of focus and teamwork, where we made big decisions and set out our hopes for a post-pandemic world, 2021 was a year where we have taken steps towards greater flexibility, in order to grow and thrive as we move towards a more sustainable business model. As we look back at the past year we are happy to highlight some of our achievements:
- We’ve seen big wins in accountability, with 97 percent of our suppliers agreeing to our Code of Conduct and more than 50 percent of our production now covered by social audits.
- We introduced a questionnaire to create more transparency in our overall supply chain by gathering information from our suppliers about their suppliers and subcontractors
- During the very first phase of our creation process, the design phase, we now make more responsible choices in terms of materials. If we want to remain relevant as an international brand, a prominent dialogue with our suppliers is an essential element of the creation process.
- We reconfirmed the importance of long-term supplier relationships, which has proven to be a stabilizing factor during the uncertainty of the pandemic and beyond.
- We continue to challenge ourselves in finding a balance between premium and responsible choices by using fewer materials and making more sustainable choices for our packaging.
- We have adapted our internal processes to organize and incorporate sustainability information to have it at hand easily, both for internal and external processes.
- We take every available opportunity to incorporate our sustainability efforts in our communications with our different stakeholders, to keep them informed and educate them on our initiatives.
OUR COMMITMENTS
As we all become more aware of the impact of the fashion industry on our shared world, we want to be part of the change. To make a significant difference to how we do business, we wanted to look more deeply into our operations. Since 2019, we have been listening to the experts and examining our own sustainable entrepreneurship process. As an international player with a sense of social responsibility, we have been guided in particular by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. This international framework sets out 17 goals for sustainable development by 2030, divided into the themes of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships. A full list of these is provided in the appendix for your reference.
As a result of our research, we have determined four strategic priorities for Essentiel Antwerp – areas where we want to make significant changes, both in the short and long term. These four priorities translate the Sustainable Development Goals into Essentiel Antwerp’s business context and provide a roadmap for the future:
We aim to contribute to a more responsible supply chain
SDG 1 – SDG 3 – SDG 5 – SDG 6 – SDG 7 – SDG 8 – SDG 10 – SDG 12 – SDG 13
We aim to use products with less impact
SDG 12 – SDG 13 – SDG 14 – SDG 15
We believe in diversity, inclusivity and equality
SDG 3 – SDG 4 - SDG 5 – SDG 8 – SDG 9 - SDG 10 – SDG 16 - SDG 17
We want to reduce our ecological footprint
SDG 7 – SDG 12 – SDG 13
A MORE
RESPONSIBLE
SUPPLY CHAIN
There’s no denying that the conventional fashion industry is one of the most polluting sectors in the world, with more and more stories of unacceptable working conditions in clothing factories emerging. Here at Essentiel Antwerp we realize that, as an international fashion brand, we must take responsibility for our own business practices in this regard, earning our customers’ trust through a transparent and ethical approach.
Our company aims to be completely accountable for the social and environmental conditions under which our products are manufactured — accountable to the companies we do business with, to consumers, and ultimately to all those impacted by our choices in our shared world.
AUDITS
The signing of our Code of Conduct by our suppliers represents a strong commitment, however, this does not guarantee compliance in practice. For this reason, we also ask our suppliers for social audit reports, in which correct working conditions are evaluated by a third, independent party. We have received recent audit reports (no older than three years) from many of our suppliers. These are usually BSCI or SEDEX/SMETA audits. This means that more than 50% of our production is covered by social audits. Additionally, 30% of our collections are produced in Europe, where fair working conditions are guaranteed under the applicable European regulations.
From the available reports, no evident violations of human rights were identified. However, we will always stay alert as we are aware that systematic overwork and a lack of social dialogue are structural challenges in manufacturing countries, such as China. We are committed to further dialogue with our suppliers on these issues, to gain a better understanding of the root causes of this and whether we, as Essentiel Antwerp, can play a meaningful role.
CODE OF CONDUCT
In light of this, we developed a Code of Conduct at the beginning of 2020, which now guides all our operations worldwide. We aim to work with suppliers that are as committed as we are to operating in a responsible and ethical manner, by respecting social, environmental and economic standards and upholding them in their business practices.
TRANSPARENCY
We maintain good relationships with our suppliers in an atmosphere of trust. Last year we did our best to create more transparency in our own supply chains.
As of 2021 we are now working with a specific questionnaire for our suppliers. It not only helps us gather information about the number of employees in their factory, the proportion of men and women, but also asks them to identify their subcontractors and suppliers of fabrics, yarns and linings, with names, address and contact details. Many of our suppliers answered the questions in a very transparent way. As a result, we now have more insights in the daily business of our suppliers, their subcontractors and their suppliers (so-called tier 2 and 3 suppliers).
It is our ambition to create greater transparency in the supply chain of our garments as time goes on. It is a complex issue, but we have made a good start in this.
Over the last years, our ambition has been to bring more of our production closer to home, although each supplier and market has its own unique capabilities and know-how. In 2021 around 70% of our clothes were produced in China, India, and Turkey, and almost 30% in Europe.
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SPECIFIC CHALLENGES
IN 2021
The year 2021, just like 2020, brought a lot of challenges to the world and to our business. Various lockdowns and increased absenteeism amongst workers in countries such as Portugal and China due to COVID-19 delayed deliveries significantly. Prices for transport, energy and materials also continued to rise. As a result, the suppliers themselves were more conservative in holding onto a large inventory of raw materials, which obliged us to adjust our forecast. We communicated more than usual with our suppliers and looked for solutions together, and we took a share in the rising production costs, so they were not borne solely by the suppliers. Even though cancellations from B2B customers were unfortunately unavoidable, we agreed to still honor our commitments towards our suppliers, whether by paying the reduced production amount or by purchasing the fabrics for next collections.
“Over the last year, we have communicated with our suppliers even more than usual. Together, we sought solutions to the problems that arose, from delays due to restrictive measures and absent employees to the rising cost of transport and energy and the lack of stock.”
LUDO OLLEAC
Head of Production
PRODUCTS WITH
LESS IMPACT
SUSTAINABLE FABRICS
We continue to discover more environmentally friendly fabrics from suppliers and at fairs and we are always enthusiastic to try them out. In 2021, we developed our Corporate Product Policy to help us move towards more sustainable design and fabrics, which explains our criteria for considering a fabric ‘sustainable’ to our staff and to suppliers. To guarantee the sustainability of the fibers and textiles, we require the necessary supporting certificates from suppliers.
If the quality of these sustainable fabrics meets our standards, they are our preferred choice, without a doubt. From our most recent Fall/Winter 2022 collection, 32% of the fabrics are (partly or fully) more sustainable. Our ambition is to reach 50% by 2025. To achieve this goal, we are currently exploring which environmentally friendly alternatives are possible for our best-selling products.
Our ongoing “green blue” denim is produced in an environmentally friendly way, with significant water and energy savings. In 2021, our Turkish denim manufacturer even invested in a fully closed water loop system. This manufacturer also uses computer-driven laser technology without water, chemicals or stones to finish our denim wear, and fully loaded washing machines have been replaced by e-flow technology, minimizing water and chemical use.
Our ambition is to reach 50% by 2025. To achieve this goal, we are currently exploring which environmentally friendly alternatives are possible for our best-selling products.
“Sustainability has become more central in our dialogue with suppliers as they know this is a priority for us. During the development of each collection, we search for sustainable alternatives for materials, which come from new developments and technologies.”
“We constantly question ourselves. We are aware of the ecological impact of our fabrics and we want to get involved in innovative technical developments in this field. We’re exploring new options and are ambitious to make our products more sustainable.”
LOTTE LIJNEN
Assistant Designer
“We constantly question ourselves. We are aware of the ecological impact of our fabrics and we want to get involved in innovative technical developments in this field. We’re exploring new options and are ambitious to make our products more sustainable.”
TOM DEPOORTERE
Art Director
LONGEVITY
We strive to design long-lasting items that customers can love and wear for a long time. Quality fabrics and quality customer service are essential. We provide a tailoring service, for optimal fit and use of our garments. We also work hard to give our customers the right advice on how to wash to care for garments, because prolonging the life of a garment is the most sustainable option.
We are aware that the fashion industry today still follows a linear model of take-make-waste. To decrease the impact of textile waste on our planet, we must move to a more circular economy, where reuse, upcycling and recycling are the new normal. Essentiel Antwerp wants to contribute by bringing new circular initiatives to life.
THE RENTAL REVOLUTION
In May 2021, we launched an occasion wear rental collection in our stores. Customers were able to rent their favorite Essentiel Antwerp dress for a special occasion. They could pick up their chosen garment from four different stores, look fabulous at their event, and simply return it after use. We have partnered with Samsung, who are providing us with appliances to clean, sanitize and refresh the collection in store, ready for collection by the next customer.
UPCYCLING
We buy our fabrics and yarns as efficiently as possible, but sometimes we end up with surpluses. In 2021 we made a cardigan from two types of leftover yarns. We also donated fabrics and yarns to local initiatives that organize upcycling workshops with them. Production errors also sometimes occur. Then we look for solutions to save the garments from becoming waste. As an example, we have worked together with Kunnig, a company that employs people who are experiencing barriers to the regular labor market, to repair trousers with elastic that did not match the sizes to then be resold.100% MONOMATERIALS
Approximately 30% of Essentiel Antwerp collections are made of so-called ‘monomaterials’, where the fabric is comprised of only one material – 100% cotton or polyester or viscose, for example. This offers important advantages in the post-consumer recycling process. Monomaterial items have a much higher recycling rate and post-recycling quality compared to mixed material items, which are difficult to separate for recycling.
PEOPLE
What connects us at Essentiel Antwerp is our absolute passion for what we do. Our people are open-minded, and we cherish the international and diverse backgrounds of our team. It is the perfect recipe for creativity and positive vibes. Our playful spirit and joie-de-vivre helps opportunities to come to us in a very organic way. As for our employees, we can count 15 different nationalities just within our Essentiel Antwerp headquarters and retail teams. Diversity is not only reflected in nationality, but also the cultures and backgrounds of our full team who create our identity and the Essentiel Antwerp spirit.
INCLUSIVITY,
DIVERSITY,
EQUALITY
With our open mindset, topics such as equality, inclusion and non-discrimination seem straightforward to Essentiel Antwerp. Nevertheless, we know that this is not self-evident for everyone.
That is why we still regard inclusivity as a very important pillar in our policy. Although our organizational culture is defined by openness and acceptance, we still maintain a comprehensive policy on these topics to define best practice throughout the organization. This is because we believe we can use our brand and voice to promote our beliefs to our customers and our own organization.
INITIATIVES CLOSE
TO OUR HEART
As part of our passion for social justice, we also support initiatives that are close to our heart. Our choice of projects to support and collaborations we initiate ourselves are not governed by commercial concerns. They are an authentic expression of Essentiel Antwerp’s own values, with our passion running through them all.
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Supporting upcoming designers
Based on their own learnings from their growth story, Essentiel Antwerp founders Inge and Esfan as well as the rest of the Essentiel Antwerp creative team believe that supporting upcoming talent is crucial both for the company and for empowering the new artists and designers we work with. In 2021 we worked with Julie Kegels, an upcoming graduate from the Royal Antwerp Academy for two projects. Firstly, for the A/part project, an event was organized in Antwerp to celebrate the Antwerp Fashion ecosystem. As part of this we commissioned a piece from Julie’s master collection to be sold at our store. For the second project, Julie and Essentiel Antwerp worked on a t-shirt for the Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu) shop.
"When the Essentiel Antwerp creative team and I were going through my sketchbooks, it felt natural to choose one of the pieces from my master's collection and to commercialize it. The concept for my collection was to work with a different front and back in every garment. We decided to work on my knit silhouette. Originally, the knitted dress had a totally open back, but we decided to close the back for the new silhouette, and it totally works! I really enjoyed coming up with new ideas and finding solutions together with the Essentiel Antwerp team. They were able to make some changes to the piece to make it saleable to a wider audience.”
Julie Kegels
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Antwerp Pride
Since 2019, Essentiel Antwerp has released a limited edition set of t-shirts on a yearly basis as part of the Antwerp Pride event, designed by our creative team to send out a powerful message in a playful way. All the proceeds from the Antwerp Pride Collection are donated to the Antwerp Pride organization. Additionally, we supported 300 volunteers to showcase their pride by offering them our rainbow-colored ‘I am Pride’ t-shirt. While before we were offering the t-shirts for sale at the Antwerp pride event only, for 2021 we launched the collection on our own website during the month of June (Pride Month) to allow for a more international reach. As a result, we were able to sell 30% more than in previous years. To offer ongoing support to Antwerp pride and the LGBTQIA+ community, we are repeating this initiative in 2022.
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Plan International
For International Women’s Day 2021, Essentiel Antwerp joined forces with Plan International to support the Saksham project in India, which empowers young girls to realize their dreams. Through this project, Plan International provides training and opportunities to encourage economic empowerment and gender equality. Essentiel Antwerp donated 20% of the online revenues to the NGO to support this project on March 8th, 2021. We hope to implement our learnings from this first collaboration experience in 2021 to create a stronger message, broader reach and larger financial contribution for the celebration of International Women’s Day 2022.
- Clothing and other donations
Towards the end of each year, Inge Onsea (creative director & co-founder) donates a substantial amount of Essentiel Antwerp deadstock from previous seasons to an Antwerp-based NGO supporting homeless people. The NGO uses its expertise to distribute the donation, mainly warm winter clothes, to those in need. Furthermore, we are happy to support small and local goodwill initiatives by offering goodies that can be auctioned or offered in a raffle.
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REDUCING OUR
FOOTPRINT
Every day, the entire Essentiel Antwerp team faces choices that have a direct or indirect impact on our environment and ecosystem. We want to make conscious choices, and to challenge ourselves daily on the topics of transport, energy consumption and the use of materials, at every stage in our value chain.
Whereas in 2020, we could set new steps in our inbound distribution process, we faced major distribution challenges in 2021. Fortunately, due to previous improvements in our processes, we were able to act on and manage these challenges, still ensuring a timely and efficient delivery of our stock. However, we must admit that responding to the global container crisis had a major impact on our carbon footprint for inbound logistics, one that could not be avoided in order for us to carry on our business.
Apart from this negative impact, which we hope to see improved in 2022, we also managed to take steps forward in the management of our packaging and overall distribution process.
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WASTE
We are strongly committed to raising awareness internally about the waste streams that our operations entail. We want to deal with this consciously in our distribution chain, in our stores and regarding the materials that we use for our e-shop. With this in mind, we have defined three focus areas: our packaging solutions, our use of paper, and sustainable choices for visuals, merchandising and shop design resulting in concrete actions of which we are proud in 2021.
TRANSPORT AND
DISTRIBUTION
Essentiel Antwerp maintains good historical relations with its suppliers, many of which are located overseas. We are aware of the immense impact of inbound transport on CO2 emissions. To reduce our emissions, we have been working on streamlining processes within our organization, from styling to production, and we apply a guideline in which we focus on the use of boats and trains for long-haul transportation, reducing the use of air shipping. In 2020 we also tested transport from the Far East by train and thanks to these first experiences in 2020 we could partially mitigate the negative impact of the global container crisis which had a major impact on how we had to manage our inbound transports. Unfortunately, we encountered severe issues due to the lack of containers in Chinese ports which forced us to reluctantly look for air transport solutions. Where we could, we chose to use trains. We know we will still feel the effects of the shipping crisis in 2022 but by managing our collection and order timeline as well as possible we can mitigate further negative impacts. One of the already confirmed initiatives is that as from 2022 we will deliver shipments from the Far East to our customers in the US and South Korea directly, avoiding transit via Belgium.
SUSTAINABLE
PACKAGING
For all our packaging, we investigate the best options in terms of sustainable materials, options for reuse and recycling opportunities. We are looking for ways to improve our management and use of the plastic polybag. We have already switched to polybags made of recycled or recyclable plastic. We’re currently taking further steps to improve on our packaging initiatives. In 2020 we revamped the shopping bags given to customers in the shops by eliminating the laminated layer of the bags and replaced the ribbons with cotton. The cardboard boxes from our B2B distribution partner are made up of 80% of paper sources and our cardboard boxes for B2C packages are made from FSC certified paper. The production of paper bags requires less material and has less impact on the environment and using paper bags enables us to reduce the volume our packages take up during transportation by an estimated 34 – 80%, depending on the type of product. This means one journey can carry more goods, so we can decrease the number of needed transports, reducing fuel and emissions. That is why we realized a 100% switch to Kraft paper and cardboard boxes for our ecommerce. In 2021 we further researched skipping the secondary branded wrapping used for our cardboard boxes. In 2022 we are launching a new branded box, eliminating the inner bag in which the garments are wrapped.
For all paper-based packaging – from hangtags and gift-wrapping materials to the shopping bags we use in our stores and the bags and boxes we use for our web orders – we have now switched to recycled and/or FSC certified paper. FSC certification guarantees that our paper materials have been produced according to industry standards. We also pay attention to the recyclability of our stationery, which is why no longer use laminated paper products. By switching to soy ink for printing purposes, we have reduced the use of harmful substances and improved recycling potential.
To reduce the total amount of paper we use, we examined all our stationery requirements carefully, and had already decided to stop producing paper look books and brochures in 2020. We also evaluated the number and use of shopping bags and made choices that entail lower volume consumption. This conscious use of paper has become the new normal within our team, resulting in a minimal use of printed materials for marketing purposes.
In 2022 we also want to measure our waste streams based on the use of polybags, Kraft paper bags and cardboard boxes for further transparency and analysis reasons. Today, we are compliant with local requirements for countries such as Austria, Spain, and Germany, paying taxes for the packaging materials we bring into these local markets.
ON A
SUSTAINABLE
JOURNEY
WITH EXPERTS
As this is a challenging and complex topic, we've taken on a professional team to guide us in our sustainable journey. They gave us an external viewpoint and a fresh perspective on our way of working that has been established for 20 years. This fundamental company change doesn't happen overnight.
Studio D is a small team but their passion (for sustainability) runs through their veins. That's where we saw our match. They helped us in making sure that all stakeholders are aligned and that all noses are pointing in the same direction. This journey is exciting, yet challenging and we're happy that we're not in this alone.
It’s also very encouraging to see our team become more confident and knowledgeable about sustainability, building internal expertise in the use of more sustainable fabrics and packaging, and embodying our views on equality and non-discrimination in each of our campaigns.
WHAT'S NEXT
Working towards a more sustainable business requires a strong and consistent vision. The past year, working with sustainability principles at the core of our actions, we feel confident that we are on track with the goals and priorities we set for 2025 and we continue to engage with both enthusiasm and excitement. Even if we still don’t know what the future will bring, we know that we can work towards a brighter one.
Our priorities for 2025:
Our priorities for 2025:
- We must invest in transparent and responsible supply chains. We challenge ourselves to have full transparency into tier 1 and 2 suppliers and to implement more active screening of labor conditions and living wages by 2025.
- We feel very enthusiastic about using fabrics with a smaller environmental footprint. By 2025, we hope we can say that at least 50% of our fabrics are sustainable.
- As we are strong believers in an inclusive society where inequality and discrimination have no place, we will further integrate these values in our daily communication and campaigns.
- We aim for a further reduction of our emissions per transported item, even in the context of a global distribution crisis, with a focus on cherishing our good supplier relations.
- We will further limit our environmental footprint by decreasing waste throughout the production, distribution and sales process.
- We will make responsible choices regarding our energy use.
- We will do further research, and we will measure and analyze our data to improve our products and services, particularly regarding sustainability.
Join us in building a better future.
Every effort counts.