Neonyt's Fashionsustain Frankfurt to focus on sustainability, retail

In its hybrid City Edition, the three-day conference will play host to a limited number of guests at the Danzig am Platz event location in the city centre of Frankfurt and will also be streamed live. From 11:00 am until 2:00 pm on 19 January 2021, industry insiders will be shedding light on the current challenges facing the fashion industry in keynotes, deep dives and panel discussions and providing valuable forecasts and solutions, fair organiser Messe Frankfurt said in a press release.

“Starting the ball rolling is neuroscientist Dr Maren Urner, with her keynote speech entitled Change the mindset. The focus here will be on the attitude-behaviour gap: a scientific phenomenon that involves consumers increasingly stating in studies that they attach importance to sustainability and are willing to spend more money on sustainably produced goods, yet other studies confirm that the price is still one of the most decisive purchasing criteria. This means that their actual consumer behaviour falls short of their good intentions. Dr Maren Urner will explain how to manage this dilemma and how our brains can be reprogrammed from powerlessness to sustainable action,” the release added.

In the subsequent deep dive with Karin Ziegler from Blutsgeschwister and Lutz Dietzold from the German Design Council, she will be reflecting on why people act differently than they intend to and how our own attitudes will reflect our behaviour even more in the future. Sebastian Herold from the federal ministry of economic cooperation and development will join Axel Schröder from Tchibo GmbH and Hannes Weber from Fond of to discuss where the Green Button stands two years after it was launched, how much progress has been made in terms of due diligence obligations from a company perspective and how this development will continue.

The fact that brands aren’t immune to the attitude-behaviour gap either is being proven by Christian Salewski from research start-up Flip. In his insight talk Sneaker Hunt – What happens to our old shoes?, he will be giving us a peek behind the scenes of one of the most hotly discussed videos in the industry last year: together with media such as NDR, Die Zeit and well-known celebrities, Flip has exposed the truth behind sneaker recycling and shown that they aren’t always recycled how the brands say they are.

The Fashionsustain City Edition will be rounded off with a panel discussion entitled Sustainability at the point of sale – How do I explain it to my customers? Tanja Kliewe-Meyer from Like a Bird, Marco Schütte from the EK Service Group and representatives of Handelsverband Hessen, the trade association for the German state of Hesse, will discuss how the retail sector can pass on its knowledge and contribute to raising awareness among consumers and what that could mean for the rejuvenation of city centres.

The conference is aimed at a professional audience and will be held as an in-person event in German. The live stream will be offered in German and English. B2B visitors and press representatives can register to take part in person in advance on the website. The event will take place under Germany’s ‘2G+’ rule, meaning that only those who have been fully vaccinated or recently recovered plus tested will be able to attend. Participants are requested to bring the necessary documents as proof.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)