The “Double 12” (China's shopping day) is coming, will you buy some new clothes? It seems there are many unwanted clothes in your closet, however it is not fashion to wear them and it is quite pity to throw them away. To deal with those clothes, Sissi comes up a good idea to give them a new life!
Sissi Zhao is the founder of REMAKETORY and as well as an extreme enthusiast in low carbon lifestyle. REMAKTORY focused on redesigning and reconstructing the clothes people unwanted to reach a sustainable life. This week we carried out an interview with her.
Photo from Sissy LinkedIn profile
Q: Can you briefly introduce REMAKTORY for us?
Sissi: It can be briefly concluded that REMAKETORY is both remake and factory. It provides a unique service of redesigning and recontructing your unwanted clothes into new useful items. It makes your unwanted clothes do not be wasted, now we have already remade some clothes into cushions.
Q: Why you come up the idea about REMAKETORY?
Sissi: We made a statistics that the world annual produce 80 billion clothes, however 80 percentage of clothes in your closet you don’t wear, 60 percentage of unwanted clothes were disposed inproperly, in fact 95 percentage of clothes can be reused. I feel quite sad to see so much fashion junk, many clothes are just out of date, its fabric is still nice, we reuse the material into other products, to extend their life and make it recyclable.
Photo from Remaketory website
Q: It is really innovative, what scale do you expect REMAKETORY achieve in the future?
Sissi: Such development has been spread fast overseas, there are offline stores in Berlin and London, but there is no such platform in China at the moment, so I plan to register in China. Currently we have planned three stages, the first stage is B2C, we redesign and process the materials, then sell it to the customers. The second stage is B2B, it will establish a recycling channel with fashion brands. Finally, in the third stage to establish a platform, we will work with individual designers and get commission from main brands on the platform.
Q: It did not take much time from idea to forming, how you achieve such a high efficiency?
Sissi: It is mainly because of three aspects. Firstly our team is very practical, the division is also very reasonable no matter on marketing, operation, design or exploitation. The second is because the idea of REMAKETORY is indeed very popular, many people are willing to try it. Thirdly, it may thanks to the increased environmental awareness, the appear of REMAKETORY exactly provides a new solution.
Photo from Remaketory website
Q: What have you gained from the Recycling Incubator Fellowship in Impact Hub Shanghai, and what guidance do you want to achieve?
Sissi: I attended last Impact Lab and had exchanged with many teams and mentors. I am thankful to the connection by Impact Hub Shanghai, it provides me with links to many environmental enthusiasts who are committed to a sustainable lifestyle. I hope to achieve some guidance on team planning , such as the source of profit, cost budget and so on. We also hope that our impact could be enhanced by Impact Hub Shanghai, attract more funds to help us build business model. At the same time, partners are also very important, we can create a more sustainable and better world with Impact Hub Shanghai.
Q: It seems you love life a lot. Have your original experiences help you create REMAKETORY?
Sissi: I am addicted in tourism and have already been to 48 countries, I used to work in the biggest tourism company Greece. When I came back from abroad, I realized that the environmental issues are quite serious in China, as I am very longing for a better life, I also hope that China's water, air and pollution problems can be solved to reach a better standard. So I want to devote to this, it can be began with fashion industry which I am fond of, so I created REMAKTORY to defer the life cycle of those materials and reduce the harmful chemicals produced in the textile industry. This approach is more acceptable to the public so that it can reach the goal of environmental protection and sustainability.
Q: At last, you are extremely low carbon lifestyle lover, can you give some small tips to achieve low carbon life?
Sissi: The most important may be using more public transport, then the plastic products could be reduced if people always bring their own cups. The last is, emmm, eating more vegetarian! It is diet and healthy, of course very environmentally friendly.
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The REMAKTORY interview was previously published by Impact Hub Shanghai's wechat page. Starting December 2017, CHANGE magazine establishes partnership with Impact Hub Shanghai, to identify and promote great initiatives that create huge potentials of social impact in China. Impact Hub is a global social impact platform with 95 physical offices and 16,000+ members.
The original interview can be seen after following Impact Hub Shanghai's wechat page below