This document summarizes an interview study on scaling up fashion upcycling businesses in the UK. 23 stakeholders from upcycling businesses were interviewed, including material suppliers, upcyclers, retailers, and consumers. Common challenges identified across stakeholders were sourcing quality materials, producing good quality products, pricing, marketing, space issues, and financial sustainability. Common success factors included support for marketing, awareness raising, and financial support. The study provides implications for supporting the growth of upcycling businesses in fashion and other sectors.

1. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Global Fashion Conference 2018 (31/10/2018)
University of the Arts, London College of Fashion
Scaling up British fashion upcycling businesses:
Multi-stakeholder perspectives
Kyungeun Sung, School of Design, De Montfort University, UK
Tim Cooper, School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Johanna Oehlmann, Sustainable Business Lab, Nottingham Business School, UK
Jagdeep Singh, International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden

2. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Introduction

3. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Environmental impacts from fashion industry
Image sources: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/fashion/environment-costs-fast-fashion-pollution-waste-
sustainability-a8139386.html

4. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Upcycling fashion as an alternative
Image sources: https://eluxemagazine.com/fashion/fashion-brands-that-upcycle/

5. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Scaling up of upcycling
 Niche practices
becoming mainstream
(regimes)
 Interventions across a
range of scales
involving various
actors
 Systems approach
required

6. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Methods

7. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Methods
 Semi-structured interviews with 23 stakeholders of fashion upcycling
SMEs in the UK between April and June 2017
 Challenges and success factors for scaling up fashion upcycling businesses
and suitable actors for making changes
 30-60 minutes, in person or via phone
 Dimensional sampling (4 stakeholder groups + age and gender groups for
consumers)

8. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Interview participants
 16 practitioners + 7 consumers
 16 females + 7 males; under 35 (n=3) + 35-54 (10) + 55-64 (10)
 British (n=19) with higher education completion (20)
 Art (n=12) or business (7)
 Sole traders (n=8) + charities (5) + limited companies (2) + partnership (1)
 Micro business (n=15) + small business (1)
 Annual turnover for micro businesses: £1,000 (part-time, hobby business) ~
£90,000 (average: £25,800)

9. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Results

10. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Material suppliers’ perspectives: Challenges
 Keeping a steady inflow of sufficient, affordable materials
 Complicated laws and legislations: “Because it is so complicated, we cross lots of laws to
do with waste and waste transfer, VAT, weights and measures. It’s all bound up and it
gets really complicated sometimes. So complicated that the law seems to contradict
itself.”
 Being financially sustainable: “[…] being a charity that saves the planet doesn’t seem to
be enough now. […] We asked the big lottery for funding and they’ve said, ‘No, you don’t
do enough for the community to be eligible for our funding.’”
 Macro-economic situation (e.g. recession): “If there’s a recession, the companies that we
deal with [that donate materials] are under threat, but our takings go up because most
people are looking for cheaper options because they have less money. So I am kind of
looking forward to a recession and kind of not.”

11. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Material suppliers’ perspectives: Success factors & suitable actors
 Keeping a steady inflow of sufficient, affordable materials
 Complicated laws and legislations: “Because it is so complicated, we cross lots of laws to
do with waste and waste transfer, VAT, weights and measures. It’s all bound up and it
gets really complicated sometimes. So complicated that the law seems to contradict
itself.”
 Being financially sustainable: “[…] being a charity that saves the planet doesn’t seem to
be enough now. […] We asked the big lottery for funding and they’ve said, ‘No, you don’t
do enough for the community to be eligible for our funding.’”
 Macro-economic situation (e.g. recession): “If there’s a recession, the companies that we
deal with [that donate materials] are under threat, but our takings go up because most
people are looking for cheaper options because they have less money. So I am kind of
looking forward to a recession and kind of not.”
 Awareness raising  more donations
 Legal and legislative support by a special
organisation or a group of experts (e.g.
Reuseful UK)
 Financial support by local councils or big
companies

12. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Upcyclers’ perspectives: Challenges
 Sourcing materials: access to a variety of affordable, used materials with quality and
quantity
 Production: limitation from the given materials + finding right equipment + time-consuming
handmade process  a small volume of production + a limited product variety + high labour
cost
 Marketing: limited opportunities to expose products + high price for sales + high cost for
attending markets and fairs, “We have people that occasionally contact us from different
galleries and offer to sell our stuff but they want 40% to 50% commission.”
 Space: affordability and lack of space + trade-off between affordability and access to
customers, “In London it [space affordability] is a big thing at the moment. A lot of
professionals moved out completely of London. […] Obviously, if you are somewhere else, it’s
going to be more difficult to deal with customers because customers need to come to you.”

13. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Upcyclers’ perspectives: Success factors & suitable actors
 Sourcing materials: access to a variety of affordable, used materials with quality and
quantity
 Production: limitation from the given materials + finding right equipment + time-consuming
handmade process  a small volume of production + a limited product variety + high labour
cost
 Marketing: limited opportunities to expose products + high price for sales + high cost for
attending markets and fairs, “We have people that occasionally contact us from different
galleries and offer to sell our stuff but they want 40% to 50% commission.”
 Space: affordability and lack of space + trade-off between affordability and access to
customers, “In London it [space affordability] is a big thing at the moment. A lot of
professionals moved out completely of London. […] Obviously, if you are somewhere else, it’s
going to be more difficult to deal with customers because customers need to come to you.”
 Support for human resources: apprentices for
production and office assistants for online
marketing and sales
 Marketing support
 Support for general resources (time) + keep up
with market and trends

14. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Retailers’ perspectives: Challenges
 Product quality and saleability
 Marketing: right narratives and keywords + social media + attracting right people
 Physical shop: sufficient display space + good location + affordable rent
 Lack of funding
 Consumers’ negative perception
 Macro-economic situation (e.g. recession)

15. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Retailers’ perspectives: Success factors & suitable actors
 Product quality and saleability
 Marketing: right narratives and keywords + social media + attracting right people
 Physical shop: sufficient display space + good location + affordable rent
 Lack of funding
 Consumers’ negative perception
 Macro-economic situation (e.g. restricted consumer expenditure due to the stagnating
economy)
 High quality (aesthetics, longevity and durability)
and availability of the products by retailers
 Good exposure + raising awareness and building
trust by social media, celebrities, consumers and
volunteers

16. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Consumers’ perspectives: Challenges
 Product: limited availability + limited good quality products + limited suitability + warranty
unavailability
 High price (or price justification): “If you look at it and think you could do that job by
yourself, I personally find it harder to justify spending the money.”
 Purchasing experience: limited access + inconvenience in shopping, “It’s so easy to buy,
and so cheap to buy new stuff now. But if you want something upcycled, you are probably
gonna have to spend a bit more time and do a bit more research to find the independent
people who are doing it.”
 A lack of awareness (mass production vs upcycling)
 Personal situation (e.g. financial situation)

17. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
 Product: limited availability + limited good quality products + limited suitability + warranty
unavailability
 High price (or price justification): “If you look at it and think you could do that job by
yourself, I personally find it harder to justify spending the money.”
 Purchasing experience: limited access + inconvenience in shopping, “It’s so easy to buy,
and so cheap to buy new stuff now. But if you want something upcycled, you are probably
gonna have to spend a bit more time and do a bit more research to find the independent
people who are doing it.”
 A lack of awareness (mass production vs upcycling)
 Personal situation (e.g. financial situation)
Consumers’ perspectives: Success factors & suitable actors
 Bespoke upcycling by businesses
 Lowered price by VAT reduction by the
government
 More physical shops or one-stop shop 
increase availability and access by local
councils
 More information, training and education
by government, local councils, HEIs,…

18. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Discussion and conclusion

19. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Discussion: Common challenges across stakeholders
 Sourcing materials (material suppliers + upcyclers)
 Good quality products (upcyclers + retailers + consumers)
 Reasonable pricing (upcyclers + consumers)
 Ineffective marketing and a lack of suitable space (upcyclers + retailers)
 Consumers’ negative perception (retailers + consumers)
 Financial sustainability and macro economic situation (material suppliers + retailers)

20. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Discussion: Common success factors across stakeholders
 Sourcing materials (material suppliers + upcyclers)
 Good quality products (upcyclers + retailers + consumers)
 Reasonable pricing (upcyclers + consumers)
 Ineffective marketing and a lack of suitable space (upcyclers + retailers)
 Consumers’ negative perception (retailers + consumers)
 Financial sustainability and macro economic situation (material suppliers + retailers)
 Support for marketing (upcyclers + retailers)
 Awareness raising activities (material suppliers + retailers + consumers)
 Financial support (material suppliers + upcyclers + consumers)
 Increased availability and access (retailers + consumers)

21. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
 Challenges and success factors from the fashion upcycling designers and
makers = those from upcycling entrepreneurs with varies inputs and outputs
 Upcycling SMEs may share common challenges and success factors across
sectors
 Corroborating the previous research (Sung, K., Cooper, T., Ramanathan, U. and Singh, J. (2017),
"Challenges and support for scaling up upcycling businesses in the UK: Insights from small-business entrepreneurs" in proceedings of
the Product Lifetimes And The Environment 2017 conference in Delft, 8-10 November 2017, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp. 397-401.)
 Additional challenges and success factors by extended stakeholders 
holistic views
 Practical implications for direct and indirect stakeholders to take actions for
scaling up upcycling SMEs in fashion and beyond
Conclusion

22. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Acknowledgement
 Research and Innovation Allowance from DMU
 Data collection: Materials Research Seed-Corn fund from NTU
 Analysis, writing up and attendance to GFC: VC2020 fund from DMU
 Jagdeep’s time: Urban Reconomy by Formas 211-2014-1440
 Mr. Stuart Lawson and Prof. Deborah Cartmell
 Lynn Oxborrow, Mollie Painter-Morland and Usha Ramanathan

23. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
 One man’s trash is another man’s resource for
upcycling-based art.
 One-day co-creation event with Michelle Reader
 Making remarkable art pieces by upcycling
 Learning history of recycled art
 Saturday 17th November 2018, 10:00-16:00
 New Walk Museum & Art Gallery
 https://beinghumanfestival.org/event/art-with-upcycling/
Being Human 2018 Festival: Art with Upcycling

24. Kyungeun Sung / School of Design
Any questions?
Further questions
kyungeun.sung@dmu.ac.uk
0116 207 8498https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/93/b0/7193b0002d52dcd6ecb0a78394d85543.png