Can Ecouture Give Green Fashion More Style?

If ecouture has its way, your home — and your closet — will soon be a lot greener. The San Francisco-based startup believes that consumers would buy far more eco-friendly clothing, gifts, baby products and décor if they could only find enough stylish and high-quality options.

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After all, a Roper-Yale study found that half of Americans say they would pay more for greener products and 83 percent of consumers say they would choose the greener option when deciding between two otherwise similar products, the company pointed out in a presentation last month.

Apparently that’s not just all talk, either. Sales of environmentally friendly products are growing even in the downturn, said Amy Fritz, president and founder of ecouture. The Natural Marketing Institute estimates the market for green consumer goods at $227 billion and projects it will reach a whopping $400 billion next year.

But ecouture says there simply aren’t anywhere near enough green products available to meet all the demand. “Some of the biggest segments have the fewest green products,” Fritz said, pointing to apparel and home décor. In other words, the selection is woefully small, and fashionable greenies don’t want their clothes and homes to look just like their friends’. A small inventory of products on green retail websites mean that shoppers end up seeing the same things over and over again, Fritz claims. “A lot of products are not connecting with the consumers who are looking [for them],” she says.

And while retailers such as TheGreenLoop have targeted young idealists and Gaiam and Vivaterra have targeted an older crowd of former hippies, those most motivated to buy green — 30- to 45-year-olds who are more hip than hippy, but who are passionate about the environment — are left out of the loop, ecouture claims.

This “eco-chic” market is the largest and most underserved green-consumer market, ecouture says, adding that it hopes to fill the market gap by focusing on stylish design and quality. The company believes the opportunity is huge, estimating that its target buyers make up a $9 billion potential market, of which ecouture hopes to capture at least 1.5 percent — more than $100 million per year — by 2013.

Nobody can accuse the company of being unambitious. Ecouture, which is now raising $2.5 million in its first round of venture-capital financing, expects to be profitable after only two years, without raising any more money.

But how does ecouture plan to succeed where others have failed? Relying on style to keep ecouture ahead of competitors is likely to be risky, as fashion is ever-changing and can be hard to predict.

First of all, the company plans to rely on experience. CEO Kathi Lentzsch, for example, has spent more than 25 years in retail, most recently as the chief executive for Elephant Pharm, a holistic pharmacy that closed last month. She previously served as the executive vice president for Cost Plus World Market, which last month announced it was closing some of its stores, and as a senior vice president for Pottery Barn. Lentzsch must be hoping that ecouture can weather the economy better than her last two employers.

Secondly, Fritz told me she’s been searching for products for ecouture for the last four years, scouring trade shows around the world to find perhaps one booth in 500 with stylish green products. The four years’ head start on sourcing — as well as the work ecouture has put in to help develop its suppliers — should give ecouture another advantage, she said. Aside from aggregating perhaps 90 percent of its products, the company also plans to develop its own private label brands, she said.

Image courtesy of kevinkobek under a Flickr Creative Commons license.

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