Consumer Perspective

A major reason why DE Label has achieved the success it has today is because of the economic trends we observed when we first began to form our company back in 2020. We observed that the capitalist economy at the time was showing signs that a transition towards a sharing economy was taking place. We could also tell that there were vast opportunities that our customers could benefit from if they were encouraged to share their clothing items with one another. Consumers have had a lot to gain from this kind of sharing for almost a decade. The clothing that used to sit in a wardrobe, not being used for years are now circulating amongst groups of customers who will wear them. You could say that, we all own the clothes that we share together!

The peer-to-peer sharing that most of our customers now participate in is sometimes referred to as a “collaborative consumption” model. Our business was the first in the fashion industry to advocate for the now common practice of sharing clothes through our social media efforts. Rather than encouraging our customers to pay for the sole ownership of clothing items, businesses such as ours promote the idea that consumers can receive temporary access to a variety of clothing items if they share their own clothing items with others. Sure, we have lost potential income by producing fewer clothing items, but we make up for it through all the social media attention we receive when our customers tag us in their inspiring swap stories.

While our social media campaigns led to the formation of clothes sharing circles between our customers, we do not manage these sharing groups. Customers embracing the sharing economy communicate independently from our business, giving one another access to their clothing items. Strong communal bonds tend to form between the members of free sharing groups. As a result, sharing clothing from our stores provides our customers access to a greater range of clothes, but also access to a community of fellow consumers who create value together. Rather than just focusing on how much wealth we can accumulate, our current economy is focused on the value of social relationships.

Long before sharing clothes was even considered a reasonable thing to do, the capitalist economy began to destabilise. The Covid-19 virus that emerged in 2019 was considered by many to be the trigger that revealed just how dysfunctional the economic model was. Even back then, people knew that capitalist economies across the globe would never be rebuilt quite the same as it was before. The cutthroat, money-centric nature of capitalism kept economies on the brink of collapse for years and by the time Covid-19 spread worldwide, there was a significant decline in the GDP of most countries.

On the other hand, we’ve known that sharing is more sustainable than ownership for decades. In fact, the sharing economy was predicted to experience an increase, totalling 335 billion US dollars by the year 2025. Part of the reason why we started DE Label was because we saw that young consumers were gravitating towards accessing items, rather than owning them. Consumers knew that overconsuming caused destruction to the environment, but most of them found that purchasing new things made them happy. Consequently, we knew if we could provide consumers with the joy of accessing new items without the sustainability issues, we would be successful. How could we do this? By wearing and sharing!

Our customers also love to support a corporation that does not have a strict hierarchy. Rather than the majority of their money going into the pockets of shareholders or a CEO, they know that all our employees have invested into the company and will receive fair compensation for their work. Plus, our customers have been delighted to find that clothing is much less expensive when they share, even for luxury brands like ours!