Dead stocks wake up
While the AGEC law now prohibits the destruction of unsold non-food products, startups Feat Coop and Adapta have clearly understood the benefits of marketing the many dead stocks of textiles and leathers produced by the industry.
They are one of the sources that have been in the spotlight since the need for circular fashion was first recognized. And, even more so, since the application, at the beginning of 2022, of the AGEC law, prohibiting the destruction of unsold non-food items. Ready to use, and therefore with no carbon impact - unlike recycled materials, which require processing - dead stocks are new materials (textiles, leathers, etc.) that have not yet been transformed into finished products. They may come from end-of-stock, have been set aside for their non-conformity to a specification or, more rarely, a defect.
According to an assessment carried out in 2020 by ADEME, 10,000 to 20,000 tonnes of new textiles were likely, each year, to be put away in a corner of a warehouse, before being acquired by destockers or even, at the time, destroyed. "According to manufacturers, dead stock represents around 4% to 5% of initial textile production. But if we also include those of brands or garment makers, according to estimates made for environmental labelling, some 15% of textiles produced in France end up as dead stock" points out Tristan Vuillet, co-founder and partner of Feat Coop. Enough to justify the design, in 2022, of this cooperative, bringing "a solution to easily source at lower cost (with prices at least 20% lower), a wide variety of dormant stocks manufactured in France".
For her part, Virginie Ducatillon, director of SARL Adapta, specialized in dormant stocks of leathers, mentions the existence of "thousands of tons of unused leathers in France, and per color, several hundred m2".
Two startups from the incubation
The two young entrepreneurs come from very different worlds: the social and solidarity economy for the former, luxury Home for the latter, for whom she has developed leather goods collections.
Tristan Vuillet, and his partner from a responsible fashion and decoration marketplace, wanted to launch a company in the sustainable textile sector. After incubating for two years in a Lyon incubator, they came up with the idea for Feat Coop (an acronym for "facilitating the emergence of textile alternatives") "Our cooperative started from an observation made after a quantitative and qualitative study with a dozen weavers and knitters in the Lyon region, namely the existence of an enormous deposit of unused materials at home. However, there was no permanent solution to the problem. Companies were selling off their textiles, which were most often exported, recycled or destroyed". At the time, the manufacturers surveyed reported over "350,000 meters of dead stock on their premises". Enough to produce that many T-shirts, "knowing that it takes 1 m for each one" calculates Tristan.
Adapta, too, was incubated for three years, but for its part at ADC (Au-Delà du Cuir) and after its design in 2018 by Virginie Ducatillon. She had been "shocked by both the unused volume in product development and then the waste in production" in the industry. Hence the gestation of "a circular sourcing solution to reuse leather for lower-impact collections". Joined by an associate in 2020, their aim is "to create a real reflex to use materials that already exist in the leather sector even before the use of recycled materials, which still require a transformation effort, and to do so as long as there are dead stocks of excellent quality and no impact on the planet."
Textile dead stocks 100% "Made in France"
Adapta and Feat Coop are among the structures that have emerged over the past five years on the dead stock market. But unlike Nona Source and Atelier des Matières, which were born in 2019, they were not supported or initiated by luxury groups (in this case LVMH and Chanel). Another difference is that Feat Coop focuses on French materials, while Adapta accepts sourcing from European tanners and shippers, who comply with Reach regulations and are generally LWG (Leather Working Group) labeled.
At first, Feat Coop only offered dead stock from the Lyon region, "the leading textile territory for the luxury and technical industry". Since 2024, it has begun to move out of the Rhône-Alpes region, with three of its 25 current partners now coming from northern France. It remains, however, the only company dedicated to "Made in France textile dead stocks with 100% traceability."
"We chose to recover them at source from the manufacturers, to have a very good traceability of our textiles, their history, the names and places of those who produced them for the last two manufacturing stages (weaving or knitting and finishing), technical and physical characteristics, Tristan Vuillet emphasizes. Unlike other marketplaces, we also indicate the reasons why they are in dead stock: overproduction, order cancellation, or even, more rarely (around 1% of supply), minor defect (thread pulled, stains or holes on a limited part of the roll)."
A traceability that Adapta also values. "The skins we select must be well stored and we need to know their traceability" explains Virginie Ducatillon. She initially sourced from French tanners and butchers, in small quantities by color, however only meeting the modest needs of young brands or artisans. Since 2020, Adapta has opened up to partnerships with luxury Homes, giving visibility over their dead stocks and those of their service providers, and consequently access to larger quantities of leathers. "This means we can work with brands with greater demands" emphasizes the entrepreneur. Adapta now has around 15 partners, the majority of whom (90%) are luxury Home brands and their French manufacturers, with the exception of three European ones. "Our promise is quality control done on site" Virginie Ducatillon points out.
Making dead stock desirable
The leathers chosen by Adapta take into account customer needs and the trends exhibited at the Salons. "Our goal is to make dead stock desirable. Our added value is to curate, presenting color themes that we show on Instagram". Adapta's independence enables it to obtain a wide variety of materials. Both classics (sheep and bovine leathers), in classic colors likely to interest artisans or small brands, for example, but also fancy materials, more suited to established companies. This gives everyone access to top-of-the-range leathers, at prices 30% to 70% lower, or even more, than the original, for a "lower-impact collection."
Feat Coop's offer ranges from fabrics and knits, both synthetic and natural, for clothing, lingerie, swimwear, furnishings and technical applications. In small quantities, it includes a few recycled and organic materials."We select textiles so as to have a wide variety in our showroom", says Tristan Vuillet. They are available by the roll, up to over 10,000 meters, but also by the cut, from three meters upwards. This means we can meet the needs of project developers, brands and clothing manufacturers alike.
In its physical showroom, located in Lyon's ninth arrondissement, Feat Coop welcomes professionals by appointment. At the end of the appointment, they usually leave with samples. "Most of our stock is held by manufacturers, so we only collect one roll per fabric, i.e. almost 1,000 references arranged in an 80 m² room next to our showroom, details Tristan Vuillet. This allows us to make cut-to-size sales to customers. When we sell stock, we notify the manufacturers who prepare the rolls and send them to the customer via a logistics provider, via DPD."
Still 90% French customers
Since mid-2023 (when accounting began), Feat Coop's showroom has welcomed more than 212 people, "mostly clothing brands but also clothing manufacturers, stylists, costume designers, etc". While 90% of its customers are still French, the company is beginning to attract the interest of a few Europeans, exhibiting at trade shows such as Première Vision, Made in France and Interfilière. For the past year and a half, it has also had an online platform where it is possible to order samples with detailed technical specifications."For the moment, we're on a filter system, but we've recruited someone to refine its functionalities and enable more relevant proposals and searches" says Tristan Vuillet.
For its part, Adapta makes customized sourcing offers based on a customer brief. "We go looking for treasures in dead stock, whether at our suppliers or in a warehouse in the Paris region, where we've also reserved a few slots, notably for timeless skins saved from destruction." Materials can also be seen on its e-shop, which opened in 2020. Adapta then sends a skin with which customers can make a prototype, and reserves the necessary stock. If the prototype is validated, Adapta buys the volumes if necessary (some already have been), and has them shipped via its warehouse or partners.
The company generates its sales with customers who are 85% French and 15% European, 60% with mature brands and 40% "with young brands, student artisans". Since 2018, it has had 1,200 customers, including some 50 established brands.
Gemstones for sustainable fashion
The two startups bring a gemstone to sustainable fashion. "Our business helps show that you can have French quality and still have a circular approach. Since our inception, we have already sold around 30,000 meters of dormant fabric, details Tristan Vuillet (Feat Coop). This has made it possible to avoid the production of as many new fabrics, or around 170 tonnes of CO2 if they had been made in France and 330 tonnes of CO2 if they had been made in Asia. This represents the annual carbon footprint of 24 to 47 French people". To measure its impact even more accurately, Feat Coop will be introducing, in the first half of 2025, a figure for the impact generated by the production of its textiles, in terms of atmospheric pollution, use of fresh water, etc.
Adapta, for its part, collaborated in 2020 with independent consultancy Oksigen to be able to calculate its avoided impact autonomously with an appropriate tool. From 2018 to 2023, Adapta has already saved "more than one million liters of water and more than 90 tons of CO2 equivalent", a calculation that does not take into account the impact of animal rearing. From its inception to the end of 2023, it has enabled its customers to reuse 30 tons of leather.
Promoting French savoir-faire
Feat Coop and Adapta also help French savoir-faire to shine. "Through dead stock, we promote the diversity of textile savoir-faire still present in France, stresses Tristan Vuillet (Feat Coop). More pragmatically, we contribute to the economy of manufacturers. Thanks to us, they lose less money". "We do a real job of educating and promoting the industry and its savoir-faire, also assures Virginie Ducatillon (Adapta). We work a lot in an ecosystem, with the whole leather industry and in particular with the Centre Technique du Cuir, as part of the Faire de Lance support scheme, bringing together brands and manufacturers of French leather goods and footwear. We also help our customers in their search for French or European manufacturers of finished products".
Training and education
The two start-ups are also pursuing an educational mission. Adapta by having "to deal with people who don't always know about leather" and to whom it teaches that "we don't raise animals for their skins, but their meat and milk" and that "it's better to use this waste that is leather". Feat Coop goes a step further, offering half-day face-to-face collective and participative training modules on the impact of textiles along the value chain, or a day on recognizing textiles from a technical perspective. They are either self-financed by the participants, or paid for by Opco.
Of course, it hasn't been an easy road for these dead stock pioneers. The main difficulty, according to Tristan Vuillet (Feat Coop), was setting up the business with no money and financing its growth. But with hindsight, he judges this to have been "hyper beneficial" by encouraging them to "be more creative about the business model," consisting of not buying any dead stock before selling it. "Manufacturers have accepted this rule because they know it allows them to be better remunerated". Contrary to their fears, the age of Feat Coop's founders (25) was no obstacle to convincing their interlocutors, who were happy to see young people taking an interest in their sector. "The hardest part was rather convincing them to change their fashion from before, like salesmen getting rid of their dead stock. For those who had a good IT system, this wasn't a problem. But we had to stop working with certain manufacturers, as we hadn't put the necessary resources in place". Feat Coop, which from the outset set up collective and participative workshops with manufacturers to co-construct its solution, today continues to bring its partners together annually as a group, then individually, to take stock and further improve what already exists.
Bringing its high-end leathers to young designers
For her part, in the early days, when dead stock was still little-known, Virginie Ducatillon (Adapta) also had to take up her pilgrim's staff to defend her concept among future suppliers and customers. She had to reassure tanners and shippers that she would not be their competitor, but would, on the contrary,"enable them to promote their products to young designers or brands who had not, until then, had access to them". We also had to convince the luxury Houses to reveal the traceability of their materials, and that setting up new destocking processes for their dead stock could be done quickly. This convincing work itself sometimes takes several years! Another current problem is the economic crisis, which is having a downward impact on demand from brands, who have less visibility on their future projects.
But both structures, now on the right track, can now envisage other future projects.
After having considered tackling textiles as well, Adapta preferred to refocus on leather, where it is now well recognized. At the end of 2023, it launched its B2B leather goods brand for business gifts, christened Itera. This has opened up new outlets for her materials, which are processed by partners in France "for total Made in France". And Virginie Ducatillon has other plans for the future. "Today, we only select very high-quality materials. But there are still some dormant materials that are either too identifiable, such as logo embossed leathers, or less qualitative. Eventually, we don't rule out becoming a one-stop solution, a platform for recovering all these dormant leathers as well as production offcuts, and also offering recycling solutions". What's more, while today she supplies mainly for capsules or small batches, she would eventually like to move towards "something more perennial with a reuse reflex in every collection"
More generally, she is delighted that "the circular economy process is becoming more democratic". Because "whether it's from a financial or ecological point of view, we won't have a choice, we'll be forced into it", she notes.
A showroom in Paris for Feat Coop in 2025
Feat Coop plans to open a second showroom in 2025, this time in Paris, where it has a large customer base. And while, according to Tristan Vuillet, "the big challenge in the textile industry is to match supply and demand", he's keen to further expand his propositions to ever better meet his customers' needs.
To finance its projects, Feat Coop is aiming to raise funds this year, the form of which (collaborative platform or impact fund) has yet to be specified. As you can see, Tristan Vuillet is "rather optimistic" about the rise of circular fashion. "Things are moving rather in the right direction, even if it's never enough..."
To find out more:
- Find out more about Feat Coop's company fact sheet and the link to book a showroom appointment
- Find out more about Adapta's company fact sheet
