Textile Insight

textileinsight.com Spring 2025 ~ Textile Insight • 23 THE NORTH FACE DESIGNS FOR CIRCULARITY R enewed is the second-hand resale platform for The North Face. Renewed products are inspected, cleaned and repaired so that every garment meets the brand's refurbished standards. Renewed Trade-In was launched last year, allowing customers to mail in or drop their unwanted e North Face items off in its stores for credit. Since implementation, its partner Tersus cleaned more than 120,000 units of product and e North Face sold more than 75,000 units of product. We chatted with e North Face execs Carol Shu, senior manager, global sustain- ability and Kellen Hennessy, senior design manager, circularity about circularity efforts. Why is a closed-loop system important and where are you in this process? Shu: We push the boundaries of material technology and conduct rigorous testing on our fabrics to make sure we can back up our performance claims. When a customer doesn't want their e North Face product anymore, if it's still usable, we go through a rigorous eight-step process which includes six quality checks to ensure products in our Renewed collection continue to meet our standards for refurbished garments. If we receive a returned product that is worn out and unusable, the product may still have valuable resources, like the polyester fabric, that we can recover and get back into a textile supply chain. What are the biggest challenges in building a circular system? Shu: It takes time and partnership to develop systems and processes that will facilitate keeping our products in use while recovering raw materials. We feel the ur- gency to develop these systems, but also must make sure our products enable our customers to explore safely. While we do face challenges including the ease of recy- cling some fabrics, trims, etc., we're working to incorporate principles of circularity into our initial product design process, which will streamline the recycling processes if these items are returned through Renewed Trade-In. Talk to me about mono-materials. Are they important for you in your recycling efforts and what is your feeling on sacri- ficing durability for mono-material trims? Hennessy: We work closely with our sup- pliers to develop mono-material trims and fabrics that meet our performance require- ments. Ultimately, mono-materials are easier to recycle back into new products because they are made from a single source, so we aim to incorporate them into our initial design process assuming they meet all performance standard metrics. How are you designing for circularity? Hennessy: Our Circular Design products are built with disassembly and recyclability in mind while maintaining the durability and quality our customers expect from us. We've established a clear set of design guardrails for our design teams to select materials, trims, and feature sets to allow for streamlined disassembly and recycling at the end of the product's usable life. n The North Face Renewed products are inspected, cleaned and repaired so that every garment meets the brand's refurbished standards.

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