Dive Brief:
- Lingerie brand and Certified B Corporation Adore Me launched The Adore Me Sustainability Accelerator, according to a press release emailed to Retail Dive Monday.
- The accelerator’s 2023 cohort includes four startups to-date — Ever Dye, Carbonfact, Commonshare and Pendulum — which initially engaged with Adore Me over the last year and a half to address various segments of the manufacturing process.
- Adore Me’s accelerator program features a six to 12-month “onboarding, testing, and integration period with each startup before it deploys the technology formally,” per the release.
Dive Insight:
Adore Me’s sustainability accelerator debuts about four years after it began planting the seeds for it in Paris.
“We are proud to be the ‘ideal first big customer’ for many of the startups in our cohort to help them scale more rapidly,” Morgan Hermand, founder and CEO of Adore Me, said in a statement. “A company of Adore Me’s size presents a significant customer and revenue base for innovative startups, but we’ve also spent years building Adore Me’s technology and operational foundation to rapidly experiment and scale ideas. We’re incredibly excited to watch the trajectory of the startups that have been partnering with us in our accelerator.”
Each startup in the accelerator focuses on sustainability tech used at different parts of the development process. Ever Dye, for example, is a French company that created a low-heat and low-energy dyeing process and CarbonFact developed a data platform for designers to incorporate carbon impact into the design process.
Adore Me said that it has reduced its overall emissions for its upcoming January 2024 collection by 12% through using Carbonfact’s technology.
The lingerie company was acquired by Victoria’s Secret in January in a $400 million deal. Though Adore Me has historically focused on its direct-to-consumer channels, it’s explored wholesale this year through its exclusive Walmart line Adored by Adore Me, which was developed in partnership with Gelmart.
