Jochen Zeitz on the Power of Fashion to Drive Sustainable Change

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The former CEO of Puma has been one of the fashion industry’s leading sustainability advocates. As part of our special edition on building a responsible fashion business, Zeitz talks to BoF CEO Imran Amed about finding opportunities in crisis.

The former CEO of Puma has spent his career advocating, and sometimes agitating, for change to more responsible business practices. As he steps into a new role at the head of Harley-Davidson, he offers advice about finding opportunities in crisis.
“Iconic brands have a tremendous opportunity to contribute to a change in consumer behaviour as a whole,” Zeitz said, mounting a defense of consumer culture when managed responsibly. “Growing while reducing has to be the parameter of the future. We can grow, but we have to reduce our footprint over-proportionately to the impact we are having through our growth.”
The current crisis in particular could prove an important catalyst to drive change towards better ways of doing business. “Now you can make the business case for the planet and you can say what we’re experiencing now with the virus is just a fast way of experiencing climate change that will happen over decades,” Zeitz said. “This virus is testament for a needed fast change in order to deal with a much bigger crisis that will be affecting all our lives around the world in 20, 30 years to come.”
Companies that fail to move may well get left behind. “I look at every crisis as an opportunity… to look at your business and how you operate and say what can we really essentially change to adjust ourselves to the new normal,” Zeitz said. “If businesses don’t ask themselves that question, you will be part of history, rather than the future.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	As quality is such an important driver of luxury and desirability, if you're not sustainable,
0:09.0	you don't actually operate with quality products.
0:12.0	How is it that you define what a responsible business means now?
0:17.0	Collaborating for the sake of solving big problems, I think that's critical.
0:21.8	Change happens so much quickly in today's world that if you're not part of the change,
0:26.0	I think you would be left behind.
0:30.9	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion, and welcome to the
0:35.0	Bof podcast.
0:36.2	All this week on BOF, we've been talking about
0:38.4	how to build a responsible fashion business. As part of our special edition, can fashion clean up its act?
0:45.0	On this episode, I sit down with Yakin Zaitz, the former CEO of Puma, who has been one of the
0:50.5	fashion industry's leading advocates for a more sustainable business model. During his time at
0:56.4	Puma, which was acquired by Caring, Zyitz developed the EPNL, the environmental profit and loss statement,
1:03.6	one of the first measures of how we can bring the principle of stakeholder capitalism,
1:08.3	considering people, planet, and profit as part of the business model going
1:13.4	forward.
1:14.4	Here's Jokken Zaitz on the power of fashion to drive sustainable change.
1:24.9	Well, good afternoon, Yakin.
1:27.1	How are you today? I'm very good. Hi, Imran, Yakin. How are you today?
1:28.1	I'm very good. Hi, Imran, from America.
1:31.4	You're in New Mexico, is that right?
1:33.7	I am, yes. Shetering at home because our offices are still closed until later this month.
	...

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