Mulberry launches "Made to Last Manifesto" to mark 50th anniversary
Luxury leather goods brand Mulberry is launching a new "Made to Last Manifesto" on World Earth Day, 22 April, 2021, with a mission to be “the leading responsible British luxury lifestyle brand,” in this its 50thanniversary year.
It aims to transform its business to a regenerative and circular model, encompassing the entire supply chain “from field to wardrobe by 2030".
To achieve the commitment, the manifesto is focusing on a number of actions for change, including pioneering hyper-local and hyper transparent “farm to finished product,” achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2035, extending the life of Mulberry products through repair and restoration, and promoting “buy back, resell or repurpose” of any Mulberry bag.
Acknowledging the environmental issues associated with cattle farming, Mulberry believes the continuation of a long and successful association with leather is dependent on achieving full traceability from farm to finished product, allowing it to put in place a network of organic and environmentally conscious farms to supply the hides that create its leather.
Additionally, the Mulberry repairs team at The Rookery, one of the brand’s Somerset factories, are masters of restoration, breathing new life into more than 10,000 bags every year, with leather and hardware archives going back over 35 years.
Also, through the Mulberry Exchange the brand is matching authenticated and beautifully restored classics with a new owner, and every one of its bags, “be they 50 years or five months old,” can find a second home with another member of the Mulberry community.
The Mulberry Exchange platform was launched in store in 2020, and is going digital on mulberry.com in April 2021, alongside a recently launched partnership with Vestiaire Collective, making resale a core pillar of Mulberry’s circularity strategy.
If the day comes when a Mulberry bag has reached the end of the line, the brand will still buy it back and use an innovative energy reclaim system, unique to its strategic partner Muirhead, a member of the Scottish Leather Group, to power the production of a new bag, ensuring that the line never ends, “it just becomes a circle.”
Mulberry CEO, Thierry Andretta, said: “At Mulberry we have already taken significant action to embed sustainability across our business, but today we offer our commitment to a programme of transformative change, embedding principles of regeneration and circularity across our entire supply chain.
“We are committed to creating a hyper-local, hyper-transparent ‘farm to finished product’ sourcing model and, whilst we are at the beginning of this transition, I am immensely proud of my colleagues and the work done to launch the Made to Last Manifesto. We look forward to the challenges ahead.”
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