The Future of Fashion & Sustainability | 17 ettitude: Blending Style, Comfort, and Sustainability for A Great Night Sleep

ettitude: Deep Rooted Beliefs and Commitment to the Environment

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ettitude: Deep Rooted Beliefs and Commitment to the Environment 〰️

Amanda Turner is an innovator in sustainable, performance materials with 20 years of experience in fashion and consumer goods. She is the VP of Product and Impact at ettitude, driving innovation and development of ettitude’s home goods brand and its textile business. ettitude is a material innovation company with a commitment to dramatically reduce the harmful environmental impact of textiles with its proprietary CleanBamboo® fibers.

Amanda works at the cutting edge of material innovation with ettitude. Her love for the brand’s products and alignment with the company’s values guides her work. Co-founded by Phoebe Yu and Kat Dey, ettitude creates “next-gen fabrics and products that reduce our impact and support your health and the health of the planet.”[1] ettitude is in the business of selling home goods: luxurious bedding, bath products, and the occasional apparel line. However, If you ask Amanda, her work goes beyond overseeing the development of home goods products. ettitude has the potential to have a “much larger impact and be able to help brands hit their sustainability goals.”[2] Environmental impact is at the core of the brand’s identity.

The brand’s products are made possible by their CleanBamboo® lyocell fibers, offering the perfect mix of quality and sustainability. In my conversation with Amanda, we reflect on the quality and performance of ettitude’s CleanBamboo® fibers, the importance of extending the life of products, and the brand’s new venture as a B2B textile supplier.

Historically, the creation of bamboo fibers has involved converting bamboo pulps into fibers through a viscose process. Viscose fiber manufacturing is chemically intensive and toxic, polluting fresh waterways and leading to eutrophication - the addition of ‘excess’ nutrients to a water body that creates “dead zones” in waterways.[3] ettitude’s process behind CleanBamboo® fibers has considerable advantages.

The process of creating CleanBamboo® lyocell fibers involves the use of “food grade organic solvents that are not harmful for the workers exposed to the process,” and ettitude is “able to recycle and reprocess the water and the solvents up to 200 times.”[4] 98% of the water involved in fiber creation is recycled, while the remaining 2% that is released is clean.[5] A 3rd party Lifecycle Assessment – crucial in measuring the environmental impact of products or services throughout the entire lifecycle – from 2022 clearly outlines the progress the brand has made.

Made with its patented and trademarked CleanBamboo® fibers, ettitude’s fabrics save up to 100% water, 86% CO2 emissions, 85% fossil fuels and avoid up to 98% of eutrophication vs conventional silk.[6]

While viscose currently dominates the market for fibers derived from bamboo pulp, CleanBamboo® fibers have both sustainability and performance credentials.[7]

Amanda credits the brand’s continued success to performance attributes that keep customers wanting to come back for more. Performance is key to brand differentiation, and ettitude’s leadership team invests time to ensure their products are up to par. Weekly all-hands calls highlight both positive and negative feedback.[8] Amanda provides a detailed account of their fabrics’ performance qualities.

Because we're doing very gentle processing, we're able to maintain a lot of the innate properties of bamboo itself; those properties would be temperature regulation. So, we have excellent temperature regulation, not like bamboo viscose… [our fabrics] do a really good job of maintaining that neutral ambient temperature for comfortable sleep, which then obviously translates excellent into intimates and activewear space for the textile division. We also have great durability and moisture management as well as other properties such as…anti-microbial, anti-odor, and anti-fungal properties.[9]

Given the product’s performance track record, resale and take-back initiatives were a natural next step for ettitude. The move has apparent environmental and financial benefits alike. Joining a growing list of brands across luxury fashion, footwear, and home goods, ettitude partnered with branded resale platform Treet last year to show returned and lightly worn products new love.

30-day sleep trials are standard in the bedding industry, specifically for DTC brands, so a certain number of returns is expected. Since bedding products tend to have a longer lifespan, the quality of returned ettitude products remains excellent.[10] It was important that the brand close the waste loop and extend the lifecycle of its products.[11] Finally, a year into the resale business, the brand seems to have hit its financial and environmental goals. The brand’s resale marketplace has attracted a new customer base, allowing existing customers to upgrade their bedding, while extending the life of ettitude products. Customers looking to buy secondhand can expect a discounted price for the renewed products.

According to Amanda, the program has been well-received in the U.S. market, and the brand is exploring expansion of its take-back and resale services to the Australian market.[12] Partnering with Treet also allowed the brand to capture unusable waste material. The brand can now stockpile and experiment with deadstock fabric, and Amanda is excited to “work on our own innovation to take that fiber and do textile-to-textile recycling.”[13]

After ten years as a home goods brand, ettitude launched its textile business intending to make a larger impact. This move isn’t just financially driven; Amanda wants other brands to benefit from CleanBamboo® and hit their sustainability goals.[14] ettitude has spent the last year and a half educating home goods and fashion brands on the CleanBamboo® solution by attending important fashion trade shows like the Future Fabrics Expo and Première Vision.[15] Educating brands about CleanBamboo® has come with challenges. Brands investing in sustainable materials worry about the process used in bamboo fabric manufacturing. Traditionally, bamboo materials marketed as sustainable have been byproducts of the viscose method and heavy chemistry. However, ettitude’s sustainability credentials stand out because of their environmental certifications. Right now, the brand’s main goal is to “help the market understand the point of difference, see the value in what we’re offering, and then be able to incorporate it into their product lines.” Already ettitude has received a lot of interest from luxury brands in the 100% PLNTsilk™ (Italian Silk-alternative) and 100% PLNTcashmere™ (Cashmere-alternative) fabrics.[16]

Another challenge for fabric innovators is cost. The fashion industry is cost-averse and hesitant to invest long-term into unproven innovation. Most alternative material businesses produce at a smaller scale, and it “takes time to get to a cost-competitive price.”[17] Brands are interested in innovating, just not at current prices and not fast enough. Material innovators face a tall task, but the continued interest in sustainable products from consumers and brands, coupled with regulatory pressure on the fashion industry, suggests the industry will need to adopt cleaner alternatives. With 10 years of experience developing its fiber technology and bolstering its performance qualities, ettitude has a leg up.

Amanda is optimistic and excited about the development of the brand’s home goods and textile business. Along with the development of its luxury line of blankets, rugs, and towels, Amanda promises continued innovation of their fiber technology and improvements towards lowering environmental impact. While the brand is still in the early stages of its textile business, the quality, performance, and eco-attitude are clear. Brands throughout home goods and fashion should emulate ettitude’s track record in hitting its sustainability initiatives and strive to offer a blend of quality and sustainability.

[1] https://www.ettitude.com/pages/about

[2] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[3] https://www.ettitude.com/blogs/ettitude-journal/which-is-the-most-sustainable-of-them-all-viscose-vs-tree-based-lyocell-vs-bamboo-lyocell

[4] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[5] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[6] https://explore.changeclimate.org/brand/ettitude

[7] https://www.ettitude.com/blogs/ettitude-journal/which-is-the-most-sustainable-of-them-all-viscose-vs-tree-based-lyocell-vs-bamboo-lyocell

[8] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[9] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[10] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[11] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[12] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[13] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[14] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[15] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24

[16] https://materials.ettitude.com/pages/products

[17] Amanda Turner – 4/15/24