Customers are now more powerful than ever. Whatever the customer wants, the customer gets, as well as whatever the customer hates can be discontinued and thrown into the back drawer for good.

Our demands have recently grown the ability to revolutionize a brand’s ethics and commitment to sustainability. These brands need and feed off of their buyers’ purchase cycle. This is why we can now control what is put on a label, and the process a certain place, being, and/or condition is being put through before looking at the final product. Actually, scratch the now. This has always been there, we just never looked at it from the right perspective. I am certain we can do some good if we all exploit this power. Brands have started to sense how the global consciousness that humans now share, is being reflected on what they choose to buy. This has helped them update the way they portray their products in order to satisfy their loyal customer’s wants and needs.

A great example of this concept is H&M. After its 2017 scandal, one that involved the brand burning 12 tons of usable but unpurchased items of clothing, a sustainability project rose. H&M had a complete makeover. Now, their main focus is lowering their negative impact on Mother Earth. This exact thing is the power of the customer put into practice. The clothing brand’s reputation was and still is, at an all-time low but they reinvented themselves in order to calm their customers’ complaints and please their environmentally conscious minds.

The change we seek won’t happen overnight, some brands won’t change at all, but it is our job as customers to be non-conformists and push the companies we know and love to reinvent themselves, just like H&M did.

Reference:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/heatherfarmbrough/2018/04/14/hm-is-pushing-sustainability-hard-but-not-everyone-is-convinced/?sh=675105017ebd