Estelle Sommer, VISCONTI Partner, welcomes Sophie Pignères, founder and CEO of Weturn.

For this new season of Visconti Talks/Trajectoire d'entrepreneurs, we will follow Sophie's career path, which we will title “changing the paradigms in the world of fashion and textiles”.

Launched two years ago, the company Weturn aims to provide a solution to the waste of textile raw materials. It is positioning itself as a new player in the circular economy: it is the first service to offer brands the recycling of their unsold items.

Coming from a business and finance school, Sophie Pignières quickly turned to committed start-ups such as KissKissBankBank. For five years, she trained in the collaborative economy and in supporting project leaders in the sectors of the social and solidarity economy, tech, and ecology.

How did Weturn come about?

The idea for Weturn was born three years ago. At that time, there was a lot of talk about textile waste. The textile industry was announced as one of the most polluting with unlimited production and consumption patterns. Even today, fashion is one of the most polluting industries, but it is possible to help it be more virtuous.

Any particular affinities with the world of textiles?

Sophie had no technical knowledge of textiles but she was wondering about the absence of clothing recycling channels. She has always been sensitive to environmental problems and this subject seemed to her to be an aberration.

At the same time, she kept up with the evolution of fashion and quickly felt overwhelmed by a world that she considered too superficial. She then made the bet to enter this industry that she was completely unaware of.

During the first lockdown, Sophie dissected the AGEC bill (Anti Waste for a Circular Economy), one of the articles of which announced the ban on the destruction of unsold goods. At that time, no sector existed to process these products and valorize them. This has guided Weturn's activity and its positioning: collecting and recycling unsold textiles into new raw materials in order to reintroduce them into collections with less impact.

What were Weturn's ambitions when it was created?

Weturn's mission is to generalize the use of recycled materials by saving thousands of tons of unused textiles from destruction. And that is always the case. The vision defended today by the company in the industry is that of: a third, a third, a third. In a store, this means distributing: a third of new products, a third of second-hand products, a third of second-hand products, a third of recycled products.

What is Weturn's raison d'être?

Protect resources and living beings by transforming production models. This model, focused on textiles, can be applied to other industries and product typologies.Also, Weturn is a logistics and industrial sector that integrates all the trades of the circular economy.The ambition is to become a beautiful French SME, recognized for giving back to the French textile industry its credentials, while adapting it to the new challenges of ecological transition.

What was the strategy and how did it evolve over time?

Sophie conducted a year of research before launching Weturn. With that, she notes that:

- On the citizen side: recycling = sorting, trash cans, lockers;

- Industry side: recycling = plastic;

- On the textile side: recycling remains a niche problem.

Faced with these findings, it was necessary to evangelize recycling in terms of the raw material, its lifespan, its origin and the impact to be drawn from it.

But how do you make recycling desirable? Second subject: influential textile companies and players (LVMH, KERING, Hermès, CHANEL), not converted to recycling at the time, had stocks of the noblest, most qualitative materials and therefore the easiest to recycle. But they cannot pay off any of their unsold goods and must therefore value them in another way.

Consequently, Weturn's choice was to build a sector for these actors. By imagining that they could facilitate evangelization work before descending step by step to more mainstream and mass distribution actors.

The biggest challenges of Weturn and Sophie Pignères

The most difficult thing was to make a place for herself in this sector that was unknown to Sophie. The complicated part in starting a business is getting appointments with the interlocutors and decision-makers. This is all the more true in fashion, a very closed environment. Also, it was necessary to surround themselves with competent people and recruit at each stage of their activity.

How did Weturn manage to impose its vision?

The announcement of their collaboration with LVMH was a real springboard. They have gained legitimacy since.They have succeeded in creating logistical and operational processes that their customers have integrated to renew projects.Their current customers understand that they are investing in a useful sector. Others, on the other hand, have not yet understood that the ecological transition has a cost.

On a personal level, Sophie Pignières took up the challenge of creating a company with high ambition at the age of 28. To achieve this, she decided to never be impressed and to never give in to a method that took her away from her commitment.

Defending your vision: a fight?

Defending your vision is a fight that Weturn tries to fight with patience, resilience and calm. They should always be careful to explain to their clients the reasons for the change in method, why their support and the expected results. They are not ready to accept everything if it does not fit into their framework, their vision and their mission.

In terms of management, what lessons can we learn as a young entrepreneur?

Recruiting and managing is tricky. There have been movements at Weturn over the last two years. Nothing is fixed, everything has to be created and the processes are, at the beginning, non-existent. So there is a need for people with specific skills.

The challenge is to ensure that everyone is aligned with the company's ambition, its goals and that there is no growing gap in the teams.Sophie and her teams try to communicate as transparently as possible, both internally and externally. Today, they have a team of eight people united and mobilized.

After two years of existence, what is Weturn's ambition?

On the activity of collecting and recycling unsold items to recreate collections, work is underway, in particular with LVMH and Nona Source* to integrate their solution across the group.

Weturn also has other projects with other brands in the industry. In parallel with the collection and recycling center, the eco-design center is very present. This fall, Weturn is launching an ingredient brand, a logo that will be found among their customers using their recycled brands.

Sophie Pignières's three tips

Show the customer that a solution is being provided;

Never let yourself be impressed, position yourself as equals;

Never stop believing in it: as an entrepreneur, resilience is key.

*Developed by LVMH internally, Nona Source is the first platform for reselling materials from its Fashion & Leather Goods Houses. It offers all houses to resell to designers their dormant fabrics that are not protected by intellectual property (therefore not printed, not logoted).