Clothing that grows with your child
The
Danish clothing company
Vigga is challenging the traditional business model
of the clothing industry. Through
a subscription-based clothing line for infants
and small children
Vigga ensures
you always have the right size
clothing for your children. The clothes are recycled through
a circular system, where
every garment is used
several times, ensuring a low environmental impact. 
With a few exceptions most textile companies in the midrange market focus on keeping expenditures towards production and materials low, while maintaining an acceptable quality. And as the demands for cheaper production leads to the use of cheaper materials and crude manufacturing processes, the expected life- time of the clothing has shortened.
The Danish clothing start-up Vigga is challenging this model. Vig-ga offers a subscription-based service providing customers with high quality clothing for their children during the first years of life.
It pays to produce quality, when your customers are sharing. The idea of producing high quality clothing to extend the lifetime of the products is not new. However the utilization of a subscription based business model to reduce the costs for the consumers as well as the environmental impact is an interesting combination, which can be replicated across many other industries.
Vigga’s model reverses the drive towards low quality. To be profitable, Vigga needs to ensure, that each item of clothing can be reused several times while passing a strict quality control. Producing cheap items with a short lifespan would hurt the business.
How does it work?
Vigga’s customers pay a monthly fee for the subscription ser- vice. The service entails that customers receive the first pack- age of clothing shortly before their baby is due. Once the baby grows out of the clothes, a new package arrives with clothing in a larger size. The customer returns the smaller sized clothing to Vigga, where it will be washed using an environmentally friendly process and put through a rigorous quality control before being shipped out to another customer.
Sharing clothes with strangers requires trust in the system
Like most business models in the We-economy, a great deal of trust is required. Thus quality control becomes a vital part of the business model, so that customers receiving previously used clothing do not experience a decline in quality.
Another trust issue is the obligation to return the clothing once the child grows out of them. In order to make customers comfortable with the obligation as well as the risk of losing or damaging clothing, Vigga has added an insurance fee in the monthly price, which covers 10 percent of the clothing supplied to the customer.
Focus on the core business, and do not get lost in the opportunities
There are many obvious possibilities to expand the business model with new services and add-ons. But CEO Vigga Svensson warns others to “not get lost in the many opportunities this business model offers. Once you get the core product and services right, you can explore the other possibilities”.