Listen to the audio version of the article
«We have made a series of choices, such as never producing optical white t-shirts: this way we avoid 500 grams of excess chemistry. And then we use certified, recycled and recyclable and 100% organic materials and we produce 99.9% in Italy, between Puglia, Campania, Veeto, Emilia and Piedmont”. Talking about choices – oriented towards circularity but also towards innovation and quality – is Alberto Bressan, co-founder and CEO of the Vicenza start-up Seay which produces collections of sportswear and beachwear for men and women, inspired by the atmospheres of surfing and based on a sustainable fashion culture.
The intuition came – as often happens – from a job in the more traditional and polluting fashion sector: «I was general manager of a division of a denim group: products that require six or seven trips to be sold at 29.90 – he says Bressan – and when we started to develop the idea of a new business model we decided to focus on sustainability”. Hence another choice: producing (few) high quality garments, investing in technologies that could make the project even more effective in creating a model that is as circular as possible.
The company – which started a round of financing on mamacrowd about a month ago (which will end on March 29, ed.) – was born in 2020 as a Benefit company – and two years ago it became a B Corp – from the collaboration of the already cited Bressan with two other partners: Simone Scodellaro, now chief commercial officer, and Maurizio Del Duca, chief innovation officer of Seay. Innovation is a founding component of Seay: «We have engineered the “take back” of the products in a model called Re3 and we have made an agreement with a non-profit organization that selects, reuses and possibly reuses the product, with the obligation to maintain the second choices on Italian territory. The customer who delivers a used car to us gets a label with a 20% refund on the purchase he has already made”, says Bressan. Seay has also equipped all its products with a digital passport – which will be an obligation starting from the entry into force of the European Ecodesign regulation – with information on the origins of the garment (materials, place of production) but also on care and maintenance of the boss.”
The objective is to grow without increasing the environmental impact, also with targeted investments in points of sale: «We have a network of 180 multi-brand stores and we sell online, on our website, offsetting distribution emissions, but we also have a series of retail projects: a Miami company will help us open a point of sale and two corners on site, while we are planning an opening in Marsala in April”, concludes Bressan. The temporary podium in the Rinascente Duomo (Annex area) is already active, an important gateway also for the international public.