Bio-based Clothes Covers for a High-end Clothing Brand

Abstract: There is a growing interest in using plastics from renewable resources and other bio-based materials to replace conventional oil-based plastics. This report presents the development of a new bio-based clothes cover for a high-end clothing brand. The project was carried out as a Master’s Thesis project in Industrial Design Engineering at the research institute Innventia AB commissioned by the clothing brand Tiger of Sweden. The project’s development process was based on The Mechanical Design Process by David G. Ullman. A web-based survey, an idea generation workshop and a perception study were performed as a basis for the investigation. The new clothes cover is intended for hanging clothes, primarily suits. The new clothes cover should be effectively managed in the transport chain and be aesthetically appealing. Additionally, it should add value by being used by the end-users as a transport bag when buying a suit. The study had a large focus on the selection of a suitable bio-based material for the application. The project resulted in two product concepts: one to be used from production to retail and from the store to the customer’s home and the other primarily to be used as a transport cover. The first concept, Concept 1, is a foldable clothes cover made in bio-based polyethylene. The product concept fulfills the requirements within the transport chain and can also be carried as a garment bag. Concept 2 is a premium transportcover also made in bio-based polyethylene. The cover has a stiff exclusive look and is closed at the bottom with a resealable zip-lock. Bio-based polyethylene was selected because it possesses the most suitable properties for this demanding application and is nearest to a commercially implementable solution. The flexibility, water barrier and great manufacturability of polyethylene outperformed the other bio-based competitors among starch-based plastics, polylactic acid and paper materials. The project was delimited to be adapted to the prevailing methods Tiger of Sweden was using in their transport chain and finally, cost and profitability studies were not included.