Collectively Closing the Consumption Circle: An Explorative Study on the Swedish Market for Fashion Sharing

Abstract: Sharing business models have made their way into plenty of industries. One of them is the fashion industry. New innovative fashion sharing models strive to change consumerism behavior towards circular usage and a smaller environmental footprint. On top of emerging in a young market, many fashion sharing businesses launched closely to or in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. By mapping the fashion sharing market in Sweden, this thesis aims to identify underlying patterns as to how fashion sharing business model innovation is disruptive. The thesis also aspires to explore the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the market, as well as the future outlook. The methodology used is qualitative and exploratory which is motivated by limited previous research. It furthermore lets the authors contribute with market understandings and insights. Through in-depth interviews primarily with founders of fashion sharing businesses the thesis finds two interesting trends: an increase in technology profiling and scalability being a market wide obstacle. Fashion sharing business model innovation is found to be disruptive in several ways, for instance by challenging the cost and revenue structures of linear fashion companies. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a contradictory effect on the market, both increasing the demand for digital platforms and lowering the demand for formal clothing. The future outlook is an increasing growth in technological platform developments.