Not wasting waste and managing excess stock for the fashion world are the hottest topic of the moment. It is no coincidence that Zerow is growing in this context. The Tuscan startup has launched a B2B platform to sell, donate and recycle redundant materials, allowing companies (both SMEs and brands) to measure and reduce their environmental impact. The young company, based in the Scandicci leather goods district, was founded in 2022 and currently has about 1,000 products in its catalog. It boasts, moreover, a network of 1,300 companies in its system, which includes six luxury brands and SMEs from all over Italy. Gabriele Rorandelli, CEO and founder of Zerow (pictured), told us about the company’s evolution and the investments that will allow the startup to expand its activities abroad.
Don’t waste byproducts and manage stocks
What has been the path since your inception?
I started with my project ZeroLab in June 2020. The platform was launched in September 2023. The experience in upcycling started from the companies in our area and everything took off from there. In recent years, we have gained credibility in the fashion industry, so much so that we have earned the trust of major luxury brands. We are based in the heart of manufacturing and being on-site has helped us. We are establishing ourselves as a local business, and this is just the beginning for us.
You recently won the e-P Summit Innovation Award in Florence. How did it go?
Participating in Pitti Immagine’s e-P Summit 2024 gave us a great boost. The fair was an opportunity to present our circular economy marketplace and launch the “Road to ZeroWaste” project. Our mission is to eliminate waste in fashion by turning textile and leather waste into new valuable products through a structured long-term supply chain plan and cutting-edge industrial recycling technologies. And this message is being received with great interest by the fashion industry. After the expo, we started working with two major luxury brands on inventory waste management.
What are your growth goals?
We currently have an offering of about 1,000 products and are working to expand it and we are active throughout Italy and will soon expand internationally as well. We have just raised 300,000 euro in the last round, with which we will be able to expand. We obtained several funding through PNRR, as an innovative startup and then foreign investors joined the company.
How?
At the beginning of the year we entered Nana Bianca. Now we have entered an international startup incubator, Startup Wise Guys, which will allow us to participate in an additional investment round over the next 18 months, with the goal of raising 1 million euro. This will serve us to grow further and be able to become a reference point for the buying and selling of unused waste for Italy, dialoguing with the rest of the world.
Your goal is “to eliminate waste in fashion.” How do you plan to achieve this?
We know it is not easy, but with time and the support of the partners we have gathered, it is a doable mission. We want to do it through the marketplace by encouraging upcycling and recycling of waste. Anything that cannot be resold and reused can be transformed. As part of this, we also do match-making and manage the reporting of recycling and waste disposal data.
Why do you call it “smart match-making”?
We use artificial intelligence to create the match between material and buyer. We connect with machine learning craft workshops, small producers and micro-businesses with the materials available to us. So we suggest what to find on the application and convey the user to a type of material.
Do you have a warehouse?
We do not stock. We manage our different items between fabrics, leathers, yarns, metal accessories, but also consumables such as sewing threads. In this way we avoid selling out by the kilo and turning it into waste.
In addition to the upcycling marketplace, do you also offer products?
Depending on the materials a company has, we are able to make various applications of recycled materials that go beyond fashion, introducing design objects produced from recycled fabric and leather scraps. We go to identify the best match between the waste materials, the quantities and the result. It is an activity of analysis, of output. We have industrial partners and are always active in materials research and development. In fact, we are also developing a partnership with the University of Florence for this.
How useful is your business in light of the upcoming EU Eco-design legislation?
It is the main reason for our such fast growth. Everyone immediately understood the importance of working in the direction of recycling and recovery, and this has allowed us to make a very accelerated path of growth. The legislation has a clear message: unsold and unused materials can no longer be disposed of. The quantities are massive, but we are convinced that with the right approach, we can become a leader in recycling and waste disposal.
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