Matleena Kallio
Nea Levonius
Emma Forsman
Vilma Runeberg
Hanken School of Economics
Martin Fougere
Keep this story going! Share below!
Ninyes offers resale as a service to fashion brands, enabling them to seamlessly resell unsold inventory and reduce waste through a plug-and-play circular solution. By managing logistics, warehousing, and marketing, Ninyes simplifies the process of reselling high-quality, sustainable fashion items, effectively extending their lifecycle. This approach supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals by reducing textile waste and CO₂ emissions associated with overproduction, and promoting sustainable consumption by encouraging brands and consumers to embrace secondhand fashion.
Ninyes is a start-up company founded in 2020, offering retail services in the fashion industry. The concept is to provide recycling and circular solutions for fashion brands so that they can utilize once-produced goods, thus not wasting anything being produced. In this sense, Ninyes offers a plug-and-play resale solution for fashion companies, and the companies can easily and efficiently sell their full inventory. Ninyes handles everything from logistics and warehousing to marketing, allowing fashion brands to easily resell their clothes secondhand and extending the life of their clothes. This means that Ninyes sells secondhand clothing straight from the fashion brands, instead of secondhand clothing from consumers, which is the case for most secondhand stores.
What makes Ninyes special is that they only resell fashion items that they consider to be of high quality and long-lasting, thus focusing only on sustainable fashion companies. This combined with the notion of true circularity makes Ninyes a true champion of sustainable development and innovation. Additionally, the founders believe that by making recycling an easily available option for brands, they are more likely to take part in it. This innovation can therefore be seen as promoting sustainable fashion not only for consumers but also for fashion brands to make it a part of their business.
Overproduction is a significant problem in the fashion industry today, with more than a hundred billion new items produced every year despite us being only eight billion people on this planet. As a result, the fashion industry is responsible for about 10% of all global CO2-emissions which has severe environmental consequences. “It's considered that if we stopped producing new garments now, the existing clothing on this planet would be enough to last for up to six generations”, Siukosaari says. This means that there isn’t really a need for new clothing to be made, however fast fashion promotes quickly changing trends which leads to masses of clothes being made, out of which a portion is never used before being destroyed.
Elina Niinistö, one of the founders, previously ran her own kid’s clothing store and became tired of the constant promotion of new items and the pressure to encourage people to consume. Meanwhile, the other founder, Mikko Siukosaari, had been working with several circular startups and became interested in the idea how circularity could save the world. When they met the idea of doing something concrete instead of just talking about it was raised and an alternative approach was born - promoting second-hand instead of new. The founders combined their different expertise, putting together fashion and circularity. The idea combines promoting second-hand and reducing the demand for new, while also utilizing the leftover clothing from fashion brands that haven’t been sold.
The industry of reselling and reusing already existing clothes has grown a lot over the last years. The simplest form of secondhand stores has existed since the 19th century, but there have only lately been introduced different forms of selling existing clothing. A lot of second-hand clothing stores focus on already used clothing. Ninyes innovation instead combats the problem of unused clothing coming straight from the fashion brands. Ninyes is one of the biggest operators in Europe, concentrating on selling high-quality clothing, and because they have been operating for only under 4 years, it is difficult to calculate the overall impact that it has.
Last year, Ninyes had a turnover of 240 000 euros from selling secondhand clothing from sustainable fashion brands. An assumption can be made that this proves that a positive impact regarding CO2 emissions from the fashion industry, as well as reducing textile waste was made. Ninyes has in particular made an impact when it comes to unsold clothing of fashion brands, reselling these clothes, reducing both the need to produce new clothes as well as the potential textile waste these clothes would have created. From a big picture view, Ninyes has also helped promote sustainable fashion and consumption of second-hand clothing. Additionally, Ninyes focuses on collaborating only with responsible and sustainable brands, through which they support responsible fashion even in the beginning of the supply chain.
Since starting the business in 2020, there has been significant growth within the company. Ninyes started as a family business with two founders. Since then, Ninyes has grown to be a 12-person company, with people working on various tasks and responsibilities.
Ninyes has also managed to attract many fashion brands to join their mission of reselling used quality fashion items. The company has currently 32 partner companies, which makes Ninyes the second largest in Europe in this specific field. According to Siukosaari, “there hasn’t been many Finnish successes when it comes to fashion / … / on a global scale” which also gives Ninyes a good competitive advantage. This means that Ninyes can fill a potential gap that may exist in the Finnish fashion industry, especially when it comes to sustainable fashion.
Since attaining all the fashion brands that Ninyes wants to include from Finland, the next step was to expand to other countries as well. After expanding the business internationally about a year ago, “we’ve been able to attract fashion brands from Sweden, Denmark and Germany to join us”. Siukosaari told us, that the next step is to attract more mid-size German brands, and to preach others the same message that Ninyes lives for. The expansion to other European countries provides Ninyes with potential for more growth, which is a great business benefit for Ninyes.
Ninyes strives toward a longer life cycle for clothing and more sustainable fashion consumption. Ninyes reselling innovation for fashion brands combats two big environmental problems that exist in the fashion industry: reducing the need for producing new clothes and reducing the textile waste created from unsold products being destroyed. Ninyes selling clothes second hand significantly reduces the CO2 emissions of clothes as they resell clothes instead of requiring new clothes to be made. “We slash about 75% of all fashion emissions by doing this”. As mentioned before, the fashion industry is a huge contributor to global CO2 emissions, making this an important environmental problem to tackle.
At the same time, this innovation reduces the textile waste that comes directly from unsold clothes in clothing stores. According to the European Environment Agency up to 9% of all textile products made are destroyed before use, making this a significant problem. Ninyes solution therefore combats both the environmental impact of producing new clothes and the textile waste created by the fashion industry. When it comes to the SDGs, Ninyes particularly promotes SDG 12 Sustainable consumption and production, since its innovation promotes both consuming more responsibly by consuming second-hand and producing less clothing as well.
Ninyes also chooses to work specifically with sustainable fashion brands, that are aligned with their values and mission toward more sustainable fashion consumption. For this reason, they choose not to work with fast fashion brands. This has both an environmental and social impact, promoting collaboration with sustainable businesses that work both environmentally and socially in a sustainable way. “We only offer this service for responsible fashion brands, so no H&M, Zara or Shein for us”. This means that Ninyes isn’t contributing to environmentally harmful production of clothes or supporting unfair working conditions etc. even indirectly by supporting fashion brands with unsustainable practices.
Get stories of positive business innovations from around the world delivered right to your inbox.
Ninyes is a start-up company founded in 2020, offering retail services in the fashion industry. Ninyes offers resale as a service for fashion brands, simplifying the process of reselling unsold clothing for fashion brands. The concept is to provide recycling and circular solutions for fashion brands so that they can utilize once produced goods, thus not wasting anything being produced.