Scan Magazine | Special Theme | The Best Christmas Gifts From Sweden
Soft, solid slow fashion in 100 per cent cashmere The two founders of Soft Goat share a love of all the wonderful qualities of cashmere: its sustainability, its versatility and its sheer softness and beauty. With a determination to slice costs, they are now spreading that love, making 100 per cent cashmere accessible for everyone.
makes us flexible so that we can launch new products quickly and don’t depend on a sales organisation to sell our collections to retailers.”
By Linnea Dunne | Photos: Christine Knutsson
Warm, sustainable and service-minded
“It all started when I was chatting to my friend, Erik Magnuson, about his cashmere jumper and reflected on how it had kept its quality for such a long time,” Stephanie Bergström recalls. “We were talking about how cashmere is so costly and wondering whether there might be a way to sell beautiful, high-quality cashmere jumpers at a better price.” That was seven years ago, and the solution – to work exclusively with online trade – was still somewhat of a novelty. 34 | Issue 106 | November 2017
The strategy was based on the idea of cutting out retailers’ mark-up costs in order to maintain the high quality but slash the price. This remains a crucial aspect of the two cashmere lovers’ now wellestablished fashion brand, Soft Goat, but there are plenty of additional benefits of the online-only approach. “The cost aspect is critical, in that a jumper we can sell online for 1,600 SEK would cost at least twice that if we were selling it in a physical boutique,” Bergström explains. “But working with e-commerce also
Consistently good quality is one of Soft Goat’s key promises to their customers. “It’s a fantastically sustainable material, in more than one sense,” says Bergström. “A cashmere jumper will last a very long time if you look after it the right way, so we’re part of a ‘slow fashion’ movement that aims to move away from throw-away fashion and endless consumption. This is important to us, and we’re working very consciously with sustainability at the moment. But cashmere is also very versatile and works in different climates and seasons.”