ebook：https://www.facebook.com/solit.japan/
・Twitter：https://twitter.com/solit_japan
・Youtube：https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPJ03qaLVydlvTPvyPnbqag

– Have you undertaken any sustainability education or training?
・Copenhagen Business School MBA in Sustainable Fashion in 2020
・Running a learning community called Sustainability College (Started in 2020)

– Your personal profile and motivations in applying to the Challenge：

I am a serial social entrepreneur and social designer in Japan, having the motto of solving social issues through “the Fun Theory”. I often found clothes I wanted to wear were unavailable to me due to my plus-sized body shape, limiting my self-expression and keeping myself in self-denial. A friend of mine with a physical disability also experienced similar fashion challenges. These personal experiences drove me to pursue an "all-inclusive society" through fashion: a society of diverse community of people as well as environment, leaving no one and nothing behind, including nature, and animals.

From this perspective of sustainable fashion, I believe that the wide range of issues in fashion cannot be solved like a domino effect by resolving a single problem, due to the complex economic, political and social relationships. For example, often, mass production is considered as ‘bad,’ however, it actually creates jobs. Organic cotton, which is highly used in fashion brands as an environmentally friendly material, is in fact has a high environmental footprint. I believe there are always two sides to things. Thus, we need to make systemic changes without being satisfied by solving just few issues.

Therefore, we have decided to make what is needed, to whom it is needed and, in the amount, needed. This would minimise human rights violations and environmental impact in the production process and eliminate hierarchy in fashion by making products that can be worn by anyone, especially the disabled, sexual minorities and the elderly, who have not been able to fully enjoy fashion.

Our team is made up of a diverse range of people, including climate change and human rights activists, healthcare professionals, researchers, disabled people, and students. Diversity in our team enables us to address issues in social and environmental aspects. By applying for this award, we want to strengthen the fashion aspects of our work to reach even more people. We hope that inclusive fashion like ours will gain global recognition and that similar initiatives will occur all over the world. In doing so, we would also like to share the knowledge and know-how that we have gained so far, so that we can work together with more people to realise an inclusive society throughout the world.

– Have you been nominated to apply If yes, who nominated you?
・Kamakura Sustainability Institute(KSI.)

– About Your Business
・Business Name：SOLIT, Inc.
・Years in business：2years and 4months
・Business stage：Growth

– Description of your business

SOLIT is an inclusive fashion brand that allows people to choose their own design, size, and length for each part of their body according to their own preferences, regardless of their disability and body type. We are committed to solving the problems of conventional fashion which often disregards diversity in body types. We create products by incorporating minorities’ voices from the planning stage. Furthermore, we adopt a business model of semi-customisation and made-to-order production to produce only the necessary amount of goods that already have an owner; therefore, we minimise waste and negative environmental impact.

– A detailed description of your business

People with disabilities have few fashion options due to physical, mental, and social limitations. Clothes are usually designed and produced for people who can stand up, making it difficult to wear especially for disabled people, which often results in a lack of social participation. Moreover, with clothing that prioritizes functionality for nursing, it is hard to enjoy fashion. Thus, by providing products that are fashionable and can be easily worn by anyone, we aim to remove the physical and mental hardships toward fashion through fashion.

Instead of designers designing exclusively, as is conventionally the case, we use the Inclusive Design method to develop products, involving people with diverse backgrounds from the planning stage, who have been neglected in conventional production. Moreover, by adopting a semi-customisation system and made-to-order production, we only produce the necessary amount of clothes that customers order, minimising burdens on the environment. Customers can customise clothes on our website however they want them. This is what we call “the democratisation of fashion”: clothing is produced to suit customers’ individual needs, rather than corporations, designers, and trading companies owning the process of production. Additionally, we offer clothes with the same base design regardless of their body characteristics and disabilities. Therefore, wearing our clothes erases the recognizable boundaries between non-disabled and disabled people.

We also value the relationship with our manufacturing partner in China. As our products need to be made one by one, a worker must finish the entire process by hand which leads to improvement on individuals’ skills. And because it requires more skills, their basic salaries are up to 30% higher than minimum wage. Moreover, our selling prices are constantly reviewed based on the shift in exchange rate and production cost to pay the same base salaries to factory workers.

Since we started in September 2020, our products have developed through repeated prototyping, identifying, and resolving each small but burdensome difficulties through the voices of more than 100 physically challenged people and through collaboration with medical professionals and social workers in physical mobility and rehabilitation. Based on physical data collected from them, we originally developed “magnetic buttons” that enabled people with paralyzed limbs to put on and take off their clothes, and “jacket cuff designs” that prevent jacket sleeves from getting caught in wheelchairs. We won GOLD at the iF Design Award, one of the world's top three design awards, because of such inclusive designs.

Until December 2022, in addition to selling our products through our e-commerce site, we have been creating touchpoints by holding regular try-on events and "SOLIT stand," an exhibition where we display our products, reaching out to 159 people with the sales of 328 products. Roughly 20% of our customers are physically challenged persons and they gave us positive feedbacks that they were finally able to enjoy fashion. We exist thanks to all the stakeholders with their longing for an “all-inclusive society”.