Speaking at World Retail Congress, former H&M CEO, Helena Helmersson, delivered a keynote session for retail leaders on the business of sustainability. She outlined how to drive effective and meaningful sustainability practices within retail organisations, by addressing a trifecta of challenges across companies, customers and the fashion industry at large.

Cut the conflict: sustainability and profit must co-exist

Helmersson first addressed company-focused challenges to sustainable operations. “In the beginning, the sustainability space was full of big promises, but then things happened – Covid, the war in Ukraine, trade pressures – and suddenly sustainability wasn’t the top issue anymore,” she said. 

She suggests that the first step in putting ESG back into the business’ core depends on leaders creating a culture where sustainability and profitability go hand-in-hand. Rather than operating at cross purposes, where organisations weigh up sustainability against profitability, retail leaders need to find a way to “eliminate that conflict,” allowing both goals to effectively co-exist.

“Quite often there is a conflict between sustainability and business… our job as [retail leaders] is to eliminate that conflict.”

Helena Helmersson, former CEO, H&M

Some of this, she added, is about changing the mindset around green retailing. “Right now, the collective instinct is that sustainability is about engagement,” she said. Retailers need to move beyond seeing ESG as solely an engagement strategy and ensure sustainability makes up the very fabric of the business.

And, for Helmersson, that change must start at the top: “it’s the job of the CEO to design a system that will help the organisation to reach those targets and help the teams to succeed.”

This problem “cannot be solved by ticking boxes,” she added. “There must be coordination and investment with a long-term perspective.”

Changing the habits of conflicted consumers

Next, Helmersson went on to explore how retailers can bring the customer along with them on their sustainability journeys. This, she said, relies on tapping into consumers’ “real needs,” which centre around cost, convenience and making green consumption “cool.”

“When you want to change customers’ behaviours, there’s three things to think about. How can sustainability be good for customers’ wallets? How can [it] make life easier? And how can sustainability make the outfit you’re wearing even cooler?”

Helena Helmersson, former CEO, H&M

However, Helmersson pointed out that within addressing consumers’ perception of costs for eco-products, the consumer remains conflicted: “they care so much, but they don’t act like it… customers are not willing to pay for sustainability.”

Seperate research of over 1,000 shoppers conducted recently by True Fit showed that offering budget lines that are still sustainably created was the top way 34% of UK shoppers felt retailers could help them consume in a more sustainable manner.

Making sustainability a convenient choice

To make greener choices more convenient, Helmersson gave the example of H&M’s partnership with second-hand fashion platform, Sellpy, which it went on to acquire in 2022. This allowed customers to clean out their wardrobes, with doorstep collections of garments they no longer wanted or needed. The garments were then sold on Sellpy’s platform, and customers are given a share of the proceeds.

“That means [it’s] great for customers’ wallets, [and] it’s also super convenient,” Helmersson said, “helping customers to develop their personal style at the same time as recycling their clothes.”

Shoppers are driving the rise of eco-chic

Addressing how sustainability can make shoppers’ wardrobes “even cooler” was a further pillar Helersson said retailers needed to focus upon to shift the dial on buying behaviours.

Some of this change may already be happening, with consumers driving this shift as the pre-loved, resale and repair fashion categories continue to grow. Take for example, recommerce marketplace, Vinted, which posted +36% year-on-year rise in revenues in its 2024 financial results, while earlier this month, Green Retail World reported that it has now also become the top fashion retailer by volume in France in another win for the circular retail movement.

This was also echoed by former Founder of All Saints, Stuart Trevor, speaking earlier this year at the Retail Technology Show Press Day. Trevor, founder of his eponymous fashion brand which creates all of its collections from deadstock, said demand for eco-chic clothing was being driven primarily by younger consumers.

“I know that there are lots of younger people who will not shop anywhere other than vintage, markets, charity shops – and there’s a social divide; they won’t associate with kids that shop fast fashion,” he said.

Unpicking industry complexities to drive change

The last bastion for change resides with the industry itself, according to Helmersson – and this relies on shifting the perception that the fashion sector is too complex to adapt.

“Last, we have the problem in the industry [that] I hear a lot; this industry is just far too complex to change, especially when you have companies who own the value and the supply chains.”

Helena Helmersson, former CEO, H&M

As an example of where true, ‘deep’ change at industry level can occur, she pointed to a joint venture which H&M had conducted with one of Europe’s largest biggest clothing recycling companies, CIRCULOSE, where Helmersson is now chairman.

CIRCULOSE recycles garment waste to create new fibres which can be used again in apparel production. H&M integrated CIRCULOSE fibres in to its collections, helping it influence and change the way the fashion industry uses – and reuses – discarded garments.