One decision at a time: Tackling the hidden carbon cost of marketing

At first glance, marketing may seem unrelated to sustainability.

In reality, it plays a critical role in shaping decisions across the entire product value chain. In fashion, data-smart marketing decisions can prevent overproduction, reduce excess inventory and travel, and optimize distribution—ultimately improving both sustainability and business performance, while poor choices actively increase waste and carbon emissions. 

In the age of omnichannel retail, traditional marketing remains siloed – making its impact on sustainability difficult to track and blurring the line between smart decisions and those that generates waste. Lectra provides the data visibility needed to identify and measure the drivers of both performance and sustainability, helping fashion companies to focus on what truly creates value and synergy across the entire marketing cycle.

Here’s how Lectra helps you eliminate five hidden sources of marketing waste. 

1.Overstock and unsold inventory  

To avoid missed sales, field teams often inflate stock requests—leading to end-of-season overstock. Retviews helps brands optimize pricing and assortments using competitive insights to maximize sell-through and limit excess stock. 

2. High return rates 

With return rates around 30%, fashion heavily increases the environmental footprint of logistics due to multi-size online orders. Integrated with PIM and Neteven, Kubix Link enables transparent product information and richer product pages, helping consumers make informed purchases and reducing returns.

3. Fashion shows and physical events  

Fashion shows have a high environmental impact—from international travel to paper invitations. Launchmetrics helps brands digitize events, eliminating paper and couriering emissions while reducing the need for travel. 

4. Back-and-forth sample handling  

During campaigns, the constant movement of prototypes between brands, press, and showrooms increases emissions and risk of loss. Launchmetrics replaces physical samples with digital assets and tracks remaining items, improving efficiency while reducing emissions. 

5. Fragmented distribution across channels and marketplaces 

The multiplication of delivery methods disperses stock across logistical layers, increasing complexity and duplicating inventory across warehouses, leading to excess stock. Neteven, enables centralized and precise stock management with accurate inventory information across all channels, helping teams optimize distribution based on stock data.  
 

Done right, marketing turns sustainability into a significant competitive advantage. By leveraging data, fashion brands can make sharper decisions to reduce excess inventory, lower return rates, minimize campaign and event-related emissions, and optimize distribution across channels. In turn, a more cohesive brand experience helps build authentic customer relationships and foster long-term loyalty. 

Read our article to see how our technology helps fashion companies make greener, smarter decisions across the entire product lifecycle.