The Future of Fashion & Sustainability | 26 Scaling Sustainable Material Innovation | PLNTmatter
As far as I can remember, 2017 to 2023 felt like we were at the peak of the buzz around next-gen materials and sustainability in fashion. There were several high-profile bio-based leather alternative startups, including MycoWorks, Bolt Threads, Ecovative, and more, securing brand partnerships. We’d regularly read and hear about the next big sustainable fashion startup raising capital. But a mix of financial, supply chain, and industry factors sidelined many promising solutions that struggled to progress beyond initial capsule programs with brand partners. Fashion and sustainability, in particular, have suffered a volatile past few years with headlines like “What’s Blocking the Rise of More Sustainable Materials?” and “Beware Fashion’s Sustainability Retreat” displayed across the Business of Fashion magazine.
In my latest sit-down with Amanda Turner, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy at luxury home goods brand ettitude and its materials division PLNTmatter, we explore how Amanda’s team at PLNTmatter is getting scrappy and ensuring PLNTmatter’s commercial products become core materials.
Amanda is a product innovator and designer with over two decades of experience creating innovative products in fashion, and she oversees all end-to-end R&D and business operations for PLNTmatter. Over the last three years, Amanda has led PLNTmatter’s innovation and IP development, bringing more than 100 materials and final goods to market. PLNTmatter is a material science company that sells plant-based fibers, yarns, and textiles to supply chain partners and brands across fashion.
Previously named ettitude materials, ettitude’s material division rebranded as PLNTmatter to reaffirm their commitment to reimagining what’s possible with plants, science, and circular design. ettitude’s luxury home goods brand derived success from its proprietary CleanBamboo® lyocell fibers that give both luxury and health benefits. Now, PLNTmatter is moving beyond bamboo “to include a broader range of plant-based feedstocks and next-generation fiber technologies.”
What They’ve Been Up To
PLNTmatter uses regenerative plant-based raw materials to create 100% man-made, cellulosic, plant-based fibers. As a reminder, raw materials become fibers, fibers turn into yarn, and yarn gets spun into finished fabric. 99% of plant-based fibers today are made with wood pulp, which is grown on big fields that grow 100% of the same thing. It’s a process that negatively affects biodiversity and soil health. In contrast, PLNTmatter’s IP development on pre-processing treatments allows them to work with smaller farms in the U.S. and Central America to pre-process non-homogeneous, non-wood feedstock, such as bamboo, wheat straw, palm leaves, and eventually banana leaves to create fibers. These non-wood feedstocks allow PLNTmatter to test a variety of new raw materials for textiles.
PLNTmatter is also developing a modular pulping system, which separates the plant fiber component from non-wood feedstocks, takes waste byproducts and fertilizes the soil, and creates “biomass for energy.” PLNTmatter achieves a smaller footprint, reduces the energy and chemistry, all while making a cost-effective product. It’s a system that benefits PLNTmatter and their partner farms.
These innovations aren’t just side projects for PLNTmatter. According to Amanda, the associated long-term cost savings are “the only way that we're going to get market adoption in a massive way,” of creating cost-effective products like their existing line of commercially available fibers. In other stories, Amanda recounts how PLNTmatter’s team acts like a scrappy startup, moving with agility and adaptiveness, not seen often with established brands. Whereas other innovators have taken on a ton of investment and are taking on a lot of capital spend, PLNTmatter has been able to stay lean and tap into “existing supply chain, existing facilities, so that we don't have to put all of that financial capital into one facility and then hope and pray that the demand is there and continues to grow.”
What it takes to build a commercially viable core material
PLNTmatter’s resilience as a material innovator is built upon a foundation of proving it over and over again with their ettitude home goods brand. ettitude has served as the perfect incubator for testing the commercial strength of PLNTmatter’s material innovation. Having a self-sustaining brand provides PLNTmatter financial security by alleviating the financial constraints that other venture-backed material startups face.
Over the next 1.5 to 2 years, PLNTmatter is solely focused on becoming a “core material,” rather than participating in one-off pilot partnerships. They’re not trying to be a marketing solution for brands; instead talking with brands to replace their staple product. This route has taken longer, as Amanda admits, but “it is the right path for us because…we've proven that it [fibers] has the material characteristics, has the strength, the durability, the performance, all of that to be a survivor and to be a long-term solution.”
Rather than rush into one-off capsules, PLNTmatter is taking its time innovating and perfecting its products and working directly with supply chain partners to construct viable, cost-effective materials starting with its portfolio of materials that showcase both performance and versatility: NOTlinen™, NOTsilk™, NOTcashmere™, NOTwool™, NOTelastic™, and NOTdown™.
These materials look and feel like their alternatives but include added performance attributes, such as temperature regulation or insulation. The portfolio of 100% NOT materials can be performance wear, activewear, sportswear, or intimates. Having proven the quality attributes on the market, the next phase of PLNTmatter’s innovation will focus on commercializing these products over the next one and a half to two years with blended materials.
Why Blended Materials? Despite more than a decade of proven material performance and quality through ettitude home goods products, fashion partners are wary of new materials. Designers and brands are used to certain models and frameworks. That being said, according to LCA (lifecycle assessment) data, PLNTmatter’s blended materials are still driving positive environmental impact. According to Amanda, blends are “a way for us to get that incremental adoption of the fiber.” They achieve both the cost-effectiveness and performance attributes that PLNTmatter is aiming for.
PLNTmatter is already testing the application of these new fibers with partners like Unspun™ and others to create commercially available finished goods using PLNTmatter’s portfolio of materials. At this year’s Future Fabric Expo in June, an annual sustainable materials and textiles conference, PLNTmatter showcased its NOTelastic™ material and applications that will soon be adopted into ettitude’s line of fitted sheets. On the ettitude end, Amanda’s team is launching finished goods, including hand-woven rugs made in Peru with 100 % NOT™ material yarns. Amanda teased more developments underway as the team aims to bring PLNTmatter’s material portfolio to market with full force. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading The Weekly Roundup. To listen to the full conversation, check out the TechCouture podcast on Spotify and linked above.