It’s the dirty secret the world’s fashion industry doesn’t want known: a third of all clothing created each year goes to landfill unsold*.
Heavens, we all know how many of our own clothes we no longer need are potentially headed for landfill, let alone facilitating a “market” for more.
Citizen Wolf is a Sydney fashion company that has created a tech solution that could help solve this “dirty secret”.
The technology created by Citizen Wolf is called Magic Fit: custom tailoring so only what is ordered is made.
It distils 196 million data points to tailor any type of clothing with 94% accuracy to a customer’s body shape; thus zero waste and so no overproduction.
All a customer has to do is give their height, weight and age and the tech custom-makes the clothing to order.
As proof of concept it started with T-shirts, of which Citizen Wolf has already sold 50,000 units and made $3.5 million in the last few years. They are now taking the technology global and will expand to other types of garments such as jeans.
However, a Sydney-based fashion company has pioneered technology that is disrupting this business model where only the clothes that are ordered, are made. In other words – zero waste.
Citizen Wolf’s technology called Magic Fit® creates custom-made garments using only the customer’s height, weight and age.
The technology distils 196 million data points to tailor any type of clothing with 94% accuracy. As proof of concept – the company launched with arguably the world’s best T-shirt.
Now with over 50,000 tees already sold and sales of over $3.5M since launch, Citizen Wolf is gearing up to take its technology to the world.
To help with the expansion, the company has embarked on a Birchal equity crowdfunding raise so its loyal customers can share in the company’s fortunes. “Citizen Wolf re-engineers the way clothes are made at scale, to help save our planet,” said Zoltan Csaki, co-founder of Citizen Wolf. “Starting with T-shirts as our proof of concept, our proprietary Magic Fit® technology enables made to order clothes that are custom fit to everybody.
“Because Citizen Wolf makes only what it sells and sends nothing to landfill, the company produces 48% less carbon than the legacy fast-fashion equivalent. “Everything is made within seven days in our own, ethically certified factory in Sydney, which is open to the public. We are also proudly B Corp certified.”
Certified B Corporations (B Corps) are for-profit companies that use the power of business to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy. They meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
Equal parts fashion brand and tech company, Citizen Wolf created Magic Fit from scratch.
It replaces the measuring tape with simple biometrics to automate the process of tailoring from home. It needs only your height, weight and age (plus bra size for women) to create a 94% accurate mathematical model of your body that Citizen Wolf uses to create custom-fit garments faster and more accurately than a human tailor.
“There are other companies online that pretend to make custom fashion – but these don’t even come close to what our Australian ingenuity is bringing to the world,” says Csaki.
“There are no appointments, no measuring tapes, no body scans, and there are no embarrassing photos you have to upload in your knickers (yes, there are websites that ask you for this). And if we don’t get it right the first time, we will remake it for free.”
Citizen Wolf also has one of the shortest supply chains in game — 86% of its fabric is knitted in Melbourne, keeping jobs in Australia.
And because the company believes fashion should last a lifetime, it includes free repairs. “We make it easy to love your clothes longer because the most sustainable clothes are the ones we already own,” says Csaki.
The company’s growth has been exponential, with $1.3m of its total $3.5m in sales made in the last 12 months.
Citizen Wolf has ambitious plans to scale so it can take on the world’s biggest markets of the Americas and Europe.
“In order to do this, we will be opening our company for people to buy shares in it for the first time, with investment options starting from only $250,” he says.
Says Eric Phu, another co-founder: “We want our most loyal customers to be the first people to invest in our company so they can help us completely disrupt the global textile industry with on demand fashion.”
Money raised will be used to scale products, offering more garment types all custom made to fit a customer’s body with Magic Fit® – think shirting, knits and eventually jeans.
It will also allow Citizen Wolf to scale its technology globally – the UK, Europe and the US – by cloning its Sydney operation and setting up a second factory in the overseas market that shows the greatest promise from early export growth.
Its Sydney factory will also triple its current output from 2k-6k units/month within a year, while reducing production time from seven days average down to only five days.
Because of the world’s over-production of fashion, the World Bank forecasts the fashion industry is going to increase carbon emissions 50% this decade – in direct opposition to the Paris agreement and humanity’s need to de-carbonise (the economy) as rapidly as possible.
Fashion is one of the biggest industries on the planet, responsible for 10% of the global carbon budget today.
Citizen Wolf won Gold at the Good Design Awards (2019) and Innovation Champion of the Year 2019 at the National Retail Association Awards, as well as Finder’s Green Fashion Brand of the Year (2021).
Zoltan Csaki was also named #10 Top 50 People in Ecommerce (Inside Retail, 2022) as well as #7 Tech 20 Most Influential People in Online Fashion (RagTrader, 2020).
* Source: Monash Sustainable Development Institute (2021) & Australian Circular Textile Association (ACTA)
More information: www.citizenwolf.com
To invest: www.birchal.com/company/citizenwolf
