Fashion giant Arket has partnered with Amsterdam-based brand Circos to launch an online childrenswear rental scheme. Arket is giving parents the option to rent a variety of styles from its children’s collection to dress their kids.
The children’s collection is made up of a ‘gender neutral’ assortment of practical but comfortable pieces, that are designed for everyday wear for kids aged 2-10. Parents can rent everything from leggings, bodysuits and cardigans, to colourful jersey tops and denim. Maternity clothes are also being included as part of the online service.
The new service is part of the retailer’s commitment to circular fashion, encouraging a more sustainable approach to shopping. Arket hopes that the rental scheme will increase the use and prolong the life of a piece of clothing that might usually only be used for a short period of time.
Circos Rental Subscription
Circos is an eCommerce rental store based in Europe, specialising in children’s and maternity wear. The concept was created to prolong the life of garments that are typically used for only a short time.
The Circos store provides users with a curated range of high-quality clothing for pregnancy and children from a range of brands including adidas, Patagonia, and now Arket. The service offers clothing items delivered directly to your home for a monthly piece-by-piece rental fee.
Renting instead of buying allows the sharing of a products’ footprint across multiple users, reducing the need for each user to buy separately. Between 8 and 10 families will share and enjoy the same piece of clothing, and once the product wears out, the material is repurposed to make new products.
How does the Arket childrenswear rental scheme work?
Parents can visit Circos’ webpage, RENT ARKET wth CIRCOS, to find clothing for their children. The service is pretty straightforward to follow:
1. Pick & Rent
After logging on to the Circos website, parents can select their favourite ARKET pieces of clothing, as well as other branded products in their child’s preferred size.
2. Use & Love
Customers pay a monthly fee for the type and number of clothes they want to rent. For European customers, prices start from around €19.50 per month. They can use the clothes for as long as they want, or until it no longer fits the child.
3. Return & Repeat
Whenever parents feel like updating their child’s wardrobe, or if they need a bigger size, they simply return the clothes they’ve already rented. They don’t need to bother washing the clothes either! Circos will take care of all the laundry and dry cleaning, and there are no extra charges for damaged or stained items.
Why should parents consider a childrenswear rental scheme
If you’re a parent, there’s many benefits to using a rental clothing service, like Arket’s, for your children. Most kids go through around eight different sizes of clothes within the first two years of their life! It’s no surprise that it’s estimated that the average parent buys 280 items of clothing for their child, most of which will only be worn for a few weeks or months.
We all know the problem with waste in the fashion industry, especially the amount of used clothing that ends in landfill sites. Rental schemes like the Arket x Circos one, are helping parents to save the environment, as well as money, hassle and storage space. If you decide to rent your child’s clothes instead of buying them, you’ll effectively be sharing the carbon footprint of the garments with other parents, reducing your own family’s footprint by up to 80%!
With Arket, around 8 to 10 different families will use and share the same piece of clothing until the product wears out. And once it does, Arket will repurpose the garment’s materials into new products, saving it from ending up in a landfill site. According to research carried out by PlanMiljø, parents who rent through Circos are saving an average of 242 litres of water and 6kg of CO2 emissions each month, compared with families who buy all their kid’s clothes.
“Children’s clothes need to be designed with a longer-term horizon in mind, and all our garments are consciously intended to be handed down when outgrown. We’re really happy to be able to give our customers the possibility to share products with other families and proud to join Circos in their vision for a more circular everyday life.”
Pernilla Wohlfahrt, Managing Director, Arket
Further Reading: Lease Your Jeans: Circular Denim with MUD Jeans. Read More