Online marketplace, Queen of Raw, which sells unused textiles from organic cotton, peace silk, faux leather and fur, is providing Australian designers, retailers, and consumers access to the platform for the first time to sell and buy fabrics locally and globally.
The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry and contributes a whopping 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year, statistics that Queen of Raw co-founder, Stephanie Benedetto is fighting to change.
The platform enables businesses to recapture value from wasted materials rather than burning them, allowing clothing manufacturers, designers, upholsters, and students to access premium fabrics at a fraction of the retail price.
The Australian government estimates that Australians are the world’s second highest (per capita) consumers of textiles, with around three out of 10 people admitting to discarding more than 10 items in the past year alone. On average, Australians discard 27 kilograms of clothing every year, which means 85% of all textiles in Australia are ending up in landfill.
Leveraging blockchain technology, coupled with machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, Queen of Rawintelligently matches buyers with sellers; unused textiles are sold quickly and easily at lower price points, giving designers access to materials that they never had before.
Queen of Raw also enables sellers to map, measure, and trace their textile waste in real-time, providing actionable data to help them minimise waste going forward.
According to Benedetto, Queen of Raw has already acquired over 175,000 users, with big-name global brands coming on board from fast fashion to haute couture. With the launch of Queen of Raw into the Australian market, Benedetto is optimistic and excited about the future impact Australian designers and retailers can make on minimising textiles waste, water consumption, and carbon emissions created by the fashion industry.