Jennifer Sieg sits down with Layla Sargent, the founder of online service repair platform The Seam, for this week’s Ambition A.M. profile to discuss how she’s made way for a new kind of circular fashion ecosystem.
Tech, it can do everything, right? How about making fashion more sustainable by helping repair old clothes? That’s what Layla Sargent the 35-year-old entrepreneur set out to achieve when she founded her online repair service platform, The Seam, in 2020. The platform is essentially a marketplace. It connects eco-conscious fashionistas with makers and retailers from across the UK and has seen bookings increase by 400 per cent year-on-year, with 20,000 booking enquiries last month alone.
With the circular fashion industry expecting to reach a market size of £8.6bn by 2030, it’s a trend that could very well continue. The secret? Getting people to love their clothes – first and foremost – and providing a place to help cherish items long-term.
“More people need access to somebody who can help them to love their clothes,” Sargent says. “That for me is the bedrock to sustainable behaviours.” The Seam is available to three kinds of users – whether you are a maker looking for customers, a customer looking for a maker, or a retailer looking for data on consumer behaviours and trends – and, in turn, has three steady revenue streams of booking fees from each.
“Skills are really important. machinery is really important and location is really important,�.