100% sustainable fashion does not exist. But you can know what you’re buying.
100% sustainable fashion does not exist. Brands and citizens are jointly responsible for the sustainability or impact of a garment.
With 25 years of fashion experience, founder Niki de Schryver knows that not a single brand tracks the full story of its clothing. Drawing on that experience and evolving insights, COSH! has been analysing brands since 2018 in terms of working conditions, supply chain, their rental and second-hand market, wear cycles and repairability.
This is how COSH! makes sustainable shopping and caring for your clothes easier.
Clothing shops and brands analysed according to the COSH! Index
Cities, partners and organisations working with COSH!
What makes the COSH! platform unique?
Community
Over 1,000 entrepreneurs, pioneers in sustainable transitions, have joined COSH!. COSH! is most active in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and the network is growing worldwide.
De COSH! Digitale Kleerkast app
COSH! is the only digital wardrobe app hosted on European servers that both helps you make more sustainable clothing choices with what you already own and collaborates with local physical shops. This inspires you to make local choices that have a positive impact on wearing your clothes for longer and repairing them.
Methode
The COSH! Brand Index is unique and takes as holistic an approach as possible, with the aim of providing consumers with clarity regarding the choices they make.
Want to be inspired to explore a new city to shop more consciously?
As seen in
COSH! has been supported by these accelerators and grants
Not every brand that claims to be ‘fair’ actually is.
The COSH! Index analyses over 1,000 shops and brands against seven specific impact criteria, so you can decide for yourself which values matter most to you. In total, a COSH! analyst examines over 250 points that the brand must meet, and in the case of major brands, whether this is backed up by active certifications.
The COSH! Index is neither a quality mark nor a certificate; it is an analytical tool. We provide a visual overview of what brands are doing across 7 themes: materials, working conditions such as fair labour or ethical employment, material and water wastage choices in the supply chain, animal welfare, circularity, slow fashion and transparency, without falling into a narrow focus on CO2 alone. Every brand profile on cosh.eco highlights a brand’s key priorities. You draw your own conclusions.
100% sustainability does not exist. But transparency does.
COSH! stands for COnscious SHopping and helps people wanting to live more ecologically find more sustainable clothing. On our platform, you can discover more sustainable alternatives to fashion, cosmetics and lifestyle products. COSH! considers many personal preferences such as vegan clothing, circular options, organic raw materials or natural ingredients.
How did COSH! start? Our founder Niki de Schryver’s pioneering work for Honestby has already kick-started growth in the transparency of other brands in the fashion world. However, she noticed the brands were on board with this revolution, but the consumer wasn’t yet. The gap between consumer behaviour and the supply chain intrigued her, so she investigated this and found a solution.
She wondered why so few people were buying more sustainable clothing and suspected that personal style and budget were the main reasons. The research conducted confirmed her hunch. It takes too much effort for the consumer to find ethical and sustainable fashion, and COSH! is here to solve that problem!
At COSH!, we do not see sustainability as a black-and-white story. There are many different aspects to sustainability. Few brands score on all characteristics such as circularity, natural fibres, a short supply chain, chemical-free, ethical and local production, zero waste and carbon neutrality. All the retailers and entrepreneurs featured on the COSH! platform are striving to build a better future for fashion in their own way. They are all committed to a more sustainable and ethical industry and therefore deserve COSH!‘s and the customer’s full support!
COSH! emphasises on local stores. The COSH! member retailers are always local entrepreneurs and/or retailers that sell more sustainable products. This includes a wide range of second-hand finds, upcycled items, locally and handcrafted products, collections made from organic natural materials, etc.
We express the sustainability of a brand using the COSH! Brand Index. Each member of the COSH! community (with the exception of secondhand stores) can request a brand to be screened each year. Using the COSH! Brand Index, we take into account 7 facets of sustainability: ethics (working conditions), ecological (impact on the environment), circularity, supply chain, animal well-being, slow fashion principles, and transparency of a brand. Our algorithm is also constantly changing and improving, to keep up to date with the evolving industry. This way, we hope to display each brand’s sustainability efforts fairly and completely.
By consulting the COSH! Brand Index for a clothing brand, consumers can easily see how the brand is doing in each aspect. At the same time, the detailed texts explain how each brand works towards a more sustainable future.
Once a retailer joins, we can set up the COSH! shop page in less than five working days. From then on, the company will be included in the COSH! community, relevant articles and social media posts. The requested brand screening will be completed as soon as possible, in the order they are requested from us (first in first out), probably within 1 – 6 months.
Don’t worry! COSH! can help you transition towards becoming a more sustainable store. COSH! has no strict minimum sustainability requirements because we believe everyone can improve and become more sustainable with the right help and advice. So book a meeting with us, and we will gladly guide you through the process.
The COSH! Brand Index currently works at a brand level. We have developed an algorithm to calculate a brand’s sustainability with a rating from 0 to 100.
The calculation is based on a comprehensive questionnaire divided into 7 categories: People, Planet, Circularity, Supply Chain, Animal Welfare, Slow Fashion and Transparency. The rating of each screened brand can be found on the brand’s page. In addition to this rating, you will find text explaining how the brand performs in each category.
The score categories per theme are categorised as follows:
- Category A: The brand scores between 81 – 100
- Category B: The brand scores between 61 – 80
- Category C: The brand scores between 41 – 60
- Category D: The brand scores between 21 – 40
- Category E: The brand scores between 0 – 20
COSH! is developing a system to rate the sustainability of stores. By taking into account a lot of different aspects of the store, we want to rate its level of sustainability and advise its owners on how they can improve. For example, the COSH! Store Index will look at the store’s energy provider, packaging materials and delivery options. Apart from that, it will also consider all the brands that are sold by the retailer. The store rating will be linked to the COSH! Brand Index.
Continuous subscriptions ensure that COSH! can provide up-to-date information. This form of fair compensation is necessary to ensure marketing efforts that include sustainable stores are presented to shoppers reliably. This way COSH! can also independently research the sustainability of the brands that are sold by the subscribing retailers to provide detailed and reliable information to consumers. Cities can contribute to retailers’ costs on a one-off or annual basis. For example, some cities cover (part of) the COSH! subscription for their sustainable shops.
Thanks to the income COSH! receives through its subscriptions, we can invest in marketing tools to increase shoppers’ awareness of sustainable fashion, guiding them to sustainable retailers with an offer that suits those shoppers.
COSH!‘s retailers are part of a community that amplifies living more sustainably. Our platform allows you to involve your customers in that story. We want to summarise these four reasons for choosing COSH! You attract new customers. You help (potential/new) customers save time in their search for sustainable fashion. You increase your turnover and reduce your costs through target group-oriented acquisition.
You are part of a reliable network. Do you also believe in a more sustainable and transparent fashion industry as a retailer? Then join COSH now!
COSH! started out in Belgium, but has since grown and expanded into the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. COSH! aims to be your go-to platform, guiding you in your sustainability journey and helping you make more informed and inspired conscious shopping choices.