Worlds Converging: Sustainable Fashion Meets e-Commerce

Abstract

This case revolves around entrepreneurs Chris Yong and Adam Baodunnov as future leaders and the behaviours and traits that they demonstrated or exhibited in April 2021. Analysis of sustainable leadership is based on the framework of Jacob Morgan's 'Nine Skills and Mindsets for Future Leaders' for tackling the challenges of buying and making an e-Commerce start-up business successful and profitable in a relatively new field, such as sustainable fashion. Local Threads was a Melbourne-based start-up aimed at providing a marketplace website for sustainable fashion and ethical fashion, which represented Australia's independent brands in the sustainable fashion space and had a clear value proposition that sustainable fashion was a strategic differentiator. Yong and Baodunnov saw an opportunity to scale up this start-up and to employ what they do best: combining entrepreneurial start-up know-how with e-Commerce and marketing savvy. They also had the challenge of balancing two very different stakeholders: the more e-Commerce-savvy investors and the sustainability-oriented producers, who were on opposite ends of a continuum. How would they do this as future leaders?

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