Holt Renfrew gets out of fur business
Luxury retailer promoting sustainability
Holt Renfrew has announced it will stop selling animal furs and exotic skins by the end of the year.
The announcement, part of a larger initiative to promote sustainability by the Canadian luxury retailer, signifies a marked shift for the company, which was founded as a furrier in Quebec City in 1837.
“This is a really big deal,” Sebastian Picardo, president and CEO of Holt Renfrew, said via a virtual call. “Holt Renfrew started 184 years ago as a fur shop . ... This is obviously a very important decision.”
The move away from the product categories was “100 per cent based on insight,” Picardo said. “From our customers, from our teams and from our brand partners. What we're hearing is that people are highly concerned with the impact that certain materials have on people and the planet. As a result, we think that this initiative is 100 per cent customer-centric, rather than something that we are imposing on the customer.”
Holt Renfrew's retail partnership with brands that feature fur elements, such as those from the Canadian outerwear offerings Canada Goose and Moose Knuckles, will evolve in order to accommodate the changes, Picardo said.
“We are working very closely with our brand partners,” Picardo said. “I think everyone, even though brands are at different stages in their journey to sustainability, everyone realizes the importance of this. And the fact customers, employees and other partners they interact with want to see change.”
The retail executive said he's confident that all brands will get on board with the company's sustainability initiatives.
“Because it's not only the right thing to do,” Picardo says, “it's also the future of retail.”
The decision to drop furs and exotic skins were among several points outlined in a recently released set of “science-based” sustainability targets approved by Science Based Targets initiative, which is a partnership between the not-for-profit organization CDP, the UN Global Compact, World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Additional targets include reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 65 per cent by 2030 (using 2019 as a base year for comparison) from Scope 1 and 2 operations, which are categorized as “owned or controlled sources,” as well as purchased energy such as electricity and heating/cooling, according to Carbon Trust.
A further reduction target on emissions for Scope 3, via the company's value chain, is set at 28 per cent by 2030.
“The targets that were set are aligned with the Paris Agreement,” Picardo said, referencing the global agreement that outlines the reductions required to hold global warming at 1.5 C. “Two-thousandand-thirty may look far away, but it's actually ambitious to deliver those targets in this length of time.”
Picardo pointed to the company's discontinuation of the sale of beauty products with plastic glitter June 8, to coincide with World Oceans Day, along with its new partnership with Terracycle that sees beauty product packaging receptacles available in its seven stores across Canada, as already completed actions among the company's sustainability mission.
The list of targets, Picardo said, build off the greener plan first pioneered by the retailer's in-house H Project department, which sees a “curation of products” that are ethically and environmentally focused offered among the more traditional luxury brands.
“We feel we have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to take a leadership role — not only because of our expertise in the market for over 185 years, but also because we're part of the Selfridges Group, which has the scale and the global knowledge to be able to do it,” Picardo said.