Circ Launches Fiber Club, Leveraging The Power Of Collaboration To Drive Adoption Of Recycled Materials

DANVILLE, Va. — January 28, 2025 — Circ®, a U.S.-based textile-to-textile recycling innovator, announced the launch of Fiber Club, in partnership with sustainable innovation platform, Fashion for Good, and forest conservation non-profit, Canopy. Fiber Club is a collaborative initiative that enables brands to validate and adopt recycled materials through a structured four-phase process that spans sampling, pilot collections, and crucial long-term off-take commitments.

The inaugural fiber for Fiber Club is Circ’s staple lyocell fiber, with plans to incorporate more Circ materials in the future. Often, piloting a new fiber into existing supply chains requires certain minimum volumes and investment and it can be costly and complex. Fiber Club aims to overcome these challenges by providing brands with a platform to engage in testing and adoption simultaneously, streamlining the suppliers engaged, and reducing minimum order quantities by combining brand volumes — all resulting in reduced costs.

With Fiber Club, Circ is setting a new standard for sustainability in fashion, building the first-ever roadmap for scaling circular materials. This pioneering initiative will advance Next Gen material adoption by simplifying supply chain integration, establishing bulk pricing frameworks, and facilitating brands’ access to Next Gen materials to make large-scale adoption more accessible and affordable.

Designed to drive seamless integration into commercial-scale production and foster lasting partnerships, the inaugural organizations within Fiber Club include supply chain partners Birla Cellulose, Foshan Chicley, and Arvind, and brand partners Bestseller, Eileen Fisher, Everlane, and Zalando. Of the three supply chain partners doing pilot development for these brands, Birla Cellulose will produce lyocell staple fiber from Circ’s pulp made from polycotton textile waste, and Arvind and Foshan Chicley will produce textile fabrications. Collaboration with these value chain partners on pilot quantities is essential to getting material off the ground. The brands will then nominate a garment manufacturer to take the innovative fabric through to products available to purchase.

Unlike one-off initiatives, Fiber Club is a forward-thinking program committed to long-term impact. The Fiber Club concept, via Circ, Fashion for Good, and Canopy, may be utilized by other innovative Next Gen material producers to scale their products as well — Circ is just the beginning. With Circ’s Lyocell staple fiber being the inaugural focus, together we are marking the first step towards revolutionizing the availability of scalable, sustainable textile solutions.

Peter Majeranowski, CEO of Circ

“Fiber Club represents the future of textile recycling and circularity,” said Peter Majeranowski, CEO of Circ. “By collaborating with brands and streamlining supply chain integration, we’re making it easier than ever to adopt recycled and Next Gen materials at scale—starting with our Circ Lyocell.”

“For BESTSELLER to effectively meet our material goals, we need to work toward establishing continuous access to these new resources,” said Alexander Granberg, Materials manager – Recycling & Innovation at BESTSELLER. “That means we must be pragmatic, embracing cross-industry collaboration to drive these ambitions and ultimately achieve impactful change.”

“At EILEEN FISHER, we’re thrilled to join Fiber Club, a powerful initiative driving collaboration and innovation to transform the fashion industry and increase the rate of adoption of preferred innovative materials — especially those that help tackle the textile waste crisis,” said Inka Apter, director of Material Sustainability & Integrity at Eileen Fisher. “By addressing key challenges like supplier engagement, competitive pricing, and fiber availability, Fiber Club accelerates the adoption of groundbreaking materials like Circ’s staple lyocell. This plug-and-play solution integrates seamlessly into trusted supply chains, making it easier for brands like ours to embrace sustainable innovations. Fiber Club exemplifies the strength of collective action in tackling the textile waste crisis and scaling the use of preferred, innovative materials. EILEEN FISHER is proud to support these efforts.”

“At Everlane, we are committed to leaving the fashion industry cleaner than we found it,” said Katina Boutis, director of Sustainability at Everlane. “We understand that this is not something we can do alone, and so we’re dedicated to working collaboratively across the value chain to scale innovative next-gen materials like Circ Lyocell. We are so excited to be part of Fiber Club, a novel pre-competitive approach that will leverage our collective power in pursuit of a more circular industry.”

“As a long-standing partner of Fashion for Good and an investor in Circ, Zalando is proud to join this transformative initiative,” added Pascal Brun, vice president, Sustainability and D&I. “We view the Fiber Club not only as vital to scale up next generation materials for our own brands, but also to tackle the systemic challenges that we face at an industry level, that are key to unlocking scale and enabling a more circular future for fashion.”

Posted: January 28, 2025

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