By Arora Attenborough, NoCamels -
Bio-Fluff, manufacturer of one of the world’s first fully vegan, biodegradable faux fur, is on a mission to transform fashion – the third most polluting industry on the planet.
The Paris and New York-based company creates plant-based alternatives to animal and synthetic materials, starting with their own luxury fashion brand Savian, which offers faux fur, shearling and fleece fabrics crafted purely from plant fibers.
The company was co-founded two years ago by Israeli entrepreneur and CCO Roni GamZon, Austrian biochemist and CEO Martin Stübler, and American textile executive and COO Steven Usdan.
Today, Bio-Fluff’s vegan faux fur is already being used by international luxury brands, including Stella McCartney and Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH). Danish fashion brand Ganni is also onboard, working with Bio-Fluff to create a line of sustainable handbags.
“Sixty to 70 percent of the fashion industry emissions come from materials,” GamZon tells NoCamels. And she wanted to revolutionize that statistic.
The fashion industry is notorious for its lack of green credentials. According to the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, the industry produces the same amount of greenhouse gasses annually as the economies of France, Germany and the UK together.
And if it does not cut its emissions in half by 2030, it will violate the steps to mitigate climate change laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
The Bio-Fluff fur is free of animals, plastic and even petrochemicals, the company says. The materials it does use are entirely plant-based, as are the enzymes that are key to the transformation into fur.
The company believes that its product creates up to 90 percent less emissions than real fur, as it does not require the resource-heavy – and frequently cruel – involvement of live animals.
“We frame the solution around using existing raw materials,” GamZon explains, adding that those materials are sourced directly from European farmers. After that, the company partnered with what she calls “the right factories” in Italy for the different steps in the manufacturing process.
“We found a few family-owned factories that were very, very happy to work with us on something new,” she says.
To maintain the environmentally friendly quality of the product, the plant fibers used to make the fur are not spun into yarn, thereby avoiding an energy-consuming step, Stübler recently told a UK publication.
The founding team’s diverse expertise significantly accelerated the company’s development from a mere concept to a market-ready, scalable product, GamZon says.
“We’re a plug and play solution to the existing industry,” GamZon says.
The startup quickly made a name for itself in fashion circles, in particular in Paris, participating in the LVMH’s exclusive accelerator program Maison des Startups in 2022. The program accepts just 50 startups each year from around the world.
“We got into the LVMH incubator,” GamZon recalls. “It was a big, big help for us because they helped us get in contact with their [luxury fashion] brands.”
Investment soon followed, with the company raising $2.5 million in its Series A funding round.
“There was just so much interest because there was such a need in the market,” GamZon says.
“We’re talking to almost every brand; some are today prototyping, some are still trying to introduce it at the right time, the right collection, the right aesthetic. But it’s been crazy how much interest we’ve gotten.”
GamZon guided Bio-Fluff towards the high-end fashion market, leveraging a collaboration with Stella McCartney to introduce sustainable fur in her pre-fall collection – something she calls a pivotal advancement towards eco-friendly fashion.
“We launched the first partnership with Stella McCartney at COP28 in Dubai [in November 2023,] as part of her pre-fall collection,” GamZon says.
She explains that the company began in the luxury market due to the high costs of production for the nascent Bio-Fluff that meant the product was also pricey.
“In the beginning, you can only produce so much [so] the price is higher,” GamZon says.
“I was really strict on how we do it, with which partners [and] at what time,” she explains. “I really treated it as a luxury product and a luxury brand of materials.”
GamZon now envisions Bio-Fluff’s sustainable solution permeating every aspect of the fashion industry, becoming the norm across all sectors – from high street retailers to fashion giants.
She also hopes the company will make a mark in toy production, interior design and even packaging.
“Once you start thinking about it,” she says, “there’s so many fluffy materials that are all plastic.”
