default-output-block.skip-main
BoF Logo

The Business of Fashion

Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.

Reusable Packaging Start-Up Olive Expands Into Beauty

Shoppers will now be able to receive orders in Olive’s reusable and returnable totes.
Olive beauty tote
Olive beauty tote. Olive.

Shoppers will now be able to receive orders from brands including Glow Recipe, Supergoop, RMS Beauty and Pai in Olive’s reusable and returnable totes.

Olive was founded earlier this year by Nate Faust, the founder of e-commerce company Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart in 2016.

The company pitches itself as a solution the waste and carbon emissions associated with e-commerce, aggregating customers’ orders and shipping them in reusable fabric tote made predominantly from recycled materials. The result, the company says, is fewer shipments and less waste form cardboard boxes and single-use plastic mailers. Customers who sign up to Olive receive their deliveries from affiliate brands and retailers once a week (twice weekly in New York) in totes that can then be left for doorstep collection by the postal service and returned to the company.

It currently counts over 100 brands among its clients, including Adidas, Rag & Bone, Vince, Goop, Khaite and Veronica Beard. Since launching in February, it has registered more than 10,000 customer signups.

Expanding into beauty has been a months-long process for the delivery company, much of which was spent developing prototypes for reusable packaging with sufficient protection for beauty products, and in particular glass bottles.

Expanding into more categories is central to the company’s strategy.

“We’re still continuing to expand our fashion [business] as well,” Faust said. “But with our primary goal from a sustainability perspective being the consolidation of people’s deliveries... and the reduction in last-mile emissions that come with that, the more categories we can serve, the greater impact we can have.”

Learn more:

The Start-Ups That Want to Solve Fashion’s Packaging Problem

As the pandemic-driven surge in fashion e-commerce sends more and more cardboard boxes and plastic bags to landfills, a growing number of companies have radical ideas about how to reduce packaging waste.

In This Article

© 2024 The Business of Fashion. All rights reserved. For more information read our Terms & Conditions

More from Sustainability
Hold the industry accountable and catalyse solutions on environment, labour and ethics.




view more

Subscribe to the BoF Daily Digest

The essential daily round-up of fashion news, analysis, and breaking news alerts.

The Business of Fashion

Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
CONNECT WITH US ON
BoF Professional Summit - New Frontiers: AI, Digital Culture and Virtual Worlds - March 22, 2024
© 2024 The Business of Fashion. All rights reserved. For more information read our Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Accessibility Statement.
BoF Professional Summit - New Frontiers: AI, Digital Culture and Virtual Worlds - March 22, 2024