Abstract

Mandakini Gogoi (Mandakini), founder of 7WEAVES Social Pvt Ltd. (7WEAVES), was thinking about how to refine the 7WEAVES model. She had co-founded the social venture along with her friend Uma Madhavan (Uma) and husband Rituraj Dewan (Rituraj) in June 2017. 7WEAVES was set up as an integrated textile-garment manufacturing facility in partnership with local communities dependent on the forests in Assam’s Loharghat Forest Range. It was a for-profit company focused on Eri silk. Its stated aim was to set up a sustainable textile and garment company in Assam by providing a livelihood to forest dependent families through the integration of their village economy with the global ethical fashion market. By January 2019, 7WEAVES was able to provide guaranteed work to people in 36 households. Mandakini wanted to bring this number up to 150 households by the end of 2019. Would Mandakini be able to convince global fashion brands to buy their produce at a higher price that would help them support their model and also scale up?

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concept of slow fashion, and how it differs from the fast fashion industry.
• Understand the issues and challenges related to providing a livelihood to forest dependent families through the integration of their village economy with the global ethical fashion market.
• Understand the issues related to ethical supply chain and creating and scaling up a sustainable/ inclusive business model.
• Explore strategies that the founders of 7WEAVES may adopt to refine their model and scale up.

Keywords

Value chain; hybrid value chain; fast fashion vs slow fashion; Entrepreneurship; social entrepreneurship; Sustainable business models; Inclusive business models; Sustainability and the supply chain; Scaling up