KOREASCHOLAR

The ever-evolving fashion industry has brought forth direct and indirect effects on the environmentto the extent that environmental contamination, labor exploitation, and pirated or counterfeit products have emerged as serious social issues. The sustainability-related issues are associated with all stages of the product lifecycle, ranging from the extraction of raw materials to product disposal (Berkhout & Smith, 1999).In lifecycle management (LCM), the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability is seen from the perspective of the product lifecycle (Kocmanova & Nemecek, 2009). TBL refers to corporate efforts to keep a balance among financial viability, environmental soundness and social accountability (Elkington, 1997). As sustainable products are defined in the light of lifecycles, research on product lifecycle management (PLM) has drawn much attention (Gmelin & Seuring, 2014).In addition, PLM is known to exert substantial effects on new product development, which warrants the need to view new sustainable products from the perspective of PLM (Cantamessa, Montagna, & Neirotti, 2012). Therefore, the present study intends to apply a conceptual model of PLM-based new sustainable product development to the fashion industry and to take multifaceted approaches to sustainable fashion product development. To that end, case studies of 21 local and global sustainable fashion brands, 1:1 in-depth interviews with 24 experts from sustainable and non-sustainable fashion brands, and participant observation of 5 sustainable fashion brands were conducted as part of this study. The findings illuminate the management issues attributable to the lack of technology and expertise, as well as the quantification issues involving monitoring or normalized data collection, despite the presence of some process-specific sustainable items in sustainable products developed by the fashion brands. Also, the findings will serve as reference data for further discussions and provide some implications for the sustainable fashion product development of fashion brands.

• Eunju Ko(Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
• Jinghe Han(Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
• Eunha Chun(Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
• Minyoung Lee(Yonsei University, )