Title	THE RAG BAG
Brand	UNIFORMS FOR THE DEDICATED
Product/Service	SHOPPING BAG
Category	B02. Consumer Products (incl.Durable Goods)
Entrant Company	DDB STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
Advertising Agency	DDB STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
PR Agency	SIMON STRAND PR Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production Company	B-REEL Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Joel Ekstrand	Ddb Stockholm	Art Director
Nick Christiansen	Ddb Stockholm	Copywriter
Fredrik Simonsson	Ddb Stockholm	Art Director
Magnus Jakobsson	Ddb Stockholm	Copywriter
Katarina Bäcklund	Ddb Stockholm	Account Director
Linus Östberg	Ddb Stockholm	Designer
Anna Hellenberg	Ddb Stockholm	Print Manager
Leif Blondell	Ddb Stockholm	Graphic Designer
Jojo Brännström	Ddb Stockholm	Digital Director
August Björnberg	Ddb Stockholm	Digital Developer
Christian Björnerhag	Ddb Stockholm	Photoshop Artist
Gustav Hamdal	Ddb Stockholm	Planner
Haris Badic	Ddb House	Editor
Simon Strand	Simon Strand PR	PR
Fredrik Wikholm	Uniforms for the Dedicated	Creative Director/co founder
Victor Persson	Uniforms for the Dedicated	Marketing Director

The Campaign

Uniforms For The Dedicated is a Swedish menswear brand that have a business model based on a more sustainable fashion. To walk the walk in a fashion industry that is growing more and more thanks to a “take, make, waste”-mentality we created something concrete – The Rag Bag – a shopping bag that becomes a channel for donations.

The Brief

Reach the fashion industry and consumers with the message that they work actively for a more sustainable fashion 25% response rate Increase returning customers with 50% during a one year period. Increase average purchase with 50% during a one year period. Increase sales with 50% during a one year period.

Execution

When you buy something new, you can donate something old – TheRagBag is the shopping bag that becomes a channel for donations. Every garment sold in the UFTD store gets put in a Rag Bag. At home, the customer removes the new garment, flips the bag inside out and inserts an old garment. The bag is now a postage vessel, pre-addressed and sealed, with the postage paid for. Put it in the post box and it will go to Stockholm City Mission where another cycle will be added to its life. To influence the rest of the fashion industry, we initialized an e-commerce solution where any brand that wanted could order The Rag Bag to use within their business. The initiative (the site) launched April 23rd 2014, and the first bags started being distributed in the Uniforms for the Dedicated store on November 1st 2014. The project is still ongoing.

The pilot project included 600 bags, out of which over 300 has been utilized to recycle garments. That’s a response rate of over 50%. Returning customers have increased with 225% during the period. Average purchase at UFTD have increased with 123%, and total sales with 157% compared to last period. To date, the website has seen visitors from over 118 countries and we’ve received declarations of interest on over 1.100.000 bags from major businesses both in Sweden and internationally. Major publications such as The Huffington Post, Glamour Magazine, Nylon Japan, Women’s Wear Daily, Plaza Magazine and many others caught on to spread the project organically in social media, giving credit to Uniforms For The Dedicated, who have now been getting invites from business schools, Tedx and Creative Mornings to hold lectures about the project.

The Strategy

The big fashion brands are built around cheap production, cheap garments and short seasons. We spend as much money on clothes today as we did 10 years ago, but are buying a considerably larger amount of garments. In 2013 Swedes bought 12,5 kilos of textiles per person, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. 8 kilos of those will get thrown in the trash instead of reused or recycled. At the same time, not many big labels are acting on this, despite grand strategies and lengthy presentations about sustainability. So we wanted to walk the walk. And we started with our customers – how do we make them want to be ambassadors for our vision?