Quality Vegan Fashion Items Are Hard to Find. How Can Brands Help?

A vegan diet has never been easier to follow and adoption is flourishing, especially with events like Veganuary inspiring brands to launch tasty new products.

But, beyond the plate, going vegan can present lots of challenges.

In addition to following a plant-based diet, vegans commit to using and buying products that are animal-free. That means wool-free clothes, leather-free shoes, and insect-free lipstick (yep, insects are used for the red pigment!).

The problem

The path to finding fashion and cosmetic items that are animal free is tough.

Vegans can look for products with the cruelty free label, a guarantee that a product and its ingredients weren’t tested on animals – but this is not a great signpost. If a product is vegan, it’s necessarily cruelty free. But if a product is cruelty free, it isn’t necessarily vegan. This means that a cruelty free label alone isn’t enough to identify a product as vegan and more investigation (like reading through small print on labels) is needed.

Being vegan myself, I was curious to see how other vegans might use social media throughout their purchase journey for animal-free fashion items and how they engage with brands offering vegan products.

Using our Customer Research Platform, I was able to explore conversations across the web, and I discovered a number of opportunities for brands in this space.