WeWOOD is an Italian watchmaker founded in Florence in 2009 that manufactures eco-friendly watches made out wood, therefore completely toxic-free, also extremely light and comfortable to wear. https://global.we-wood.com/.
The watch is completely made from wood with the exception of the glass, movement, battery, pins and clasp. As wood is the main material used in the product, this company can potentially be impacted by the shortage of wood caused by deforestation, which is also one of the main contributors of climate change. Consequently, decreasing number of trees on a global scale has had serious effect on the global climate, such as:
- Reduction of GHG removal capacity from the atmosphere as trees are major greenhouse gas (GHG) absorber
- Reduction of oxygen level in the atmosphere as trees are major oxygen producers
- Reduction of humidity level in the air and consequently effects on rain cycle
- Soil erosion that causes coastal flooding
More and more consumers are concerned about such environmental issues and want to incorporate these elements into their purchase decisions. WeWOOD managed to turn potential negative effects of deforestation in to positive business opportunity and to target eco-conscious customers with a unique product – a watch made out of wood. Its strategy is based on 3 main pillars:
- Produce and sell and product with minimum environmental impact
- Raise awareness about deforestation and the effects on climate change
- Positively contribute back to the environment by planting new tree for each watch sold
1: WeWOOD’s mission is to make an eco-friendly and fashionable line of watches. The watches are made out of reclaimed and recycled wood free of chemicals treatment, which allows them to minimize their use of raw material and decreases their environmental impact. This idea allows them to be less dependent to the potential shortage of wood, leveraging on the C2C concept “Waste is Food”.
2: Marketing strategy aligns with company mission in communicating the importance of sustainable consumption and how the company is doing its part to help preserve the environment. The customer is contributing to this mission through their purchase of the wooden watch. Another differentiation point of the watches is that being completely natural (non-treated wood), each watch is unique (e.g. wood veins). Leveraging these unique attributes, WeWOOD also increases the consumer willingness to pay.
3: For each watch sold, WeWOOD plants a tree. This initiative benefits the environment and the company in two ways: it perfectly aligns with the brand strategy of a sustainable and eco-friendly watch brand (the company motto is “Our Goal is to help restore Mother Nature, one watch at a time”) and also regenerates the raw material they uses in the watches, realizing the zero impact or even positive impact of the company.
Since 2011, WeWOOD has planted over 600,000 trees and plans to plant 1 million trees by 2020 (in collaboration with Trees For The Future, which is a well-established player that in past 30 years has planted over 65 million trees in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas)
They started to expand to other lines of product such as sunglasses and other accessories to attract other line of potential customers.
Additional actions that can be considered are:
- Empowering the branding and the impact through initiative such as
- special edition watches, more expensive where the full margin is invested in specific project around the world (planting more than 1 tree)
- allow the customer to choose in which part of the world he/she wants to plant the tree (included in the watch price) through educational campaign on how tree planting has positive impact on the local ecosystem and community
- Through the educational campaign, give an easy option to donate for planting extra trees
- Ensure stronger alignment with suppliers:
- WeWOOD should create long lasting partnership with key suppliers of recycled wood, to ensure they can continue to source quality wood to make their watches.
- They are already a player in the circular economy environment (since they use wastes from other industries) but they can also close the cycle within the company, incentivising customers to return old WeWOOD watches they do not use anymore. They could also consider to collect other wooden object directly from customers (which might have a discount on purchases).
Silvia Rizzardini
Anne Nai – Tien Huang
Michele Malegori
I love these watches – super cool. Have they had to change their biz model at all in recent years due to climate change factors?
A very good business idea, not only for creating environmentally friendly products but also for developing high quality/long lasting products that reduce the use of resources, while promoting and educating society towards sustainability.
Recovering batteries can be a good future approach to ensure sustainability.
Definitely need to buy one!
It seems like a great idea! They are working hard on making luxury products more sustainable which I consider quite challenging. I would like to know if there is any expansion ideas to continue growing in this space and how to tackle the fact that there is an association between a watch and a luxury good and wood watches might not necessarily portrait that. From that perspective I believe there is still a gap in order to capture a big part of the market share because the target audience would be reduced to the people that do not value as much the luxuriousness of a product such as a watch. From this point of view I think there are additional ideas for the company to explore in order to match better luxury and sustainability in order to open new markets.
Very interesting business model, I’d definitely buy one. I wonder if this could extend to other wearables like sun glasses?
I wonder how modular watches are, in the case that they manage to return old watches, what would be the use that they can give to the different parts?
Also, how much of the initiative is based on the environmental sensitive consumers and how much of it it’s actually driving change.
It will be interesting to see if the company explores options of custom design and manufacturing of products from other firms and industry to grow its business.