Five Questions for Retraced

Six years ago, WHU alumnus Lukas Pünder (MSc 2017) and business partner Philipp G. Mayer founded Retraced, a digital platform designed for the fashion industry. Today, the company employs a team of 80 and manages 140 clients in 160 markets across 23 different countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Pünder has spoken with us about sustainability management in the fashion industry, his own founder journey, and the carbon footprint of a simple sweatshirt.

1. From synthetic fibers made of petroleum to its hefty carbon footprint to poor working conditions, the fashion industry has garnered the reputation of being rather environmentally unfriendly. What can your company do to help change this?

The goal of our platform is to digitalize supply chain transparency and sustainability management and render them more efficient and effective for companies active in the fashion industry. Most of the problems that these companies have to contend with in their efforts to be sustainable are inefficiency and a lack of transparency. In most cases, brands and suppliers communicate with each other in ways that lack automaticity or are otherwise too outmoded.

In bringing these two forces together on our platform, we’re having a network effect that every party can benefit from. We collect and evaluate data along the supply chain and, with the results, we are able to suggest a variety of measures for improvement or course correction. That can entail everything from social concerns—such as workplace safety, compensation, and special insurance for factory workers—to environmental concerns, such as water and energy usage, biodiversity, animal protection, and more.

2. How does your software-based solution work exactly?

Essentially, everything occurs at three different data levels: We have the supply chain, the suppliers (this also includes anything happening in the factories, that is, during manufacturing), and finally the product itself. Our secret recipe comes in combining these three sources of data. In doing so, we can determine any sustainability or compliance challenges relevant to the company and make good use of them. Here’s one example: Let’s say we have produced a new line of sweatshirts and that we know our suppliers. We collect data on energy usage, the source of that energy, and our production capacity. We then tie these supply chains to the product itself and are then able to answer very specific questions about it: “What is this sweatshirt’s carbon footprint?” “At which stage does it actually become a real product?” “How is it transported from factory to factory?”

This method allows us to collect data, evaluate it, and bundle it into a comprehensive package for our customers. We can also, if desired, communicate these results to the end consumer. And this works by using the “Digital Product Passport,” as the law refers to it. Here, this is a QR-code that Retraced provides that customers can scan to see more about the product’s origins and any associated certificates. Having these is already mandatory for certain largescale companies in France. By 2027, the European Union itself is expected to have a similar law on the books.

3. You studied at WHU and were later self-employed in the fashion industry. Did you always have an affinity for this industry specifically?

Not at all, actually. Philipp and I landed in fashion by chance. He was living in Mexico during his studies, and when e-commerce started emerging in 2016, we began selling boutique Mexican shoes. And that’s how we came to the topic of sustainability, which was one of the brand’s core promises. And at that time, we had serious problems collecting our own supply chain data relevant for sustainability. The amount of effort needed to do so was increasing more and more, so we started looking for helpful software solutions, but to no avail.

We spoke to a bunch of other brands that all had the same problem. And with the Supply Chain Act [Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz], we decided to move into this side of the business ourselves. Then, in March 2019, we founded Retraced.

4. When you started, you were a team of three people. But since then, your team has grown to include 75 employees. You’ve concluded several successful funding rounds, and you can count Victoria’s Secret, Calzedonia, Desigual, Marc O’Polo, Tom Tailor, and S. Oliver among your customers. What’s your vision for the future?

We have clients in 23 different countries. While the European market will remain a central pillar of our business, we see the United States as very promising. Europe constitutes half of our revenue, Asia and the Unites States the other half. And that, of course, gives us a lot of global flexibility, which affords us the ability to govern regional development flexibly. We’re growing the fastest in the United States, which is why our focus is currently on the market there. We want to be a market leader outside of Europe as well. We want to be one of the fashion industry’s leading providers, and we want to continue to grow.

5. How did your education from WHU influence your career path?

My wish to become an entrepreneur first came about during my time at WHU. I hadn’t planned for that when I started studying. It was during my master’s program that I got stuck on this idea, until I founded my first company, born out of my studies, with Philipp in 2016. And one result of my time at WHU is, of course, the connection I maintain to other founders and team members. In addition to that, our WHU background helps us immensely when we’re working