Cotopaxi’s Renovo Collection Highlights the Value Of Deadstock and Scrap Fabric

When the outdoor brand Cotopaxi launched a 170-piece jacket and vest collection made entirely from upcycled scrap fabric and deadstock items, the capsule series sold out almost instantly. “We hoped people would get excited about this, but we didn’t know,” says Liz Peixoto, the brand’s VP of product design.

It turns out that both Cotopaxi loyalists and general fashion enthusiasts were beyond excited. The Renovo Collection, in collaboration with Portland Garment Factory (PGF) in Portland, Oregon, was an instant hit and further proof of the value in producing these kinds of limited, repurposed-material releases.

Each piece in the Renovo Collection was made at PGF, using upcycled and scrap Cotopaxi material, thus leading to 168 one-of-one jackets and vests that all had a distinctive look but stayed true to Cotopaxi’s roots of utilizing various colourways of different materials to create the signature colourblocking that’s made the brand such a hit. “It skewed into Cotopaxi’s fashion side and is on trend, but necessarily their core demographic,” PGF founder Britt Howard says.

Cotopaxi isn’t the first brand to release what amounts to a capsule collection that aims to find new life for otherwise unusable material, but it is another proof case for the value of brands putting time and energy into creating collections that might be a loss leader on the balance sheet but punch well above their value with cultural buzz.

Unlike normal clothing releases, launches like Renovo are tricky because there isn’t a straightforward pool of material to pull from. Old garments and leftover fabric can come from any number of sources—resale, brand partnerships, old samples, or something else.

Howard notes that pre-production was the most difficult part of the process as PGF workers had to sift through a “massive” amount of material to find enough usable fabric to construct each Renovo piece. It’s time-consuming, and not an exact science, which in part contributes to the high cost of the collection. She estimates it took three inbound jackets to make one Renovo piece.

It’s a problem across the apparel industry, even for major brands with the capacity to scale. The North Face launched Remade in 2020 under a similar pretense–to find ways to reuse material and old garments that couldn’t be repaired or resold through the brand’s resale channel, Renewed.

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“Anytime you’re digging through damaged product, it’s an opportunity to learn,” says The North Face senior circularity design manager Kellen Hennessy.

 

The North Face is one of the largest apparel brands within any segment working on deadstock and scrap fabric repurposing, and has a robust online store of one-off pieces as a testament to that progress. Right now, most Remade products are jackets and tops, and have a similar vibe to the Renovo pieces. The North Face has used Remade as a branch to experiment with other types of repurposing, such as a run of technical snow jackets made from old ski patrol Gore-Tex material.(Snow-related products seem to be an area of great potential in the repurposed space. In early December, upcycled gear producer ReFleece released a run of small goods made from old Jackson Hole Mountain Resort ski jackets.)

Remade has proved so popular that the brand is making it a larger part of new retail outposts, like its brand-new store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Hennessy says that having Remade in a physical setting adds a new dimension to the resale/repurposing conversation, giving salespeople the chance to educate in ways that aren’t possible through digital-only sales channels.

“There’s a much more visceral response to the (in-person) experience,” she adds.

Earlier this year, Arc’teryx launched a large New York presence with its own “ReGEAR” section, marking its first in-person presence for resale of everything from one-offs to gently-used, in-line pieces.

Smaller brands trying to reduce their waste output run into many of the same challenges the big names do. A spokesperson for bag producer ORI London says that looking at a larger repurposed line required a deep look into their own supply chain. The brand is currently making some smaller products (wallets, keyring) with 100% repurposed material, and is exploring how to scale that to its main line of backpacks and purses.

ORI London is also struggling with similar fabric availability and consistency issues. The spokesperson says the brand is looking to create a completely separate sub-brand made completely from scraps, but that means there’s no product consistency because each item would look different depending on what scraps are available. There’s a value in that for the consumer that wants something different, but comes at a planning cost for the business. The brand expects this sub-brand to become an “integral part of the core business offering in 2026.”

When it comes time to get these products out in the world, they tend to create a lot of buzz both for the education opportunity and on looks. By nature, repurposed material products look unique, and their limited availability drives a lot of interest.

The hope is that as quick as the sell-through happens, the consumer also learns a little bit about what it takes to produce these collections as a broader lesson about apparel waste. Howard notes that it takes around three existing jackets to make one Renovo product once all of the usable and non-usable components are separated, and there’s even more opportunity to further repurpose what’s leftover.

With the Cotopaxi material, there ended up being enough to run a production of 60 small Renovo bags that were only available at either of the brand’s two Portland-area stores. On word of mouth alone, those pieces sold out within a few hours on release day.

Hennessy says that Remade itself was born out of an educational workshop that demonstrated the potential of repurposing material for new or adjusted garments.
While these channels are likely to remain smaller pieces of the overall bottom line, the conversation and buzz they drive make them a very worthwhile endeavor.

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