Zeeman – Towards creating a sustainable business model
Client
Zeeman is a chain of textile stores in the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain. Zeeman is a family business: 100% of the stock is held by the Zeeman family.
Zeeman offers a wide range of products, mainly categorized into baby and children’s clothes, legwear, household textiles, and underwear and sleepwear. As part of its corporate strategy, Zeeman aims to be Zuinig – with respect to its own employees, society at large and the environment.
Project description
In line with its Zuinig-strategy, Zeeman commissioned Impact Institute to assess the 2022-environmental impact of its organisation – including impact throughout the value chain. The goal of the project was to understand its current impact on the environment and develop targets for developing a Zuinig business model.
Zeeman and Impact Institute worked together to understand the retailer’s value chains. We aimed to determine what type of impact is feasible, material and strategically relevant to measure, outline what Zeeman-specific data is needed to measure the impact, collect data from all the departments, and to perform the assessment and support Zeeman in understanding and internally sharing the outcomes and learnings.
Benefits to the client
Zeeman now knows its starting point – which is needed to define reduction targets for building a financially and environmentally sustainable business model. Moreover, Zeeman learnt about the ways in which their current business model creates impact and where the ‘hotspots’ are (main causes of environmental impact). Next – Zeeman and Impact Institute will define what Zeeman’s ambition will be and (with a Transition Plan) how to get there.
