Have we lost our appetite for sustainability? New approaches in luxury retail and travel for 2026

0:11Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's programme, we're focusing on sustainability in retail and hospitality. First, we'll meet the founder of the UK's first luxury aftercare and restoration service to assess the health of the circular fashion economy. Everyone was talking about sustainability even sort of two, three years ago, and it has quietened down as economic pressures have came in. What we're trying to do at the minute is actually prove that this can be profitable and can work operationally.

0:46And later, we'll hear from a hotel industry heavyweight who's continuing to rewrite the rules of luxury hospitality into 2026. My passion is to have a real role in the community. That's part of sustainable development, engagement, how we contribute, not they contribute to us. How do we contribute to them? This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:18You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Charlotte Sturck is the founder and CEO of The Handbag Clinic, a restoration and repair business that's given new life to more than 100 ,000 handbags over the past decade. Since its beginning, Charlotte's grown the brand into a leading destination for resale and sustainable luxury with a strong online presence and a permanent concession at Selfridges in London, just around the corner from Monocle HQ. A respected authority on craftsmanship and authentication, Charlotte advises major auction houses including Sotheby's and Bonham's and has worked with the National Crime Agency on counterfeit prevention.

1:54She stopped by a Midori house to discuss circular fashion and the future of sustainable retail. Charlotte began by telling me about the start of her journey. so I've been obsessed with handbags and kind of desired a designer handbag as long as I could remember and it just never felt possible for me from I'm from a very small town in northeast England a village and that just didn't feel possible and I would save up money and I would buy a handbag so my goal was to get to a mulberry bayswater so I would save up got my first bag and then I realized that if I saved up a little bit more and then sold that bag on eBay I could then put that together and buy the next sort of level up in my books.

2:36So I did that from being sort of 15, 16. And then I happened to, in a bar in Newcastle, meet somebody who made a leather cleaner and leather sort of conditioning balm and paints and dyes for leather. So it kind of serendipitously came together. And that's how the handbag clinic was formed. And it just felt very natural, really. There was kind of no one big moment. it just sort of, it feels like it was waiting to happen. Well, it's funny because you said about that moment and we often ask, what was the eureka moment? Like a light bulb goes off. But actually so many more of the stories are exactly as you say it.

3:12Just people kind of find themselves doing it. But is it fair to say that you have a certain entrepreneurial vigour? I mean, that sounds, even the fact that you were thinking in those terms as kind of a kid really speaks to me about an entrepreneurial instinct maybe. And obviously in your earlier, in your professional career, you know, you seem to have advanced quite quickly. Do you think you just see things in that with a bit of entrepreneurial clarity, maybe? Is that fair to say? I just am a grafter, hustler, want to earn money, have always wanted to be successful, be the best that I could be.

3:45If I was working in a job and I knew that that's what I needed to do to get the next level, that's what I did to get the next level. While studying, working, running side jobs, every minute of my being was being, you know, how do I progress in life? and that is very much still how I act today. Well, and we always say, we seldom chat to lazy entrepreneurs in this programme. But it's interesting. So this kind of, you had the interest in handbags, as you said, and you'd sort of worked up through the, I don't know what the hierarchy is, you know, however it works. But this focus in on then on looking after them better, in renewing things.

4:21It's funny because I guess if you're starting that kind of conversation over a decade ago, now it's kind of a conversation that more people are having. Is it one of these things where the market has sort of caught up a little bit and the discourse actually around it has caught up with actually where you were at the beginning of the business? It's definitely been a crazy journey starting in sustainable fashion so long ago. You know, when I first started doing it, people would look at me like I was crazy. You know, people thought I was foraging in bins for old handbags. And I just couldn't understand why people found it so easy to kind of throw these things away.

4:54to me that old tired Bayswater that was sat on eBay that nobody really wanted nobody understood the value of to me meant the world and what I realized was there was so many more people out there like me who really you know would do anything to be part of that world and it just is such a natural progression to take something that somebody kind of doesn't see the value anymore when there's so many people who do see the value in that and make it feel luxury so when we first started opening retail stores the first thing I wanted to do with that space was make it feel like luxury we didn't give things out in sort of a brown paper bag they were handbag clinic branded bags that felt like luxury and people even then and this is sort of 2016-17 would still you know look at me like I was strange I would walk into investment meetings and they would always pull whichever woman from the office they could they're like handbags is your thing and they would look at me and go, but nobody would do that.

5:55Nobody, they would just go and buy new bags and nobody got it. And then in 2020, well, end of 2019 into 2020 and definitely COVID was a real, you know, it really sort of accelerated that. I just saw the shift and then all of a sudden it was cool. And I'd be like, I've been telling you all this time. But that's your early adopter advantage. And to give us a bit of a sense of scale, because as you said, from these kind of modest beginnings, I think the sector caught up a little bit with where you were, sort of ideologically almost. How many kind of handbags are being restored now monthly by your team in the clinic?

6:31Give us an idea of the scale because there's some amazing numbers. Yeah, so we'll restore around 700 bags every month, 6 to 700 bags every month. That is across sort of direct to consumer. We restore and repair and offer aftercare for a lot of the brands direct as well. And then through our circular fashion element, you know, the buying and selling of the pre-owned goods. Well, we had an amazing day actually on Black Friday and we sold sort of over in one day 130 handbags. So the scale is definitely there now. And talk to me about the idea of working with some of these houses, because presumably if we go back to that little town in the northeast and these aspirations you had as again, really only as a kid.

7:12It must be extraordinary. I mean, presumably some of these brands have reached out to you. You've worked really hard, I know, to cultivate some of those relationships. But that must have been one of those kind of pinch yourself moments where it's not an aspiration anymore. It's not a dream. It's actually happening. And they're talking to you and they want to use your services. That must have been just, I don't know, you probably still get a kick out of that, right? I do. And what's very interesting is some of the brands have actually worked with us for sort of over a decade. But we were the secret.

7:36We were, you know, it was very hush hush. sometimes we had the stores doing cash into our stores because they wanted to use our service over their own brands you know offering at that time because we could do more for them and that has evolved into these brands working with us publicly we recently did a big event with Burberry in Selfridges where we were providing those services live on the shop floor and I mean the day that Claudia Schiffer came knocking on my door was a pretty amazing day we can all say that But what an amazing, I mean, that is an astonishing kind of full circle moment from that beginning ambition to then it's happening and working with the houses direct.

8:15I don't know. How do you kind of make sense of that? And I know you now you're very involved in trying to get this message out about circularity and fashion, about roles for women, running businesses in this sector as well. Where does this go next? Because, you know, I could almost understand it if you said, well, I've kind of done this now. I've like, I've achieved that objective. But I sense it's only really the start of the journey. It is very much, it's still evolving, you know, circular fashion in press. It was really, you know, everything. Everyone was talking about sustainability even sort of two, three years ago.

8:45And it has quietened down as economic pressures have came in. And there's still a lot of fighting to do to make sure it's part of the mainstream. Because what we're trying to do at the minute is actually prove that this can be profitable and can work operationally. because there is still questions within the brands, within general public, within the markets as to whether this can work operationally. And we have in the last sort of 12 months, we were private equity backed. We were high growth, 100 % growth year on year, but loss making. And when the markets changed, we had to adapt really quickly.

9:19So we've actually reached profitability now and have turned that around in a 12 month window. and we're one of the only sustainable companies to actually do that because it is challenging in the space. So until we get to that place where everybody fully believes in it and recognises it as a market that really works, I don't think I've done my job until that happens. And that is interesting, isn't it? I think during these volatile times, we look at things like supply chains, genuine sustainability. It's often the first casualty when there's downward pressure from wherever it comes. Are you confident, though, and now you have these relationships with the houses, you get to talk to their decision makers that that change, the appetite for sustainability is here for the longer term.

10:00Of course, there'll be peaks and troughs and no one can do anything about the vicissitudes of the market. But the broader appetite, the sea change, are you confident that's kind of here to stay, Charlotte? Recently, I have seen a dip in that. But I believe that, you know, you look at France and everything that's being done there, how seriously they're taking it. And I do hope that comes through into Britain and the US and everywhere to make it a real part of everyday life and every company to really consider it because it can be done. It just requires sort of the right partners and just the right attitude towards it, I suppose.

10:38Well, speaking of attitudes, I'm really interested in how you engage directly with your consumers because, again, lots of our founders that we speak to on this programme talk about how it's unrivaled, especially in a retail setting, you get to go and talk to people, look at products, the tactility, really kind of experience them together and that's often when the best feedback comes. Do you think your consumers' attitudes have changed forever? Because, again, it's not something where, you know, occasionally I think they would ask brands maybe about the story or about provenance of certain things, but kind of they were there for the product.

11:10Do you get the sense now that your committed consumers, they won't take no for an answer, and even if it means they're having to pay a premium or if they're having to wait for products, the demand for that genuine sustainability from the consumer side is a non-negotiable or is that also is i don't know is that still also still open to question on some occasions that is an interesting question but i have to say my customers from a repair perspective we do see people who have a very different approach a lot of our clients are very affluent people who do not need to be sustainable and they are making the active choice in doing that and it does you know our clinic if we are a capacity i can't phone a temp agency and get artist handbag artist hands in you know we we have to there is a wait time and people are willing to wait those 10 weeks on occasion and pay sometimes close to what they've actually maybe paid for the bag in the first place because of obviously that bag's grown in value or whatever they're willing to do that to be sustainable because people are seeing the value in sort of investing in their wardrobe as a concept as well so they're more likely to invest back rather than just buying you and that's funny because we were actually chatting before we started taping about you know, this monocle's approach to this and this idea of buy less but buy better.

12:26And that was sometimes a harder sell. But it strikes me that's easier now. And that narrative lands better with more people. And I don't know, it sounds like you're kind of optimistic about that as well. Just more broadly, just buy less stuff but invest in that quality. We definitely see that. And I think Gen Z definitely lead the way in that their approach to fashion has changed. and it's really rocked the market. And it's great for sustainable businesses. It's great for pre-love businesses. We just really need to keep sort of fighting the fight against fast fashion, really. Let's get into some of the nuts and bolts about how you actually run the business because I know you sort of will turn your hand to most any part of it, whether it's kind of systems, processes or whatever.

13:08But obviously, as a business grows, you kind of have to loose the reins a little. You have to trust more people, maybe acknowledge that someone else might have a better perspective on one facet. How easy do you find that, Charlotte? Is that difficult? Well, I did try it. I did try it. And due to various things, it really made a lot of sense for me to step back into a really hands-on role. You know, we were growing at this triple digit rate. We were growing really, really quickly. I did get some people into support and build the senior leadership team. But my business needs doers and I'm a doer.

13:44And what I actually did was I recently stripped that senior leadership team out and I went for more manager roles with them reporting direct to me. And the plan is for them to grow with the business. It's so unique that it's really hard to find somebody who can really slot in. I, you know, came from a place of doing absolutely everything in the business. And it makes sense for other people to go through that journey with me. We feel like this group of people who have like got a point to prove and we're all proving it together. so that's how I want to grow the business further and I know there will come a time when I need to loosen the reins but now is probably not the time you know I'm gonna leave here and I will be working on a shop floor tomorrow because I love it as well and while I love it why not let's go back so you know at the beginning you mentioned this sort of hierarchy that you had and you sort of managed to kind of go up the sort of the the handbag rungs what about now what's the fantasy conversation Is it that somebody, a client contacts you and said, look, I think I've got a, what might it be?

14:44Can you have a look at it? Could you restore it for me? Or is it a bit like all of those kind of amazing stories where people find some old relic in an attic somewhere and they say, oh, my God, I think this might be dot, dot, dot. Is there a kind of a fantasy find or the dream client or the dream product still out there that you haven't yet got to kind of work on or work with so far? Well, we've done Claudia Schiffer and we've done Kate Moss. So for me, you know, I'm pretty happy with those. I love when somebody, so I do a lot of talking at like younger people events, especially in the local, in my local region.

15:18And they could write little messages to say sort of what they took away from the talk. And one person was like, I saved up and I bought my first bag from you. And I'm like, that's it. That's what we want. and also recently we had we'd had somebody come in from Selfridges and they'd found the bag in a I think like in the rubbish or something crazy I think it was they were from Ghana I think you know how sometimes things get all shipped over and they found it in the winter if it was real or not we authenticated it was real and they sold it and it was kind of like maybe 350 pounds but the person who was acting on behalf of them were like this is going to change their entire life like this money from this handbag that they have found in the middle of nowhere is going to change their whole life forever.

16:03And those stories I love the most. Like, yes, Kate Moss and Claudia are great, but, you know, that means something to people. What a brilliant story. Charlotte, listen, let's say this is a game I've occasionally played on this programme. If we're sat here in, what time frame should we pick? Let's just pick 12 months. 12 months from now, so pre-Christmas 26, what are we going to be talking about? What are you going to be preoccupied with? A tricky question, but imagine yourself forward a year. Yeah, I would like to have potentially done some more investment into the business. We are definitely looking at that to go back to a bit more of a growth strategy next year.

16:40So definitely be either just finalised a deal or in the process of finalising a deal with some really great growth on the horizon. We do would love to expand. You know, we still are the only place like us globally. the scale of the clinic, the scale of what we do. And I know that I could duplicate that in other countries. We've kind of really nailed the blueprint now. So that is something that we'd like to look at. That was Charlotte Sturck, the founder and CEO of The Handbag Clinic. And you can find out more about the business by heading to handbagclinic.co.uk and in Selfridges, London, the home of its permanent in-store concession.

17:28You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Neil Jacobs is a strategic advisor to the Capella Hotel Group and one of the most influential brand builders in global luxury hospitality. Formerly the CEO of Six Senses, Neil has spent decades shaping hotels with sustainability, well-being and a deep sense of place at their core. Today, he also advises on new concepts through his venture, Wild Origins. Monocle's Emma Nelson caught up with Neil to discuss the changing expectations of luxury travellers, Capella's sister brand, Patina, and the importance of imagination in modern hospitality. Emma began by asking Neil how sustainability can be really stitched into a hotel's culture rather than treated as just a selling point.

18:13Hotels are doing it better. You know, as an industry, frankly, we have a shocking reputation with sustainable practice and it's rarely part of the culture of larger organizations or any kind of group with some scale. You've got individual hotels out there that do it very well because they may be family owned and people really care about it. But the bigger corporate groups, they're doing a bit of the data-driven stuff now, but on the ground actually doing it. It's not a great reputation. Has anybody thought, I mean, you did a lot with Sixth Ancest. I did a lot, yeah. How did you actually approach it, given the fact that it is not the biggest hotel group in the world, but it is expanding and it has been expanding its speed under your stewardship?

18:58How did you make sure that everything ran congruently? Well, it's a very good question. I mean, firstly, Six Senses is coming up to 30 years old as a brand. Yeah. So I had it for half that time. But the founders, even back then, were doing things before anyone was talking about sustainability. So they had organic gardens. They were recycling. They were doing things. So we just built on that because it was part of the reason we bought it, because we really cared about what was happening. The key to it, as you say, I mean, I'm a great believer in a lot of decisions being made in the field and having people in the field own, you know, be part of the big initiatives.

19:42sustainability has got to come from the top, you know, because hotel general managers haven't grown up with this kind of practice or don't understand the science of it. So it has to come from the top. And on my watch at Six Senses, we introduced sustainability directors at every property. And, you know, we had Six Senses has 28, 29 properties today with another 25 on the boil. so the sustainability director was responsible across all departments we then brought in a head of sustainability at corporate level who they all reported into so it became a thing the culture was born of it it was coming from the top people were bonused and rewarded by how well they did there were certain things and it kind of changed the energy around the topic as a whole You've left Six Senses and you're now the Senior Strategic Advisor to Capella.

20:43Yeah. Which has a rather marvellous title at the moment. It is the best hotel group in the world. Yeah. So where do you take it from there? Because from the top, there is usually only one way down. And I suspect that that's probably not what you wish to happen. Not at all, no. I think my role here is, one, I've known the owners of the brand for over 20 years from my time in Singapore. And, you know, there's a lot of trust and open conversation with them. I think there's a lot of great things that they've done with Capella and will continue to do. It's got some traction now. There's 10 operating hotels.

21:26There's two, three per year that are coming along. So there's a rhythm to it. We need to do more well-being in there, and that needs to become a stated objective of the group. And we're in the process of imagining two approaches to well-being because we have two brands, right? And we don't want them to be the same. So Capella will focus on certain things. Patina will focus on others. We're introducing a different approach to sustainability, which happens quite well at many of the hotels and less well at some of the others so the organization that i just mentioned that we had at six senses we'll repeat some of that to just have the human resource piece of it in place so we're going to blow out those initiatives we're going to focus as much on patina as capella which hasn't been the case in the past because we see patina as an interesting segment of the industry.

22:27You know, people generally talk about lifestyle hotels, and then they talk about luxury hotels, but they're not the same. We see patina as being at that intersection of being the fun, having the vibe, having the energy, the music, the art, and whatever that you would get in a lifestyle hotel, but at a luxury level. There's no reason the two can't intersect. The customer is different today. What does a customer want now from looking Thinking back to the fairly large amount of shoe leather that you've worn out doing your job. It's very polite. What are you learning about how customers are changing and what clients want?

23:06And also what a hotel can offer that differentiates itself? Well, therein lies the issue, right? I have my normal speech about the state of the luxury hotel business, which, you know, You have the traditional luxury brands, all of whom are very good. The food's good, the service is good, the bed's comfortable, and so on and so forth. But it's not enough. At that level of the market, that's a given. And yet people still want to talk about intuitive service. I mean, it's so boring, really. It's what the customer wants today, particularly in the last five years, seven years. They want personality.

23:49they want individuality they need storytelling they need narrative because you look at luxury today it's kind of become homogenous they're all the same they're all pretty good but they're all kind of the same so the people that are the groups and the hotels that are going to chip away and are chipping away that market share are these smaller more i hate the word but it's kind of more personalized more bespoke in some ways that focus very much on environment and where you are and culture and context of the location of those hotels and i give plenty of examples i mean we're opening go on then give some examples well we're opening in japan yeah in japan kyoto will open well we open we have a patina in osaka which opened earlier this year and in In March, we'll be opening Capella in Kyoto.

24:46It's right next to a geisha school. So we have been on the ground there for 15 months, kind of digging around. And what are the activations? What are we going to be able to offer the guests that other hotels can't offer? You cannot access that geisha community. however given that we're the neighbor and lots of talk and lots of invitations and so on we've managed to gain access to the private tea rooms where the real geishas and the trainee geishas go and have their tea and we have been allowed to access those units and bring our guests there and talk to the geishas and just like interact. I mean, this is a big deal for Kyoto.

25:36The location is right in the heart of the old town. You know, geographically, we're there. So it's things like that that kind of actually make the difference. And it is probably the first time that we've heard the word authenticity actually having a proper meaning behind it, because everybody talks about authenticity. And it's like one of those words. We've been asking people what words get rid of the lexicon, you know, the word authenticity elevated, all that kind of stuff comes through but the idea that you have to represent a place with the hotel that you offer while at the same time being very respectful especially in somewhere like Kyoto and Geisha School you have to make sure that you too are good neighbors yeah for sure but you know to me that's the richness of what we do my passion is to have a real role in the community that's part of sustainable development, you know, engagement.

26:30How are we going to contribute? How we contribute, not they contribute to us. How do we contribute to them? And I mean, that's the joy, frankly, for me at any rate of the business to be able to do those things and offer that kind of programming to guests. And you ask, how's the guest change? That's how they've changed. They don't want to sit on the beach anymore and do nothing. They don't. It's younger. It's a psychographic. It's not a demographic for Capella, frankly. It's like-minded people who care about the same kind of stuff. And you can be 30 years old, 20 years old, or 70 years old. It's about bringing those people together and with an offer, with a product that resonates highly emotively with the customer.

27:19Where should we all be going on holiday next year? We certainly should be coming to Kyoto. Yes, I suspected you'd say that. Not long after, we're going to open in Florence. Now, these are interesting markets because they're markets which frequently have the O word attached to them, the overtourism. And how do you navigate that? Again, while being a good neighbour? Well, I have a personal connection to Florence. I went to school, I went to university in Florence, and so that was kind of very important to me. We have a property in the old town of Florence where in Florence there's not been any new building for 50 years.

27:57And even on our campus that we have there, 80 % of it is restoration of the old buildings. It was a military hospital. It's on a street called Via Sangalo, so it's kind of the old town there. 80 % is restoration. 20 % is new build. We've got a permit to do that, and we're going to build some residential, some beautiful kind of apartments for people as well as hotel. But the opportunities culturally there, I mean, you could just go on forever if you have the wherewithal to really try and penetrate that town, which is not simple. You know, the Florentines are very unique compared to perhaps the rest of Italy.