Category: Unit 3

This summer of independent learning has been very fulfilling overall. Firstly, under the guidance by Zuleika, I made a study plan for the summer, which mainly divided the whole  programme into two parts: academic research and practical exploration.

My academic research is in three main areas, animal environmental protection, materials and biotechnology. Animal conservation and environmental protection served as the starting point for the entire project, and I focused on the history of the origins of these two movements as well as their contemporary status. Then, in order to better communicate my intentions to the audience, I researched soy protein and other fibre materials with a view to possibly creating a 3d model in the future. Finally, for the purpose of writing and applying for patents and other specialised documents, I have done extensive theoretical reading on all the technologies involved in bio-synthetic fur, including skin structure, stem cell technology and fur craftsmanship.

According to the timeline, my work in this summer was mainly expert interviews, US visits, and patent applications. Before independent learning started, I interviewed three stakeholders, Abbey, Kim and Will who represent opinions from fashion, marketing and investing area respectively. Then to realise my theoretical research, I went to Columbia University in the US to meet with a team of experts, and through the trip to the US, I reached a collaboration between my bio-synthetic fur and KC Lab, and through the conversation between Jason Zhou and Prof. Chandran, I had a deeper expectation of realising bio-synthetic fur. After returning to China, I met with several industry professionals, including Cao and Chen from fur and faux fur industry, and learnt about the current status of fur industry and the challenges it is facing. Finally, I applied for a patent for bio-synthetic fur in China, and through the co-operation with Zhongli & Partners, the patent has been written and is expected to reach the preliminary examination by the end of the year.

Lastly, I have spent most of my holiday working on this project, which has generally been going well. Admittedly some things have not gone as well as expected, such as the signing of the agreement with Columbia University and the financing consultancy, but all of this has been foreseen and is expected to be resolved in the near future!

With Cao(Genuine Fur Industry Base)

Ms Cao is the founder of OFY Fur Co., Ltd. in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province. As a renowned supplier of high-end fur products in China, Ms Cao has more than 20 years of experience in the industry and has witnessed the emergence, development, decline and transformation of fur industry in China.

At the beginning of interview, Ms Cao talked about the distribution of the fur industry in China and the history of the industry in modern times. She emphasized that China is the largest producer and consumer of fur products while the largest production and processing base for fur is currently located in Yuyao, where her factory is located, as well as in the north-east, Hebei and Guangdong Province. For historical and climatic reasons, fur has been in demand in most parts of China (mainly northern and central China), both for its physiological needs in cold climates and for a long time as a symbol of the Chinese people’s social need for luxury and prestige. China’s contemporary fur industry is largely brought up by Hong Kong businessmen after the reform and opening up, by the Hong Kong capital in Guangdong to set up a number of fur enterprises for the Chinese fur industry has laid a solid foundation. Then it is the continued development of Zhejiang and Hebei and reached today’s scale.

Ms Cao believes that today’s fur industry has reached a watershed, when the kind of blowout development is gone, replaced by a more refined competition in the industry and a strong demand for new materials and new technology. As a senior practitioner, Ms Cao understands the huge challenges of environmental protection and animal protection for the industry. From the perspective of the industry as a whole, the current industrial chain is particularly polluted in the dyeing and calibrating process. There are also ethical sores in the raw material extraction process. This state of affairs has led to a vicious circle and a steady decline in the industry. Despite the tough situation in the industry, Ms Cao expresses her determination and confidence in the transition, as she believes that the demand for fur products has not fundamentally changed, and that as long as the industry is able to meet the popular demand for environmental protection and animal protection in the future, the industry will be able to usher in a return to growth. Her company is cooperating with more dyeing factories that have new technologies, aiming to reduce the negative environmental impact of the industry chain. At the same time, they are also committed to new material research cooperation, hoping that in the near future, the use of fur materials that do not harm animals and have natural properties will be possible.

With Chen(Intensive Employee in Faux Fur Industry)

Mr Chen is a former skilled worker at Ningbo Datong Textile Co., Ltd. where he worked for more than 8 years and witnessed many important moments in the company’s development and has a deep knowledge of faux fur industry.

The interview with Mr Chen is divided into three main sections: his experience in the industry, his assessment of the industry status and his prediction of the industry.

Mr Chen was initially a flat car worker, mainly responsible for the production of the company’s ready-to-wear samples, he has been in this position for eight years, during which time he has learned about the different processes and types of faux fur, Datong produces products that are mainly divided into four main categories (classified according to the length of the hair) covering most of the alternatives for fur animals. Now Mr Chen is the company’s technical director, involved in part of the company’s new product development and garment effect testing. In general, he is a intensive practitioner of faux fur industry.

Mr Chen gave an all-encompassing appraisal of the current state of the industry. Firstly, he emphasised that it is a volatile and growing industry, and that faux fur products have two big advantages: price and philosophy. Due to large-scale production, faux fur has a cost advantage that is unrivalled by genuine fur, while animal protectionism provides moral backing for the industry. Mr Chen mentioned that the vast majority of faux fur is also much lighter in weight compared to real one, which has won many customers for faux fur. Strangely, however, the development of faux fur has not been plain sailing, with cheapness and environmental constraints causing the industry to have its ups and downs in China. Due to publicity and cognitive reasons, in the eyes of Chinese consumers, faux fur is still not more precious than genuine fur, in such an country animal protectionism is not too prevalent, people prefer genuine one. More fatal is that Mr. Chen admitted that most of the artificial fur products have environmental pollution problems( Datong alone is currently facing dozens of fines and lawsuits related to pollution), except in recent years the application of some acrylic fibres to reverse this dilemma, but the whole industry in the field of material transformation is still a long way to go.

Talking about the industry future, Mr Chen said faux fur still has a lot to offer. Due to the continuous improvement of technology, the future of artificial fur is expected to create a more simulated and more environmentally friendly products while  fur animal farming with issue of COVID-19 has accelerated atrophy. Therefore, the vacuum of the market to the faux fur industry has brought unprecedented opportunities!

In fact, my intervention is a large multi-session event which includes theoretical learning, new concept presentation(proposal and pitching), market testing, expert and investor interviews. The most important aspect of this is a sample evaluation test at this stage of the process because of the suggestion from investor and actual demand for market data.  It is taking place both online and offline.

The online portion of the event was conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Chongqing and Sichuan, seven of China’s most dynamic consumer provinces. The online intervention attracted more than 200 participants from a wide range of occupations, with white-collar workers and students being the main occupational backgrounds of the participants (accounting for more than 15 per cent of the total number of participants). More than 90% of these 200 participants expressed positive expectations for bio-synthetic fur. However, it is interesting to note that more than half of the participants were not willing to pay the premium price of this new technology or even felt that it had to be cheaper than real fur, while less than 30% of the participants said that they would accept an end product that was more expensive than real fur. This data set provides an anchor guide for future pricing and positioning of the project. In the final recommendation section, most respondents expressed their support for environmental and animal protection, while requesting some features of bio-synthetic fur such as value for money and market endorsement.

The offline part of the intervention took place in the shopping streets and financial districts of Hangzhou and Shanghai, which were chosen to get more feedback from fashion practitioners and financial investors. By visiting the neighbourhoods of Xintiandi in Shanghai and Wanxiang City in Hangzhou, the intervention gained the views from a large number of students in the fashion and creative industries (due to the weekend and summer holidays) as well as some financiers. Almost all of the respondents expressed support for bio-synthetic fur, but even more extreme than the results from online interviews was the fact that none of the hundreds of respondents were willing to pay the high premium for such a product, with more people seeing alternatives to genuine fur as being cheaper than genuine fur. Due to background similarities and other reasons, most of the opinions of the entity visitors are in favour of the development of the market dimension at the same time, some extended thinking in the field of fashion, many people feel the need to dock more designers and fashion celebrities to expand awareness, while some people also talked about future large-scale production about bio-synthetic fur.

Overall, this was a very practical and well-planned intervention because essentially this intervention is under the guidance from tutor and some stakeholder. Therefore, it is very targeted and the preliminary market survey largely ensures the significance of the bio-synthetic fur development while providing strong guidance and support for its vague pricing and positioning. At the same time, for me personally, the interviews on the street were a brand new experiment, and this intervention expanded my comfort zone, giving me the opportunity to communicate with strangers and get their fair and objective evaluations. This part of the voice may not express support for the project, but its authenticity is a reminder that I don’t need to be blindly optimistic about my own project, and that I need to add more dimensions to my thinking.

China Mainland

Overview of biosynthetic fur technology

1. Through woolisation process (woolization), the fur animal hair is combed and stripped to obtain needle hair and down, according to the proportion of needle hair and down distribution of different animals (mink, for example, the ratio of needle hair and down is 1:60~1:70) and the number of needle hair distribution per unit area (mink, for example, 479-540 roots / square centimetre) to get the hair tufts (mink, for example, 500 tufts / square centimetre, each tuft has 1 needle hair and 65 down hair) evenly distributed in a net-like manner within the unit area. tufts/cm2 , 1 needle hair per tuft, 65 downy hairs) were evenly distributed in the unit area according to the mesh, and each tuft was integrated by using tissue sheath (Connective tissue sheath, CTS fibroblasts), and this was used as the medium for each cell of the skin and gallbladder.
2. Stem cells are extracted from the blood of fur animals and reprogrammed to an embryonic-like pluripotent state (i.e., iPSC induced pluripotent stem cells), and the induced pluripotent stem cells are used for the directional synthesis of various types of keratinocytes and fibroblasts required for the composition of the epidermis and dermis, and the cells required for biosynthesis of fur are optimised and streamlined according to the application of different skins and hides (for example, for the application of real mink fur). (Mink for example, the real mink fur application will eliminate a lot of fat in the hypodermis hypo-dermis, so this kind of directional synthesis can be screened to eliminate fat, blood vessels, etc.) and according to the real situation of various animals to arrange the combination of the required cells in the hair cluster culture medium and grow in this way.
3. Epidermis main synthesis cells (from outside to inside)
   Stratum corneum – 5 to 15 layers of flat, non-nucleated cells
   Hyaline layer – flatter cells
   Granular layer – flat cells
   Echinocyte layer – spiny cells
   Basal layer – single layer of columnar cells
4. Main synthetic cells and fibres of the dermis
   Collagen fibres
   Reticular fibres
   Elastic fibres
   Matrix – proteoglycans
5. According to the specific situation of growth and development, waiting for there is obvious cell layering, and finally using the nitro system process, to get the biosynthetic fur.
   Patent advantage: through the patent, fur products from the performance of biomimetic and other aspects will be no different from real leather products, compared with the traditional artificial fur, for the environment and ecological pollution is extremely small (almost no), while reducing animal killing, and can maintain part of the original industry employment and the rights and interests of breeding animals (traditional fur animal hair wool use, a conservative estimate of the impact of China’s 7 million people employed in the industry)

Questionnaire & Technology Overivew

Research Question Focus

1. How can reduce environment and animal influence for future fur products?
2. How can balance commercial demand and eco-friendliness for fur industry?
3. How can make fur without killing and polluting?
4. How can rekindle public interest for fur industry?
5. How can eliminate the stereotype of fur industry in public?

Status Investigation

• The status of current genuine fur industry
• Problems with the genuine fur in the eyes of the public
• The status of current faux fur industry
• Problems with the faux fur in the eyes of the public
• Current industry transitions and research directions

Product Analysis

1. What is the meaning for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
2. What is the advantage of new product(bio-synthetic fur) compared with current market products?
3. What is the disadvantage of new product(bio-synthetic fur) compared with current market products?
4. What is the main difficulty for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
5. What is new product(bio-synthetic fur)still struggles with?

Market Analysis

1. What is main competitor for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
2. What is the position for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
3. What is the main audience for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
4. What is the market value for new product(bio-synthetic fur)?
5. How can popularize the new product(bio-synthetic fur)?

Laboratory tour

From the 12th to the 18th of July, I embarked on a week-long research trip in the United States. I visited School of Engineering, Columbia University and talked to PhD student, Zhou and Professors Chandran there about the details of bio-synthetic fur.

I went into the laboratory to see the various experimental equipment and to experience  the sealing tests that were being carried out in the laboratory on that day.

At the same time, I had an in-depth conversation with Zhou and Prof Chandran about the feasibility of collaborating on the bio-synthetic fur, the duration of the experiments, the possible parties involved in the experiments, and other collaborative matters. First of all, Dr. Chandran agreed with the theoretical feasibility of my proposal, but also pointed out the difficulty of combining hair and skin, therefore, the specific methodology that would be applied on achieving bio-synthetic fur would be worked out by the KC Lab in collaboration with experts in stem cell transplantation. As a collaborative project, KC Lab showed a great deal of enthusiasm and clarity. Dr. Chandran expects the project will last for two years, and that the exact timing, budget, and collaboration agreement will be decided in subsequent meetings, along with the methodology.

With Abbey Li (Fashion Base)

As my classmate, Abbey Li is a fashion designer, model and stylist. I was glad to have a chance to talk deeply with her about bio-synthetic fur. The investigation with Abbey was  mainly about her overall impression to bio-synthetic fur, personnel suggestion and potential collaboration expectation.

Our investigation actually was happen after we meet Dr.Will in St. James Cafe together. Along with the speaking with Dr.Will, I naturally invited Abbey join my investigation and gave me some opinions. I was really appreciate that Abbey give a strongly positive feedback when I firstly mentioned bio-synthetic fur to her. As a intensive fashion stakeholder, Abbey know the status of fur and faux fur usage in fashion industry. Moreover, she also agree with my pain point analysis about current fur industry. Therefore, she pointed the importance about the industry transformation and meaningfulness about bio-synthetic fur research.

Running as a brand or running as a commercial project(company), this is actually the biggest difference between Abbey’s opinions and other stakeholders. Abbey’s talking  offer a new dimension for bio-synthetic fur’s development. Due to Abbey’s background, she naturally emphasize the meaning and advantages for brand base. She suggested me regard bio-synthetic fur as brand. Then, using the method of branding to develop whole project. This is a thought of B2C business essentially. Compared with my original thinking(mostly seeking to B2B collaboration), running as a brand can reach influence to public further, which can lead the famous of bio-synthetic fur and achieve higher profit in the end.

Based on my introduction about bio-synthetic fur, Abbey also gave me advice in filed of personnel. Currently, the project is settled by me and Jason who is in charge of technology aspect. We are friend and high school classmates, which means we have similar background even expertise in different direction. In consideration of team diversification, Abbey hoped me can invite people who are from different regions, education and culture background to involve in project. In her word, it can help whole project to gain trust(financing base) and opinions(development base) from bigger range of people.

Finally, Abbey also share her personal expectation to bio-synthetic fur. She thunk bio-synthetic fur is on a blue ocean market and it is positive breakthrough for fashion and material industry. She also told me that she can provide some help for later brand and designer collaboration. She believed a successful running of this project can gain plenty of prizes and opportunities. Overall, she encouraged me a lot and I was so pleasure to make interview with her.