Our main purpose is to Embed more Good into the fashion retail industry. In other words, to help make it more social and sustainable.

Making this transition is complex and requires lots of different expertises. There are lots of capable and experienced professionals out there who have knowledge on specific topics or strategic skills to be able to help brands do more good. Through the Good Brand Guru network we want to bring these experts together, to allow them to connect, learn from each other and collaborate to develop better ideas and solutions.  

The individual membership is for independent consultants/ professionals/ specialists from the fashion and sustainability worlds who:

• are passionate about Embedding more Good into the fashion retail industry
• would like to connect with other experts to share thoughts, ideas and potentially collaborate 
• are keen on expanding their reach and visibility to connect with more people and businesses seeking to become more social and sustainable
• would like to continue to learn and be inspired through discussions, meet-ups and events

We have been working on building Good Brand Guru for almost a year. We consciously chose to stay small and not yet open our membership, to allow us time to put together the building blocks for a successful membership and collaboration. Today (January 2019) we are opening our membership to others. 

Will it be interesting for you to join already? Yes, we think so! As one of the early members you will be able to quickly build relationships with the other gurus, and can play a role in further developing the network as well as the activities that we are planning on organising.  

We strongly believe that what you will get out of the membership is largely worth the investment, in terms of:

• Network you will be building of people that are experts in different yet relevant fields to you
• Building your knowledge base, through the people you will meet and be able to reach out to, the smaller and larger events you can be a part of 
• Expanding your reach as consultant through your profile page on our website, the possibility to publish posts via our blog and our social media support to support you in your thoughts and activities around social and sustainable fashion retail

Very simply, the membership fees are used for keeping the network running and growing: the IT and web part, the marketing, the administration, and some of the events we will be hosting. 

We are an association which means that we do not function for a profit. In fact, if we end up having more money coming in than expenses, our aim is to collaboratively identify small sustainable fashion initiatives projects to support financially.

To foster the quality, diversity  and open-character of our network we seek for our members to fulfil certain requirements:

> Proven relevant experience and expertise in retail and/or sustainability related fields 

> Clear desire to make the retail industry more socially responsible and sustainable

> Willingness to connect, share and collaborate

The monthly webinar is an online-based get together around a specific topic. It could involve having a speaker talk about their expertise, or a discussion around a specific challenge/ issue. We have certain subjects that we want to address, but are open to suggestions from individuals or organisations to host a meeting about a specific subject. 

Are you struggling with a client question about sourcing? Or are you wondering how to make your e-commerce business more social? Do you want to discuss the pros and cons of one fabric vs another? These are topics that we could address in one of our monthly webinars.

In April of 2019 we will be launching our first yearly event whereby we aim to bring together 80-100 people working independently, in non-profit organisations and in fashion-retail businesses all seeking to do more good. 

We want to highlight the different ways that companies can do more good and how this can be done while respecting company profitability requirements and brand image. We want to encourage businesses to start taking steps, however small, as every positive initiative makes a difference. And we seek to connect people, to enable knowledge-sharing, cross-pollination of ideas and possible collaboration. 

We would like the fashion retail industry to be what it is from the inside, what it claims to be on the outside: innovative, beautiful, and forward-thinking.

With Good Brand Guru, we hope we can build a network that is truly collaborative and involves many smart individuals, leading pioneers, and those retailers still in the early stages of discovering what sustainable fashion retail is all about.