Country Road unveils $1.5 million fund to back startups and innovators driving climate action

Iconic Australian fashion retailer Country Road will today begin a search for innovative projects, social enterprises and startups that are tackling climate change to invest thousands of dollars in via a new $1.5 million climate fund. 

Billed as a first-of-its-kind for Australia, the Country Road Climate Fund will back both early-stage and more established products and projects, awarding up to $500,000 in grants in its first year. 

The remaining funds are expected to be spread evenly across the following two years of the fund’s initial three-year phase, however Country Road brand sustainability manager Fabia Pryor says the fund is set to become a key feature of the company’s sustainability mission. 

“We’ve committed to $1.5 million in the first three years and see this as an ongoing initiative, replenished annually to support new grant recipients,” she tells SmartCompany.

“It’s a philanthropic fund … driven by the brand; it’s not funded by a specific garment or anything within the business. This is an ongoing thing that people can expect to see from us.”

The fund will provide cash grants to the recipients, as opposed to making equity investments, and those recipients will range from entrepreneurs working on the proof-of-concept for their product, to established climate solutions that are now looking to scale.

Country Road will also seek to partner with the recipients and potentially provide in-house mentoring and support too.

The grants will be offered across two streams. The incubator stream will offer grants of up to $30,000 to for-profit and not-for-profit entities that are developing seed-level projects. To be eligible for this stream, businesses must have fewer than 10 employees, less than $100,000 in total assets, and less than $100,000 in annual sales. 

More mature projects will be able to apply for the accelerator scheme, which will offer grants of up to $200,000 to not-for-profits, co-operatives and social enterprises. 

These two streams will be overlaid by four pillars or categories that Country Road is looking to invest in, including biodiversity, circularity, innovation and First Nations-led practices.

Applications for the fund will be open for six weeks, until early December, with the first round of successful recipients to be announced in April or May 2023. 

Country Road, which is owned by South African retailer Woolworths Holdings, has been developing the climate fund over the past 12 months, with Pryor telling SmartCompany its conception is a response to “the urgency of the times”. 

“The climate fund came to life because I think that there are some incredible solutions out there in Australia that are lacking the finance to be deployed or developed further,” said Pryor. “We really see the role of the Climate Fund as bridging that gap.”

L-R: Fabia Pryor, Lina Cabai, Dr Helen Crowley.

Country Road has worked with climate-focused consultancy and investment firm Pollination to establish the fund, and Pollination partner Dr Helen Crowley described the fund as “pioneering” during a launch event on Tuesday evening in Melbourne. 

“Its potential is enormous,” she said, acknowledging the relatively few funds of this nature in the fashion sector.

Crowley, who has helped develop sustainability programs for a range of luxury brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, said the fashion industry, and the Australian fashion industry in particular, has the power to set trends in driving climate action and being “a force for good”. 

The fund has been designed to be a “catalyst for change”, says Crowley, “not only for Country Road and for Australian fashion but more broadly to show what can be done to the world as you commit to a new way of doing business”.

To that end, Pryor says the climate fund sits alongside a suite of other sustainability-focused initiatives that together form Country’s Road’s climate strategy, which is geared towards reaching net zero by 2040. 

This includes supporting regenerative farming practices and First Nations organisations, tracing the cotton used in garments in partnership with Oritain, repurposing Country Road items through Red Cross stores and embedding circularity principles within its retail store designs and the latest range of the Country Road homewares. 

“It couldn’t be more stark, the reality of climate change, looking at flooding up and down the country at the moment,” Pryor said at the event on Tuesday. “There is a real need in driving immediate climate action.”

“The fashion industry is a contributor to the climate crisis and has a real role to play in shaping a positive future — and that’s a future that’s fair, a future that has a safe climate and thriving biodiversity.”

More information about the Country Road Climate Fund is available here.