Spotlight on Sangrove - Impact Shopping

Introduction

Sangrove, a NY-based B2B SaaS climate tech start-up, leverages its Impact Shopping platform to help consumer brands, retailers and marketplaces address overproduction and waste of unsold goods.

By enabling aggregated advanced purchasing during the product pre-launch, Sangrove empowers consumers with transparent measurable CO₂e savings as a direct result of buying early. At the same time, it gains clear, product-based performance metrics before production, helping brands minimise waste, enhance margins, and promote sustainable consumption - ultimately driving substantial environmental impact. Sangrove is supported by Columbia Tech Ventures and NY State and is part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation community.

Sangrove’s team is led by Tatiana Alexa, a force in fresh perspectives on efficiency and sustainability in consumer goods, apparel and fashion. Tatiana is a public speaker (Climate Week NY, Sustainability Summit 2025 by BFA), a contributor to Sustainability Report 2025 by Sourcing Journal, a member of ClimatTech Expertise Network and Harvard Sustainability Leadership Program.

Sangrove has partnered with Future Fashion Assembly in the fall of 2024.

Can you highlight a key achievement or innovation you are most proud of?

Sangrove is currently under an NDA with a major global fast-fashion marketplace operating in 150 countries, helping them to foster their ESG standing while shifting ready-to-wear garment production away from a supply-first model to a demand-led model.

About the Business

What inspired the founding of Sangrove?

Sangrove’s Impact Shopping solution is inspired by Tatiana’s hands-on, decade-long experience leading international sourcing and merchandising teams in global consumer markets. Through firsthand observation, she has recognised the shortcomings of the current overproduction and oversupply approach to inventory - an inefficiency that presents a significant opportunity for both operational improvements and emissions reduction.

Sangrove’s 'Better Business, Better Planet' mission aims to minimise overproduction, reduce the industry’s carbon footprint, and enhance business performance. By engaging consumers ahead of production and incentivising aggregated advance purchasing through the Impact Shopping experience (B2B SaaS), brands and retailers empower shoppers to directly contribute to sustainable consumption and generate a meaningful environmental impact with transparently measured lifelong CO2e savings.

Innovation and Sustainability

What innovations are you most proud of, and how are they impacting the fashion industry?

We are most proud of our proprietary algorithm for measuring and distributing the immutable CO2e emissions avoidance as a direct outcome of a product’s D2C pre-launch via the Impact Shopping B2B SaaS experience (Web 3 based, patent-pending).

Sangrove's Impact Shopping platform sets itself apart through its proprietary ability to provide measurable and verifiable CO₂e savings for both sellers and consumers, while fostering sustainable consumption behaviors by aggregating consumer demand during the product pre-launch phase. As the first mover in this space, we combine advanced purchasing insights with actionable ESG metrics to optimise inventory, minimise waste, and empower brands to achieve both profitability and environmental sustainability.

How does sustainability play a role in your work and vision?

Sustainability is a cornerstone of our approach and the enabling technology. What sets us apart is actively involving consumers in sustainable consumption by showing transparent and measured CO2 emission avoidance by adjusting delivery time expectations when purchasing novelty products.

Our sole focus and existence is to champion a fresh approach to sustainability, driven by efficiency and active consumer participation in carbon footprint reduction initiatives

• Demand-Led Inventory optimisation: Enabling an early sales data during product pre-launch leads to minimise overproduction and reduce environmental waste.

• Measurable Environmental Impact: Providing measurable and verifiable CO₂e savings and actionable ESG metrics to consumers during product pre-launch as a direct implication of them advancing their purchases, promote accountability and sustainable practices for both brands and consumers.

• Empowering Sustainable Consumption: Fostering emotional connections and motivating early purchases to drive sustainable consumption behaviours and strengthen shared values between the brand and its core base. Connecting CO2e savings to the reward program keeps re-incentivising this sub set of consumers to buy early.

Case Studies

Can you share an example of how your technology has positively impacted a fashion brand?

Our Impact Shopping SaaS platform aggregates demand, enables advanced purchasing at the time of product pre-launch phase, empowering consumers with showcasing measured CO₂e savings as a direct implication of them buying early. By analysing consumer behaviour and their contribution to reducing carbon footprints, we help brands intelligently adjust inventory, minimise waste, optimise production volume, and reduce environmental impact—all while enhancing margins and promoting sustainable consumption.

The three primary use cases we address:

1. Enabling early pre-production sales data to mitigate risks and improve profit margins, while supporting the launch of new product categories and driving incremental business for Merchants and Product Design teams.

2. Fostering emotional connections with the fan base through shared values, strengthening strategies for Marketing teams.

3. Reducing carbon footprint and providing verifiable ESG-compliant records to empower Sustainability teams.

The solution can be presented as an Impact Shopping Week digital 'trunk show,' designed to create real value for adopting brands and retailers while reinforcing their commitment to customers' values. This initiative features a curated collection of new products online, offered with MOQs or other reasonable bulk order volumes within a fixed two-week timeframe - encouraging consumers to support their favourite brands and the environment while purchasing the latest fashion.

What measurable results have you achieved with your solution?

When launching a project with a client, these KPIs are followed to measure success:

Consumer Demand: Measure the volume of consumer demand (per SKU) aggregated during the pre-launch phase towards a statistically viable volume threshold.

Inventory Optimisation: Evaluate improvements in inventory efficiency by quantifying reductions in low-performing inventory, unsold goods/dead stock.

ESG Compliance and CO₂e Savings: Track measurable and verifiable reductions in carbon emissions based on optimised inventory. Revenue Growth: Analyse incremental revenue generated for merchants and product design teams during pre-launch.

Consumer Engagement: Assess connections fostered with the fan base through shared values and measure the percentage of advanced purchases driven by sustainable consumption behaviors.

Profit Margins: Measure improvements in brand profit margins enabled by demand-led production strategies.

Gained Media coverage: Monitor media exposure gained through the Impact Shopping initiative and product launches, highlighting contributions to the client's sustainability credentials and reputation enhancement.

By gaining clear per-product performance data early on, brands can filter out low-performing inventory and adjust production volumes accordingly. The initiative enhances customer engagement while improving margins for offered product drops by 20% and reducing carbon emissions by 22%.

Future Fashion Assembly

What led you to join Future Fashion Assembly?

We are big fans of Sofia’s contagious energy and her vision for accelerating the adoption of innovative solutions in the antiquated fashion industry. Having a partner operating in a key European market also aligns with our strategic approach to this region.

Opportunities in Fashion Tech

What do you see as the biggest opportunity for businesses in fashion technology today?

The biggest opportunity for fashion technology businesses today is enabling a shift from a supply-first model to demand-driven supply. Sangrove is one of the key players in this space.

What advice would you give to other companies looking to innovate in this space?

Never underestimate the inertia of the industry.

Future Goals

What’s next for Sangrove, and how do you plan to continue making an impact for fashion brands?

Sangrove is committed to driving meaningful change in the fashion industry by transitioning brands from a supply-first approach to a demand-driven model. Our next steps focus on scaling adoption of our Impact Shopping solution, refining our proprietary CO2e emissions avoidance algorithm (patent-pending), and expanding strategic partnerships with forward-thinking brands and retailers.

We aim to empower fashion businesses with data-driven insights that optimise inventory decisions, reduce overproduction, and strengthen their sustainability commitments—all while increasing profitability. Our B2B SaaS platform continues to evolve, integrating smarter AI-driven analytics and personalised engagement tools to deepen consumer participation in sustainable shopping.

In the coming months, we will launch Impact Shopping Week, a digital trunk show that directly involves customers in early-stage purchasing, allowing brands to better predict demand while aligning with sustainability goals. We also plan to expand into key European markets, collaborating with industry leaders who share our vision for a more responsible fashion ecosystem.

By combining innovation, consumer engagement, and environmental responsibility, Sangrove is setting a new standard for fashion commerce- one that benefits both businesses and the planet.

Can you summarise the business’s vision for the future of fashion tech?

Sangrove envisions a future where fashion technology transforms the industry from a supply-first model to demand-driven production, reducing overproduction, waste, and environmental impact. By leveraging AI-driven insights, consumer engagement tools, and sustainability-focused analytics, we aim to empower brands and retailers with data-driven decision-making that enhances profitability while driving meaningful change.

Looking ahead, Sangrove is focused on scaling its technology, expanding into key markets, and refining its adaptive AI-driven algorithms to create a more responsible and efficient fashion ecosystem—one where innovation, sustainability, and consumer collaboration redefine success.

We envision a future where no new product goes into production without first running through Impact Shopping's direct-to-consumer commerce. Overproduction will be minimised, and conscious consumption will expand through the widespread adoption of Impact Shopping in mainstream marketplaces, establishing it as a standard shopping option.