The archive · Business Models · Strategic decision · 2013–2020
MUD Jeans leases denim for €5 a month — ownership becomes a circular-fashion service
MUD Jeans launched Lease A Jeans in 2013: rent denim for a deposit plus monthly fee, free repairs, and return the jeans to be resold or recycled.
MUD Jeans
What it had to solve
MUD Jeans founder Bert van Son made denim from organic cotton and recycled material, but a pair cost more than €100 — out of reach for most consumers. At Berlin's Ethical Fashion Show in July 2013, the brand launched Lease A Jeans to make circular fashion affordable while keeping control of its materials.
How it works
In July 2013, at Berlin's Ethical Fashion Show, Dutch label MUD Jeans launched Lease A Jeans: customers paid a €20 deposit and €5 a month for a year, with free repairs included, while the jeans stayed the property of MUD Jeans. After the year they could return the pair, swap it for a new one, or keep it.
The model inverted fast fashion's logic. Because MUD Jeans remained the owner, every pair had to come back: good-condition returns were cleaned and resold as vintage, and damaged denim returned to the factory to be recycled into new fabric. By 2020 the service had evolved to a €9.95 monthly fee with a €29 sign-up charge, and customers could send back any jeans of at least 96 percent cotton for a discount or a free lease month.
The aim was to make sustainable fashion affordable and circular at once: organic cotton and recycled denim, free repairs, take-back incentives, and no pair ending up in landfill. The company became a certified B Corp and reported that its model meant four fewer pairs of jeans were produced worldwide for every pair it sold.
Why it lands
- Leasing keeps the brand the owner, so returned jeans automatically become the raw material for the next cycle.
- A monthly fee broke the €100 price barrier that stopped most people buying ethical denim.
- Free repairs extended each pair's life, lowering the environmental cost per wear.
- Take-back discounts turned customers into suppliers of recycled cotton.
What it did
Lease A Jeans made MUD Jeans a certified B Corp and the reference case for circular fashion: its 2018 sustainability report claimed that for every pair it sells, four fewer pairs are produced worldwide — showing a lease model could pay for repairs, take-back and recycling.
What you can take
If you stay the owner, your product comes back to you: leasing with free repairs turns a single sale into a closed loop where every customer returns the raw material for the next cycle.
Since then
Lease A Jeans has run continuously since 2013 and became a documented reference case for circular service business models, including in the EU-funded Circular X research project at Maastricht University. MUD Jeans extended the lease to denim jackets and opened its take-back scheme to jeans from other brands, while remaining one of fashion's best-known examples of selling use rather than ownership.
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