DIGICIRCLE

Introduction

Sustainability is clearly on the agenda of the fashion industry. An industry commitment called '2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment' published by the Global Fashion Agenda, has already been signed by 90 companies.

Unfortunately, the companies are facing some obstacles related to the high price, absence of knowledge, and time that hamper the development of sustainable textiles.

Circular.fashion is a Berlin-based SME that creates diverse software solutions to accelerate the industry towards more sustainable and circular processes, among which a Circular Material Database, Circular Design Guidelines, and Circularity ID. Digital solutions play a crucial role in the education of professionals and the discovery of sustainable products but their main objective is to bind companies together in the efforts to achieve circular fashion.

SENSTILE has developed the first search engine that identifies, matches, and compares textiles digitally. This technology can enhance digital experiences and accelerate the actions of circular fashion towards this vision. The solution includes a sensor that reads fabrics and a back-end cloud platform where AI models are run. In this project, the partners are planning to integrate a new search engine into the Circular Material Database, train algorithms for auto-tagging, and improve workflow through automated clustering of the materials.

Apart from enriching digital experiences, this partnership allows testing new and efficient processes for sustainable design. It is a reverse development of sustainable collections. Instead of creating sustainable fashion from limited textiles available at fairs, by implementing the Senstile technology into the Circular Material Database, designers can find the closest match between an intended fabric quality and a sustainable fabric from the database. In the case of a perfect match, this material can be substituted for a more sustainable option.

This partnership is an excellent opportunity for circular fashion to accelerate the change and help the industry with challenges related to sustainability. At the same time, for SENSTILE, it is an opportunity to connect to the supplier network and become a strong AI fashion tech company.

Objectives

• Speed up the transition towards sustainable and circular fashion.
• Integrate a new search engine into the circular material database, training algorithms for auto-tagging and improving workflow through automated clustering of the materials.

Outcome of ELIIT project support

Impact (to date):

First, the project has been adjusted according to the state of the partner companies and industry situation due to pandemic.

With mentorship support and interviews with fashion brands, partners expect to shape and improve value propositions not only for the project but for their businesses.

Both partners are sharing the network and promoting the project that, in turn, attracts more interest from the industry itself.

Partners

SME: circular.fashion

Country: Germany
Year of creation: 2017
Background: circular.fashion is a Berlin-based SME which creates diverse software solutions to accelerate the fashion industry towards more sustainable and circular processes.
More information: company website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

Technical provider: Senstile S.L.

Country: Spain
Year of creation: 2019
Background: SENSTILE is a software company that focuses on hardware development and AI technology to enable efficient digitisation within the fashion industry.
More information: company website, Instagram, LinkedIn