INDUSTRY DEBATE: Building Resilient Textile Industries: Does the Tech Revolution offer a Lifeline?
Fashion needs a Reinvention and a Restructure of Existing Supply Chains.
“The most successful companies will likely be those that combine technological sophistication with values-driven partnerships, geographic diversification with local expertise, and operational efficiency with environmental responsibility. As these industry leaders demonstrate, the future belongs to organisations that can navigate complexity whilst maintaining focus on long-term value creation...”
"Traditional supply chain factories try to do a plug and play, and it doesn't necessarily work." Joey Pringle - Vision Factory
Everybody reading this article is aware that the fashion and textile industries stand at an unprecedented crossroads. With climate pressures intensifying, geopolitical tensions reshaping global supply chains, and consumer expectations evolving rapidly, industry leaders are grappling with fundamental questions about how to build truly resilient business models.
At the recent Future Fabrics Expo, five global change-makers convened to spotlight critical transformation pathways. Their collective insights reveal an industry in flux—one that must embrace diversification across technology, demand patterns, and supply chain strategies to navigate an increasingly volatile landscape.
The discussion, moderated by Tom Berry, former Chief Sustainability Officer at Farfetch, brought together Lauren Junestrand from UKFT, Joey Pringle of Vision Factory, Shruti Grover from Manny AI, and Marte Hentschel from the Berlin Fashion Hub. Their perspectives illuminate both the challenges and unprecedented opportunities facing fashion stakeholders today.
The Circular Innovation Imperative
Lauren Junestrand's work with the UK Fashion & Textile Association has mapped critical transformation opportunities across UK supply chains. Through the Circular Fashion Innovation Network—a collaborative programme with the British Fashion Council—UKFT has identified key leverage points for industry change.
"Everyone is operating so much in isolation," Junestrand observed. "We've provided that link between innovation, what's happening, and where you should focus to really transform the industry."
The programme has explored AI applications for reshoring, automation and robotics for high-quality UK manufacturing, and innovative models like local denim finishing hubs. Perhaps most significantly, it has demonstrated how automated sorting and preprocessing technologies can revolutionise recycling infrastructure.
For brands seeking competitive advantage, these innovations offer more than environmental benefits—they provide pathways to enhanced agility and reduced risk exposure in an uncertain global marketplace.
AI-Driven Manufacturing Intelligence
Shruti Grover's experience implementing AI solutions for major brands reveals the profound operational challenges driving industry transformation. When working with a large brand transitioning to just-in-time manufacturing, her team discovered that short lead times essentially meant "doing all of the same work just more often."
"If a brand is going from buying four times a year to 50 times a year with the same team, you're 8x or 10x-ing your work," Grover explained.
The solution? Manny AI's image recognition technology can now predict bill of materials, standard minute values, and manufacturing requirements from visual inputs alone. More crucially, it enables collaborative capacity planning between brands and factories—addressing the fundamental relationship dynamics that often undermine supply chain resilience.
The business impact is substantial. Grover reports EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) increases of 6-8% through reduced overstock and improved full-price sell-through—translating to £16 million for one particular brand. "We need to stop thinking of these solutions just in terms of sustainability, but also profitability," she emphasised.
Manufacturing Network Diversification
Joey Pringle's Vision Factory represents a new paradigm in manufacturing—one built around values-driven partnerships and geographic diversification. Operating across seven countries including China, Brazil, Colombia, and the UK, Vision Factory specialises in scaling next-generation materials whilst offering brands unprecedented flexibility.
"There's nothing worse than hearing, 'Hey, we want to work with you, but we can't do it in China,'" Pringle noted, explaining the strategic rationale behind geographic diversification.
This multi-location approach isn't merely about risk mitigation—it enables true supply chain localisation. With material suppliers positioned globally, Vision Factory can match production location to material availability, reducing both carbon footprint and lead times whilst accommodating varying order volumes.
The expertise factor proves equally crucial. "When it comes to working with these materials, it's very complicated to scale and work with next-gen materials," Pringle observed. "Traditional supply chain factories try to do a plug and play, and it doesn't necessarily work."
Collaborative Innovation Ecosystems
Marte Hentschel's Berlin Fashion Hub demonstrates how collaborative frameworks can accelerate industry-wide transformation. Rather than competing innovation initiatives, the Hub organises R&D, incubation, and acceleration collaboratively through a registered cooperative structure.
"Solutions are there," Hentschel argued. "Mainly it's lacking interoperability. If you have 15 transparency platforms competing with each other, then it's winner takes all, and through that, a lot of resources and precious knowledge is missing."
The Hub's approach addresses a fundamental challenge: no single organisation can orchestrate the transition from linear to circular business models alone. Their recent circular pixel-to-product micro-factory exemplifies this collaborative innovation—enabling design-sell-make workflows within 24-hour timeframes using industrial waste streams.
As Hentschel noted: "You create a 3D design rendering, you sell it, and then you get it made on demand. And that gets even more interesting if you're able to produce where consumption is happening close to the markets."
Resilience Through Strategic Intelligence
The panel's insights converge around a central theme: resilience requires strategic intelligence rather than simply chasing lowest costs. Political upheavals, from Brexit to Trump's trade policies, have accelerated this realisation.
"Single origin sourcing is definitely out of question," Grover observed. "Brands need multi-tier capabilities—onshore, near-shore, offshore—because pricing will work out from the Far East, but not missing that wave of a trend or losing customer faith because you don't have stock."
This strategic approach extends beyond geographic diversification to encompass technology adoption, skill development, and collaborative partnerships. As the industry confronts an aging workforce and decades of brain drain from offshoring, automation and digitalisation become necessity rather than choice.
Importantly, the panellists challenged common misconceptions about technology displacing jobs. "Chinese, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese factories all have better technology than UK factories, and they have lots of jobs," Grover pointed out. "Technology implementation creates different types of opportunities rather than simply replacing existing roles."
The Roadmap to a Viable Ecosystem
The discussion revealed an industry at a critical inflection point. Regulatory pressures, climate impacts, and geopolitical instability are forcing fundamental business model reconsideration. Yet within these challenges lie unprecedented opportunities for organisations willing to embrace collaborative innovation and strategic thinking.
The most successful companies will likely be those that combine technological sophistication with values-driven partnerships, geographic diversification with local expertise, and operational efficiency with environmental responsibility. As these industry leaders demonstrate, the future belongs to organisations that can navigate complexity whilst maintaining focus on long-term value creation.
Five Key Takeaways
1. Collaborative Innovation Accelerates Transformation: Isolated innovation efforts waste resources—collaborative platforms and cooperative structures can accelerate industry-wide change whilst reducing individual organisation risk.
2. AI Enables Strategic Supply Chain Intelligence: Beyond automation, AI technologies can provide the strategic intelligence needed for collaborative capacity planning and responsive manufacturing networks.
3. Geographic Diversification Must Be Values-Driven: Successful reshoring and nearshoring initiatives require more than proximity—they need aligned values, specialised expertise, and flexible partnership models.
4. Technology Creates Rather Than Destroys Opportunities: Properly implemented technology addresses skill shortages and enables new business models rather than simply displacing existing jobs.
5. Business Resilience Requires Systemic Thinking: Single solutions cannot address complex industry challenges—successful transformation demands integrated approaches combining technology, partnerships, and strategic intelligence.
