Practical knowledge for circular textile businesses

• Circular Business Models for Textile & Clothing — This resource provides an overview of circular business models for T&C and the different dimensions through which a company can effectively design one. A specific business model canvas is explained and provided as a worksheet.
• To scale or not to scale an urban SME — Discover how sustainable small and medium enterprises can expand their impact, optimize supply chains, and build collaborative networks without compromising their core environmental and social missions.
• Digital communication for fashion SMEs — It is a challenge to be seen on social media – our main digital communication channels. Slow growth, time-consuming content creation, and uncertain impact may discourage companies from having a social media presence. We look at why being on social media is relevant for your brand and present the “psychology of sharing” approach as an evergreen method to create human relations on fundamentally social, human platforms.
• Digital Product Passport: a strategic framework for the textile value chain — Discover how the EU's product data transparency mandate transforms traceability into a concrete mechanism for supply chain efficiency and consumer trust.
• Industry 4.0 — The application of Industry 4.0 technologies in the textile sector involves a range of digital tools capable of monitoring, optimizing, and making production processes more flexible. By integrating systems such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twins, textile companies can minimize raw material waste, reduce energy and water consumption, and optimize the traceability of their byproducts. This facilitates industrial symbiosis and mitigates the severe environmental impacts that characterize the current linear production model of fashion.
• Navigating the EU Sustainable Textile Regulations: a guide for fashion SMEs — Upcoming European Union regulations will transition the textile and fashion sectors from voluntary sustainability to mandatory circularity by 2030. This guide (compiled in June 2026) outlines the key legislative changes, compliance challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and collective strategies for remaining competitive.
• The ban on destruction of goods as an opportunity for SMEs — EU's strict ban on destroying unsold garments introduces immediate market advantages and new revenue streams for agile fashion businesses.
• 3D fashion design for the supply chain — This resource introduces 3D fashion design as a practical tool for simplifying the most expensive and time-consuming stage of garment development: sampling. We explain what 3D virtual prototyping is and how it changes the sample stages of the supply chain; describe how a virtual iteration cycle works; and identify time, cost and waste reduction possible by its use.
• Measuring and improving your carbon footprint in urban businesses — Urban businesses today have a unique opportunity to turn carbon footprint measurement into a driver of innovation, efficiency, and competitiveness. Here, practical, standards-based approaches to understanding and managing emissions are introduced, with a focus on real-world application in the textile sector. Learn how measurement becomes the first step toward smarter design, lower impact, and circular business models.
• Local production as business strategy — The FABRIX project provides useful insights to M-SMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, which make up 99% of the European T&C sector) who want to explore local & sustainable production as a business strategy: project activities focus on cities with contrasted production profiles (Rotterdam and Athens) while supporting enterprises to co-design urban production strategies and activities with the aid of Facilitators (municipalities, hubs, incubators) and engaged communities of change (designers, grassroot organisations, citizens).
• Community events: designing a hackathon — A community hackathon is a short, structured event where SMEs, makers, students, mentors, researchers and facilitators work together on real business or ecosystem challenges. In FABRIX Athens, the method was used through Seam the Change to connect policy questions, circular fashion needs, mentoring, prototyping and public pitching into one practical community process. This entry offers a light and generic SOFFA/FABRIX version for future facilitators who want to organise a simple hackathon without reproducing the full proprietary SOFFA event model.
• Community events: showcasing events — A showcasing event is a public or semi-public event where SMEs present their products, prototypes, materials, workspaces, stories or circular practices to clients, peers, policy actors, researchers and community members. It can take the form of an open studio, a small exhibition, a guided tour, a maker panel, a conference session or a networking event. In FABRIX Athens, SOFFA used this simplified open-studio logic to make local circular fashion visible through the Greek Fashion Festival, GR-I-CE Meet the Makers and Fashion Beyond Waste.
• From matchmaking to material change: ten awarded Athens SMEs — A portfolio of the ten Athens SMEs awarded through FABRIX WP4 and the collaborations their matchmaking produced — circular products, digital demonstrators and next-stage partnerships, each with its outcome pathway and evidence level.