Fredrik Timour: “If we don't talk about the money, we won't have change”.
Fredrik Timour, the founder of Fashion Innovation Center, in Stockholm, Sweden, is determined to help the fashion industry become more environmentally and economically sustainable.
Timour founded the fashion-tech company Neue. The startup creates microelectronics and software to connect clothes and has become well known for helping fashion brands find cross-collaboration partners in other industries like telecom and gaming.
Fashion Innovation Center's global network consisting of companies and organisations like FILA , Climate KIC , Ninjas in Pyjamas , FIT DTechLab in New York, The Foundry in Paris, and schools like London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London .
Recently, we sat down with the man behind the organisation to discuss fashion’s rather slow evolution and what we can do about it.
How has the fashion industry changed?
Fashion used to create trends and how they reacted to them because they needed the tools to keep up. Instead, they recycle directions over and over like a super fast copy machine. It is an industry that is now super similar to the music industry in the early 2000’s.
What are your thoughts on the 'new' customer?
The word 'customer' is so old school now. Yesterday's customers have now become users with the potential to disrupt the fashion market.
Why do you think fashion brands are hesitant to change?
The ones that are finding change hard are the ones who insist on continuing to work with a dead business model that is incapable of taking advantage of innovation.
In the end, fashion is missing the whole point of innovating, and the industry is doing much finger-pointing because no one wants to be blamed for what is happening or not happening.?
How can fashion drive development?
Disruptive innovation needs to be in integrated into fashion’s development. A relatable example of disruption at play is Netflix. The company pivoted away from providing home video rental services towards offering video streaming services. This is why fashion needs to jump the curve and switch business models, manufacturing and production methods.
How important is it that the fashion industry change its backend?
It is imperative. Fashion's backend is due for a revolution, just like what happened to the music industry, which used to take a year to release a song, but nowadays, songwriters can react to trends quicker and release music in a fraction of the time.?
What does the future of the fashion industry look like?
The problem at the moment is that the fashion world is too slow and the digital world is too fast. Therefore the future of fashion has become reliant on the industry completely committing to major restructuring. It is imperative that fashion starts to rethink how they can change on a system level so they can put a necessary infrastructure in place.?
You recently participated in in a COP27 panel on the UN Innovation Pavilion stage organised by? Climate KIC ?in partnership with UNFCCC UN ; what were some of your key takeaways?
There needs to be a better understanding of why the industry needs an internal infrastructure that allows companies to take advantage of innovation.?
We must scrap the old way to embrace the new method because we have reached a change-or-die moment.?
Sustainability is also a business deal. Putting money into projects that accelerate the transition is essential; we need to talk about the money. If we don't talk about the money, we won't have change. ?
Follow Fredrik Timour on LinkedIn