Textile and Fashion Center – the hub of cluster 7

Textile and Fashion Center – the hub of cluster 7 A cluster in West Sweden with great prospects of success

From the show of the fashion design students at London Fashion Week 2011.

Design: Ida Klamborn Photo: Simon Armstrong Front page: A belt braided with thirteen lengths of optical fibers. Design: Barbara Jansen, PhD Student Smart Textiles/Swedish School of Textiles Photo: Henrik Bengtsson

A Cluster within Textiles and Fashion competitors and colleagues is nothing new for the textile and fashion industry. This was a well-established practice for the travelling salesmen and the ready-to-wear clothing enterpreneurs in earlier days. Indeed, it is collaboration and entrepreneurship that has enabled Borås and the Sjuhärad district to retain its leading position in this field. Today, it is Scandinavia’s leading business hub for fashion, textiles and design and also Northern Europe’s leading centre for education in textiles and fashion. Borås is a business centre of strategic importance – it offers exporters and importers as well as producers within fashion, textiles and associated sectors plenty of opportunities for new business and development.

The University of Borås has developed intense collaboration with leading actors in the textile and fashion industry; this co-operation has now taken the form of a unique cluster. We call this “Cluster 7”, with the number 7 (sju in Swedish) referrring to the Sjuhärad district (Seven Administrative County Districts). The time is right for such development. There is a spirit of optimism and creativity today that has never been more tangible. This spirit is evident amongst the city’s residents, business people, entrepreneurs, students and researchers. collaborating with both

design and ready-to-wear fashion where it has proven to be internationally competitive.

The latest manifestation of this process is the rebuilding of an old factory quarter to create a centre of growth and a venue to promote interaction between textiles and fashion, companies, science and innovation. This is where the Swedish School of Textiles will be housed together with other parts of the University that carry out research within the field of commerce and economics. Companies and other stakeholders will also move to the Textile and Fashion Center and thereby create foundation that encourages a growing environment for future-oriented educational programmes, research and business with “Cluster 7” as the fundamental idea.

West Sweden has defined five other clusters: • Urban future • The marine environment and the maritime sector • Transport solutions • Green chemistry and bio based products • Life science brings together textiles and fashion (this we prefer to call the seventh). This constitutes a cluster to function as an integrating link and meeting place to generate economic growth and with respect to sustainability. The establishment of the Textile and Fashion Center creates an internationally leading arena for textiles and fashion through a triple helix co-operation between the academic and research world, the municipality and the business sector.

We invite you to co-operate with us!

The region’s sixth cluster

to shape our perception of the society in which we live. Many of us in this field are attracted by the idea of becoming stronger through working more closely together and thereby further developing our unique expertise. The scope of business in this area spans everything from the latest on the catwalk to smart textiles. The textile industry in Borås has managed to achieve a far-reaching structural transformation; it has moved from large textile mills to modern business operations within Fashion above all helps

Björn Brorström

Vice Chancellor, University of Borås

!

Anders Glemfelt

Head of Business Development, City of Borås In a survey of which industries different towns and cities are associated with, textiles and fashion

Anna Appelqvist

Director of Design and Purchase, Gina Tricot

came out number one for Borås. For Stockholm these only came in seventh place and in Gothenburg in tenth place.

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Textile and Fashion – Borås builds Did you know that a motor veichle is made of textiles to quite a large extent? Or that Sweden is a world leader in manufacturing climate screens and filtering media?

SEK 18.3 billion – that is the total value of Sweden’s export of textiles in 2011. This is more than the combined exports of Swedish music, vodka and iron ore.

vital components in many enterprises and innovations. It not only covers what we traditionally think of, for example

Textiles and fashion are

home furnishings and clothing, but also technical textiles such as airbags to smart textiles which react to their surroundings. Textiles have, moreover, fostered the development of related sectors here within logistics, mail order, e-commerce, PR and communications. These, in their turn, have generated reciprocal synergies on the textile and fashion industries. Such enterprises are strongly represented in Borås and the Sjuhärad district. No less than 50 % of all textiles and fashions that are imported to Sweden pass through Borås. The city’s traditions in the textile industry have a long history and this is indeed the industry that the city and its peoples have always been associated with.

A new city district in the heart of Borås.

In 2013 it will become a prominent venue for creative activities within the world of fashion, textiles and design with leading tenants such as the Swedish School of Textiles, Smart Textiles, Museum of Textile History, Marketplace Borås, the Fashion Incubator among others.

Illustration Sweco Arkitekter

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its future on its historical roots …

The entire textile business underwent a process of cutbacks and reorganisation during the 1970’s. Production was shifted abroad but those companies that survived were then successful at reorienting themselves. Business continued to be carried out and competence was retained within design, purchasing and the retail trade. From these operations something new has now emerged, very much due to the entrepreneurial spirit, the process of cooperation and the fact that expertise and knowledge have been nurtured and developed.

The Swedish School of Textiles is built up around three key fields: Design/handicraft, Technology and Management. Education and research is carried out within each one of these fields. The two major research profiles, Smart Textiles and F3 – Fashion Function Futures directly intersect these three fields and acquire knowledge from all of them. The broadness of the education is unique and means that hands-on research can be combined with artistic development work.

The University of Borås stands alone in Sweden in awarding doctorates (PhD’s) within both the artistic and scientific disciplines of textiles and fashion. Nowadays, it is equally important to be an actor within both textiles and fashion, just as it is essential to offer education and research. Interaction with the industry has ensured that the level of competence amongst the companies’ employees has been raised and through the profession the research fields have been fertilised with new ideas.

ated. There will be ample scope for research, education, new start-ups, business incubator activities and design workshops as well as student apartments, shops and cafés. Meanwhile, more than 90 companies in the Sjuhärad district interact via Marketplace Borås. This is a forum for business networks, events and seminars within fashion, textiles and design. Another element that gives a unique ambience to the Textile and Fashion Center is that Sweden’s only textile museum is moving in, the Museum of Textile History.

The creative environment with open areas aims to stimulate meetings, networking and events. The intention is to foster new ideas in new contexts.

The Textile and Fashion Center is set to become a self-evident venue for a series of key players in the textile cluster; thereby the region’s position is strengthened as a centre of textiles and fashion.

Business and development possibilities are not only tied to the textile industry but can be found across a whole spectrum of different sectors with textiles becoming the linking idea. The business idea behind Smart Textiles is to stimulate and demands needs-driven research and to create preconditions for co-operation between end-users, researchers and the industry in order to develop new products and services in respect of the textiles of the future.

Sustainable development is a natural component. In the future, there can be no doubt that a sustainable fashion concept will become necessary.

The research project F3 focuses on questions that relate to the paradoxical nature of fashion as a whole. Consumption is increasing year by year and this affects both people and their environment. In this context a changed A new creative arena takes shape. A natural understanding of the propattern of consumption behavior is crucial. Subsidiary issues for researchduction process is something that has always characterised education and ers relate to ecology, working environments and how we are influenced research at the Swedish School of Textiles. This owes very much to the worksocially but also economically. This type of research looks for new pershops and laboratories that students and researchers have access to. Soon spectives across the entire design process. One these preconditions will be further enhanced. In example of such research, undertaken in col2013 the first phase of a major urban development “We have opened the door to laboration with relevant companies, concerns project in Borås will have been completed. The area the opportunities that are getting to grips with the pile of clothing we all is to be called the Textile and Fashion Center. By available in textiles; this means possess! An average of eight kg of used textiles renovating an old industrial quarter of the city, a that new innovators will emerge per person in Sweden is discarded as rubbish. new growth hub for textiles and fashion will be cre-

who understand the vital function of textiles.”

Erik Bresky, Head of School at the Swedish School of Textiles

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Photo: simon armstrong

Photo: jan berg

Photo: Henrik Bengtsson

Knitted blood vessel developed by Y-Graft AB in cooperation with Smart Textiles.

Since we are running out of cotton attempts are made to find alternative materials. At the University of Borås there is ongoing research on how to make trees into cotton.

From the show of the fashion design students at London Fashion Week 2011.

Design: Maline Nordin.

Technology

Management

Design

Smart Textiles is building an internationally recognised centre for innovation, development, design and production for the next generation of textile products. In our region, with Borås as the centre, an internationally well-known cluster of textile and ready-to-wear clothing companies is now operating. Through Smart Textiles these are linked together with companies in other industries. The goal is to run a dynamic innovation system, Smart Textiles, to promote growth, strengthen international competitiveness and create new job opportunities in the region. The resulting business and development opportunities are not limited to the textile industry as such but may be found in any industry. However, textiles will always be the common link.

At a time when oil is running short and cotton production is insufficient for the rapidly growing demand, the global textile industry is facing one of its greatest challenges since the Industrial Revolution. This dramatic scenario is a starting-point for the research programme F3 – Fashion Function Futures. This relates to multidisciplinary research of high international quality. Here are combined research competencies in fashion, textiles and fashion-related businesses encompassing different schools at the University of Borås.

This leads to a strengthening of research into and around sustainable fashion as well as textiles that are useful to the fashion sector. This also correspondingly strengthens the region and its trade and industry. Owing to the fact that the research spans technology, design and management, F3 becomes an attractive forum for researchers, trainees and other organisations having an interest in fashion and function.

The fashion design process is altogether special through its short cycles, its intensity, its demand for rapid decisions and its starting point in more or less well-founded assumptions concerning future trends. The whole process makes high demands on a systematic working approach.

Research concerning the development of design methodology specially adapted to fashion design is essential for the development of educational programmes within fashion and for fashion design as a profession.

Marketplace Borås

The West Sweden Chamber

Region Västra Götaland (VGR)

City of Borås

Marketplace Borås is a

of Commerce

Region Västra Götaland’s purpose is to

Borås is a centre of trade and enterprise

virtual and physical forum

The West Sweden Chamber of

promote growth and sustainable develop-

but also has a long tradition as Sweden’s

for business networks, events

Commerce is a private, politically-

ment in Västra Götaland in co-operation

foremost textile city. Many well-known textile

and seminars within the

neutral organisation that works

with companies, organisations, municipa-

and ready-to-wear clothing chains have their

fashion, textile and design

to strengthen and develop the

lities, higher education institutions and

head offices in Borås including Hemtex, Gina

industries.

region’s business community.

government agencies.

Tricot, SVEA and 8848 Altitude.

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A list of companies that, through their membership in Marketplace Borås, are part of the textile Cluster ACG-Nyström AB

Arbeja

Tyggrossisten

FOV Fabrics AB

Oscar of Sweden

Nordifa AB

Gina Tricot AB

Segers

SEB

BoråsBorås Näringsliv AB

Carlsteins

Älvsborgs Provinsbank

Nilörngruppen AB

Brink Textile

TST Sweden AB

Rudholm & Haak AB

Kwintet

Sjuhäradsbygdens Färgeri

S.O.L reklambyrå

Wackes

BOLON

Svensk Distanshandel

Future Lab

Pret áPorter

Syverket i Borås AB

Morgan Gustafsson Skinn och läder

BMW

Unitra Int Corp

Jotex

Almedahls

Västsvenska Industri- och Handelskammaren

Brunngård

Happy Land Holding

Borås Stad

Morris

Vokes Air

Kanico AB

Wengbrands Redovisning

Svenskt Konstsilke

Inkubatorn i Borås

Etikettkompaniet

Handelsbanken

Högskolan I Borås

BEAB

Ljungberg Läderaffar Försäljnings AB

Responstryck AB

Leluma Design

Ljungbergs Textil

C. Jahn AB

Didriksons

Revolt Byra AB

Nelly.com

Unibrands

Keep Communication

Nordisk Designskola

Oscar Jacobson

Joy of Plenty

Peobe AB

Care Of carl

Söder & Company

Teko Solutions

Halens, Cellbes, Bubbleroom, Wästgöta

Norving & Company

F.S.T (Fagersbergs Sport & Texti AB)

H&M

Spirit Of Maya

CM Garment

Ruwi AB

Hemtex

Buzz International

Göte David

8848 Altitude

Londre Hatten

Craft

Rekyl reklambyrå

Bl clothing

Ateljé Margaretha

Lindevelop Innovation AB

Jenkins Productions Link

Oxeon

Organisations – the sinews of the textile cluster Swerea

HDK/GU

SP

Fashion Incubator

The Swerea Group creates,

The School of Design and

SP Technical Research Institute of

The Fashion Incubator (Modeinkubatorn) is a

refines and procures

Crafts, HDK, is a part of

Sweden is an institute for research and

niche organisation and is unique in Sweden.

research results within the

the University of Gothen-

innovation with an international profile. It

Its purpose is to create the right precondi-

fields of materials, process,

burg and is the largest Fine

contributes vital scientific knowledge to

tions for enterpreneurs to achieve a market

product and production

Arts Faculty within the

the competitiveness of the business sector

breakthrough within the textile and fashion

technology.

Nordic region.

and to sustainable development.

industries.

Production: Communications Office, University of Bor책s & Mats Palmquist Print: Responstryck, June 2012