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When textile company Byborre launched a digital platform, the aim was to be a disruptor like Airbnb or Uber. In an interview three years on, founder Borre Akkersdijk says it was “too big a jump” for an industry resistant to change.
Akkersdijk hoped that Byborre Create, billed as “a Photoshop for textiles”, would kickstart a digital revolution by enabling fashion and furniture manufacturers to source their fabrics more responsibly.
With the textile industry producing 92 million tonnes of waste every year, he thought that brands would welcome a free-to-use tool that made the process more transparent.
Instead, the Dutch designer and entrepreneur found brands unwilling to deviate from what they were used to.
“We wanted to change the textile industry but it wasn’t ready for it,” Akkersdijk told Dezeen.
“We made the process easier, faster and more responsible, all at the same price. What we didn’t anticipate was for the conversation to stop, just because it’s not the normal routine.”
“The industry is broken”
Byborre made its name as a fashion label, but after the launch of Create – named product of the year at the Dutch Design Awards in 2021 – it stopped releasing clothing collections and rebranded as a mission-driven innovation company.
Now, the company’s sole focus is to make the textile industry fairer and more sustainable with the use of digitisation.
“The industry is broken; it has scaled to a size that we cannot comprehend,” Akkersdijk said.
“Digitisation is the only way to [fix it],” he continued.
“I want to digitise the textile industry so that there is less overproduction and more balance. I want everybody who makes products using textiles to have access to a fully transparent supply chain.”
When Dezeen interviewed Akkersdijk in 2021, he said the aim of Create was to start the ball rolling on this process.
The open-source platform provides free access to the pioneering 3D-knitting technology on which Byborre built its reputation, as well as the company’s wide-ranging supplier network.
This makes it possible for users to easily create bespoke textiles and find the most efficient and eco-friendly way of producing them – but Create has failed to have the impact Akkersdijk had hoped for.
Now he understands that this shift was too radical for furniture manufacturers, who rarely design or produce their textiles.
Most source their fabrics from multinational textile producers, which gives them less control over the material supply chain or the production volumes.
“Everybody in the business is so used to selecting from existing textiles without understanding the consequences of doing that, and it results in so much overproduction,” said Akkersdijk.
“We gave them the innovation to change. But because the system is already set, the heels just went into the sand.”
“I never set out to compete”
In response, Byborre has had no choice but to adopt a more traditional approach.
In November 2022, the brand launched a ready-to-order textile collection of its own, aimed at the interiors market. The collection currently includes 19 designs, available in 147 variants that are all fully customisable.
Akkersdijk said the aim was not to take business away from other textile brands, but rather to demonstrate how the system could be improved by introducing on-demand production.
It led to collaborations with furniture brands including Fogia and Lapalma, but also created friction with textile brands.
“There are so many great textile companies; I never set out to compete with them,” Akkersdijk said.
“I just wanted them to change for the better. But I realised the only way to do that was to compete with them.”
Akkersdijk had envisioned that other textile producers would join the Create platform, allowing it to evolve into a complete ecosystem for sourcing responsible textiles.
So far, he said he has been mostly met with either resistance or confusion.
He claims that one brand he approached thought he was looking for a buyout. He accuses another of actively blocking partner companies from working with Byborre.
“I want us all to move together, but that’s not how it is seen,” he said.
Many of the major textile producers, meanwhile, are working on in-house digitisation. Akkersdijk likens the situation to the early days of satellite navigation in the car industry.
“All the big car companies built their own navigation systems, but today everybody just uses Google Maps,” he said.
“Why didn’t the car companies just work together with Google? Why did they think they had to do it themselves? And that is a bit like what the textile industry is doing right now.”
“Small stepping stones” towards change
Akkersdijk trained as a designer, studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and Design Academy Eindhoven before going on to work in the Paris studio of trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.
He co-founded Byborre with former business partner Arnoud Haverlag in 2015, on the back of a series of high-profile collaborations with brands including Nike, Moncler and Louis Vuitton.
In February 2023, the company secured €16.9million in Series B funding from a consortium of investors that include Invest-NL, VP Capital, SHIFT Invest and Amsterdams Klimaat en Energiefonds (AKEF).
The brand has unveiled numerous fashion collaborations in recent months, with brands including Ace & Tate, Palace, NN.07, Diemme and Albino & Preto.
However Akkersdijk is particularly focused on interiors, where the lifespan of products is typically much longer and customers are more accustomed to paying for high-quality textiles.
“If you look at the markets where textile is used best, it’s not fashion,” he said.
“We’re not neglecting the fashion world, but when we started growing the business it became contradicting to what we wanted to do. For the average garment, you talk about use in terms of days of use, while for a sofa it’s years.”
The company staged the exhibition The Elephant in the Room at Milan design week in April and Dutch Design Week in October, to give insight into the impact of material supply chains.
Byborre has also hosted workshops that introduce emerging and established designers to the Create platform, in the hope they might become brand ambassadors.
Akkersdijk still believes change is possible, but understands that it can only be achieved with “small stepping stones”.
“If I had anticipated all the obstacles we have faced, I would have never dared to start,” said Akkersdijk.
“It gives me hope and energy every time I hear that somebody has used our textiles because it is a little step closer to changing the status quo.”
The photography is courtesy of Byborre.
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