Recap: Sustainable textile and leather forum

The Budapest event was attended by many businesses and organisations: from textile to footwear, from fashion to industrial markets, from design to manufacturing and trading.

Like the audience, the topics were quite diverse, and presentations had a pedagogical approach that allowed all attendants to be fully captivated and attentive.

Lutz Walter (ETP and EURATEX) gave an introductory presentation that demonstrated the unmistakable opportunity represented by both smart textiles and wearables and by an innovative and technology-oriented optimisation of the European supply-chain. He then went on to explain the SmartX programme, its objectives and action plan, as well as its benefits for SMEs and the whole smart textile-related European industry.


The DeFINE programme (COSME framework) was presented by Danièle Clutier-Léauté: it has started creating a fashion-tech network and mentoring of 25 early stage start-ups to better determine the most relevant business model, tackle their technological issues, and design the best market approach.


More presentations followed: the situation and support measures of Hungarian fashion designers were explained, a geography-based analysis of the local industry was then brought to light, while exposés on leather and footwear showed the various kinds of constraints and efforts made to rejuvenate the industry in Hungary, in Germany and Portugal in particular.

By the end of the day, every attendant had gained not only much state-of-the-art tech information, but also a wide mix of contacts with different experts and executives with whom key cooperation possibilities might arise in the near future.

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