Frontier.cool – a Taiwan-based AI-driven material digitisation and collaboration platform – has partnered with Made2Flow, uniting the creativity and efficiency benefits of digital material sourcing with objective, accurate carbon impact measurement on a material-meter basis.
Starting immediately, every fabric that is scanned and uploaded to Frontier.cool will display its environmental impact, calculated using Made2Flow’s proprietary technology.
Each fabric will incorporate the full spectrum of visual and physical properties needed to support 3D design and fit simulation, as well as critical commercial information such as lead time, provenance and cost.
The addition of environmental impact indicators, such as GHG (CO2 equivalent), water use and land use, elevates these materials beyond 3D, earning them the ‘4D’ label, and enabling brands and retailers to not only make intelligent design, development, and sourcing decisions before a physical sample is made, but also to make confident disclosures around the environmental footprint of their products.
“The fashion industry has limited visibility into its multi-tier supply chains, which will make it extremely difficult for brands and their material suppliers to take measurable action to meet internal sustainability commitments and critical environmental targets,” explained Tal Shogol, Chief Executive Officer of Made2Flow.
Shogol further added that the fashion and textile industries today account for around 10 per cent of total carbon emissions worldwide, and legislation like the proposed ‘Fashion Act’ intends to hold both retailers and manufacturers to account, with potential fines of up to 2 per cent of annual revenue.
“Brands do not specialise in environmental impact analysis, and often they lack the time and the technology needed to truly map their supply chains. At Made2Flow, our success has been built on the ability to gather primary data and personalise calculations at scale, and our partnership with Frontier.cool instantly opens those insights up to an entirely new audience,” said Shogol.
According to Frontier.cool, material suppliers and mills are often uncertain about what data to gather to benchmark the emissions against key brand performance indicators, and if brand-to-supplier communication is not systematised, then neither party will be able to effectively collect, share and analyse the information needed to identify and improve emission hotspots.
To mitigate these challenges, Frontier.cool has claimed to successfully bring brands and their Tier-2 suppliers together to unlock the possibilities of digital product creation, making their environment the best possible fit for powering transparency and visibility at the material level.
“This partnership is unique in that it takes full advantage of Frontier.cool’s material attributes data, as well as placing Made2Flow’s scientific impact assessment model where it belongs: at the heart of the digital decision-making processes that determine the sustainability profile of finished garments,” said Wayne Fan, Chief Strategy Officer at Frontier.cool, adding, “Our shared goal is to help brands and their production partners to set and meet objective targets for GHG reductions.”
The company further reported that every material digitised via Frontier.cool comes complete with material-level impact indicators such as GHG, water use, land use – and can even go beyond, with the ability to further personalise assessments with increased primary data.
