U.S.-based natural indigo maker Stony Creek Colors is among the 14 innovative fashion startups to join Fashion for Good’s Accelerator Program.
The new group of startups encompasses solutions for various “impact hot spots,” Fashion for Good states, ranging from raw materials, digital acceleration, plastics, impact tracking and solutions that enable the shift from wet to dry processing in the pretreatment, dyeing and finishing stages of garment production.
In its eighth cycle, the 9-month program is designed to facilitate financing, provide impact assessments and introduce startups to technical mentors, potential collaborators and other industry leaders. The Amsterdam-based organization will immediately begin to provide the companies with mentoring guidance and industry expertise to help their technologies scale.
This class of innovators also represents the highest number of female-led startups selected, with six having been founded or co-founded by women.
“The world needs innovation to lead the vanguard on positive, long-term climate action and sustainability—the case for supporting innovative start-ups such as these who are driving the change, is looking stronger than ever,” said Katrin Ley, Fashion for Good managing director.
In addition to Stony Creek Colors, which recently announced it raised $9 million, other U.S-based dye and finishing startups in the program include: OSM Shield, which creates environmentally safe high-performance fabric finishes; Eco2Dye, a company that specializes in waterless textile dyeing technology; and Living Ink, a biotechnology company that transforms waste-algae material into a bio-based carbon black that can replace its petroleum-derived counterpart.
Fashion for Good also selected The Hurd Co., the U.S.-based engineers of a fiber pulp made from agricultural waste feedstock that can be converted into viscose alternatives.
U.S.-based tech firms Perfitly, which uses AR/VR-AI to create a size recommendation platform for e-commerce, and AnamXR, a company that builds virtual immersive B2B platforms and DTC gamified retail experiences, are part of the accelerator as well.
From the U.K., MTI-X Ltd., a company that digitally pretreats and finishes natural and synthetic textile materials, and Alchemie, a tech firm that has developed clean dyeing and finishing processes, joins the program. Enabled by a “digital fluid jetting technology,” Alchemie’s process is currently focused on polyester and will soon be available for natural fibers such as cotton.
From Germany, there is Traceless, makers of a compostable plastic substitute, and Made2Flow, a company that uses machine learning-based solutions to gather data directly from production partners and validate it based on multiple sources. The goal is to helps consumers make informed decisions and provide brands oversight over their supply chain impacts.
French company Rescoll is part of the accelerator as well. The startup offers a thermal-debondable separation technique for different applications in the fashion industry, which enables further reuse and recycling of material components.
Fashion for Good is also throwing its support behind two startups navigating leather alternatives. U.K.-based Biophilica transforms garden and park waste into a compostable, plastic-free leather alternative, while Germany-based Lignopure provides a platform technology developing a 100 percent plant-based leather alternative made from industrial side-stream lignin and natural rubber.