Clothes as service: CaaS-hackathon searches methods to revolutionize business of the textile industry

Text: Marketta Virta

In the hackathon Finlayson, Imagewear and Vaatepuu set up challenges linked to the clothes as a service theme to the students. The objective was for two weeks to harness digitalisation in the use of the companies and to renew the operation of the companies. Abbreviation CaaS suggests to selling a service instead of selling a piece of clothing. The profit for the company comes in that case for example renting the clothes and the longer the clothes circle, the greater benefit the company will have.
 

Vaatepuu challenged students to plan a clothing service for consumers where possibilities of digitalisation and circular economy are considered. The students developed clothing rental into a shared wardrobe where passage would happen by using a permit and a personal pin-code. Renting the clothes would get to borrow right then when its suitable for you, just like from your own wardrobe.

Finlayson longed for ideas about how to improve their Circular economy account which was launched last year. The students developed a rental and swapping service for home textiles in which for example bed sheets and towels are swapped to new ones after a certain amount of time and the client has always clean textiles at home. Imagewear for one missed a service where used working clothes and surplus clothes are recycled. Solution of the students was to make the recycling of the used clothes as easy as possible and to give clothes for example to schools where they can work them to new clothes or textiles.
 

In the hackathon took part students from both polytechnic and from university and from different fields like computer science, energy and environmental engineering, sociology and clothing design. Students who took the Vaatepuu’s challenge felt that the assignment was rousing but also difficult.
- The assignment was quite broad so it was tricky to find the smaller part where we wanted to focus on. Two weeks is a short period of time but in my opinion, we managed to do a lot in a short time, sociology student Eerika Heinonen from University of Turku summed up.
- I found it interesting to be able to design a service as a clothing design student. Service design is perhaps a industry of the future, clothing design Master’s student Veera Waaramaa from University of Lapland rejoiced. - All in our team were students from different fields but we managed to get going easily in a short time and everybody had something new to offer for achieving the challenge.

Clothes as a service -theme doesn’t leave behind because working with that theme is continued in TUAS.
Source used: https://anniinanurmi.com/portfolio/why-how-clothing-as-a-service-will-change-the-fashion-system/ 

CaaS-hackathon was a part of Open Daas -project which aim is with utilizing open data to open new possibilities for the creation of new business models.