WargoTex – Business Model Experimentation

Since I have already had the opportunity to do an extensive company internship within my former studies, I decided to opt for the research assistant internship instead. The Swedish School of Textiles and Science Park Borås conduct a lot of interesting projects regarding sustainable fashion, so I figured that I should utilise the chance to discover the field that I am passionate about in more detail. 

I am conducting my research in the course of the WargoTex project, which aims to establish a test and demo facility for textile resource optimisation in Sweden across the fashion and textile industry. The facility will be used to drive and support development issues related to large-scale sorting and recycling of post-consumer textile waste. As a member of the project, Science Park Borås focusses its research efforts particularly on business model experimentation for circularity, which has the potential to lead to a variety of sustainable solutions. 

A research assistant internship involves a lot of independent studies, but gives you also the possibility to manage your time and workload yourself which I highly appreciate. This kind of freedom can be an advantage if you know in what direction you are headed, but it can also represent a challenge due to the overwhelming variety of choices. Since you need access to relevant literature which might be difficult regarding highly sustainable and innovative topics, I personally prefer to research a bit in all directions before I make my final decision. In this case, I decided to focus on opportunities and challenges for establishing a joint business model for circularity in the fashion industry.

After four weeks of researching I have gained a good overview of various relevant topics and could luckily gain access to very specific information closely related to the topic. Since the project is conducted in collaboration with Lindex, KappAhl and Björkåfrihet, my next step is to start developing an empirical data collection instrument for assessing the company’s insights on opportunities and challenges for establishing such a joint business model. I hope that the companies are able to collaborate in these unpredictable times.