Released in The Interline’s Sustainability Report 2024, this executive interview with Lectra is one of an exclusive five-part series that sees The Interline quiz executives from companies who are defining what the foundations and the frontend experiences of sustainability solutions will be.
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Last year, it emerged that “sustainability” was still a useful term for capturing a very complex set of variables and conditions. This year, we want to look at how those different elements are being arranged and prioritized. Upstream visibility and traceability, for instance, is a separate piece of the sustainability puzzle from textile-to-textile recycling, or material science, or the circular economy. With all these different parts vying for brands and suppliers’ attention, and legislation adding time and compliance pressure to the mix, how do you believe our readers should be thinking about prioritization?
Sustainability is no longer just an environmental initiative; it is now a core component of a brand’s economic model and decision-making process. The intersection of economy and ecology, or what we call “Econogy”, is driving businesses to merge corporate social responsibility (CSR) with profitability. Brands no longer need to choose between sustainability and economic growth—both can coexist and fuel each other. Technology plays a pivotal role in achieving this balance, allowing for full visibility and connectivity throughout the supply chain, which enables faster and more informed decisions.
For brands to truly claim sustainability, the first critical step is implementing robust traceability mechanisms. Without transparency and verified data, efforts in areas like textile-to-textile recycling, material science, and circular economy lack a solid foundation. Legislation increasingly demands transparency, and therefore, starting with traceability ensures that brands can meet compliance requirements efficiently. Prioritizing traceability not only fulfills immediate regulatory obligations but also creates long-term benefits by reducing waste and enhancing material reuse.
How has Lectra itself tackled that same question of prioritization? As a company with broad reach across the extended supply chain, up and downstream, you have a unique vantage point on both the importance the wider industry is placing on sustainability, and its current maturity state. So where does sustainability, CSR, and ESG sit in your corporate strategic hierarchy, and what are you seeing industry-wide that has influenced that choice?
Lectra places CSR at the core of its corporate strategy with 5 major areas of action: respecting the highest ethical standards, designing eco-responsible offers, promoting an inclusive, diverse and vibrant work culture, reducing the environmental footprint of our activities, and providing support for the next generation.
Lectra has always supported customers in reducing their environmental footprint. We prioritize material savings with our nesting solutions, Quick and Flex Offer, and Fashion On Demand solution along with applying eco-design principles for each new generation of equipment. For example, the new cutting equipment VectorFashion iX2 and VectorFashion Q2 uses 30% to 40% less energy than the previous versions. To achieve sustainability, Lectra believes a traceable and transparent supply chain is essential, making it a priority for the Group. Hence, TextileGenesis, a Lectra company, offers a market-leading traceability platform that enables brands to track fabric from fiber to retail.
These elements align with industry trends towards transparency and accountability. Our extensive reach across the supply chain allows us to influence and implement sustainable practices effectively. Industry-wide, we see a growing emphasis on transparency, driven by consumer demand and regulatory pressures, which reinforces our focus on integrating sustainability deeply into our operations and solutions.
We pay a lot of attention to software, and the data it relies on, when we talk about sustainability, but comparatively little to where that data comes from and what it means to capture it at source and manage it at scale. Lectra has been a major proponent of Industry 4.0, especially connectivity in the cutting room and throughout the production process, for a long time, so tell us what it means, in 2024, to measure environmental impact directly in the supply chain – and how to integrate that data into the rest of the tech stack in a way that allows brands to manage their footprint and design more responsibly.
In 2024, Industry 4.0 technologies continue to revolutionize the way brands optimize their supply chains, driving both sustainability and productivity. Lectra has been a pioneer in this space, integrating IoT and data at scale since 2007. Our innovative approach, with thousands of connected cutters, enables predictive maintenance and achieves up to 98% uptime, extending the lifespan of our equipment while reducing operational costs.
By embedding IoT sensors and AI-driven analytics across our equipment and software, we help brands optimize production, connecting upstream and downstream processes seamlessly. These insights allow brands to manage operations, supply chains, and resource consumption more efficiently.
For example, our collaborative Kubix Link PLM solution provides a centralized hub for enhanced collaboration and sustainability. Brands can track their collections with greater traceability of materials, ensuring data compliance with global standards and providing the necessary information to authorities, partners, and consumers. Additionally, for international brands selling in markets like France, direct API connections to French regulatory bodies such as Ecobalyse facilitate compliance with environmental standards like the PEF score, making sustainable practices profitable through material and energy savings.
Looking further upstream, a huge part of any product’s impact is determined by materials. But simply choosing the right fabric is not a guarantee of sustainability, because the journey from raw fibre to finished product is long and influenced by so many different actors and stakeholders – all of whom have different priorities and incentives. What does it mean to get alignment across all of them? And what does your experience with TextileGenesis tell you about the mechanics of achieving traceability and provable material provenance?
Achieving alignment across all stakeholders requires robust traceability systems and clear communication channels. TextileGenesis exemplifies this approach by using Fibercoins™ technology, which ensures the authenticity and traceability of sustainable fibers from raw material to finished product. It is disruptive because it engages both ends of the textile value chain and the entire sustainable materials ecosystem (tiers 1-6 and certification partners) – while other traceability systems use a product backward approach offering limited and unreliable traceability (tiers 1-3). TextileGenesis leverages AI for value-chain modeling and integrates with ESG standards, providing real-time transaction tracking and third-party audit support.
Thanks to TextileGenesis, brands have access to industry’s largest supplier network, where they gain visibility on the entire ecosystem of their collection production (fiber producers, material certification standards, independent third-party audit bodies). More than 90% of the premier ESG standards and industry organizations have signed a strategic partnership to board the platform.
TextileGenesis shows that such technology fosters trust and accountability, ensuring all stakeholders align with sustainability goals and verifiable material provenance.
For a lot of organizations, sustainability is both a matter of compliance and a matter of competitive advantage: brands in particular are obviously keen to meet the requirements of regulations, but with consumer buying decisions being driven as much by values and transparency as by price and style, being verifiably more sustainable can translate into a direct market edge. It is difficult, though, for brands to benchmark themselves against their competitors, or to assess where they stand on key metrics. What is Lectra’s approach to providing that kind of competitive intelligence? And what can brands do when they have access to that kind of sustainability decision-making power?
Lectra provides competitive intelligence through the Retviews platform, which also benchmarks sustainability performance against competitors. Retviews’ AI enables brands to identify on-trend sustainable fabrics and product assortments and see how other brands are pricing their eco-friendly products. They can assess their standing on key sustainability metrics more easily as well as strategically improve their practices to appeal to value-driven consumers. It helps them to develop collections that are sustainable while being price-competitive and always stay one-step ahead.
With access to this data, brands can gain a market edge by enhancing their sustainability credentials, align production with demand and meet regulatory requirements.
With sustainability destined to bring sweeping changes to many different parts of the fashion value chain, it seems inevitable that some (or many) current ways of working will have a limited shelf life. Where do you see the industry changing the fastest and most acutely? What do we take for granted today that’s unlikely to be viable in the future? And how can fashion businesses get ahead of that shift?
The industry is evolving most rapidly in material innovation and sustainable production processes. Practices like overproduction and wasteful manufacturing are becoming increasingly unviable. The future will demand precise demand forecasting, on-demand production, and sustainable material sourcing. Fashion businesses can get ahead by adopting Industry 4.0 technologies, like Lectra’s connected cutting equipment and software, which minimizes fabric waste and reduces energy consumption. Embracing tools like Kubix Link, Retviews, and TextileGenesis ensures competitiveness and sustainability, helping businesses stay ahead of regulatory requirements and consumer expectations.
