Atelier Riforma, the startup that combines artificial intelligence and circular design

Thanks to new technologies, Atelier Riforma has created a B2B marketplace to bring together supply and demand for used clothes.Circular fashion is tech.

The relationship between fashion And artificial intelligence it becomes narrower day by day and, excluding fashion houses that hold events and launch products in the Metaverse, there are also those who strive to use the latest technologies in favor of sustainability.This is the case of Reform Atelier:startup born as an e-commerce of upcycling and has become a technological hub serving recycling and reuse.

Upcycling and technology

In fact, in September the new, innovative project by Atelier Riforma, a startup created with the aim of creating ae-commerce dedicated to upcycling and then became something else entirely.Everything comes from the creative and operational heart of the company, that is, from Elena Ferrero And Sara Secondo:two girls who met during a master's degree dedicated to publishing and startups and who they have made their environmental awareness a job.“Initially we carried out the project in our free time – says Ferrero -.It was after the pandemic, in May 2020, that we started to truly believe in it, established the company and gave a real entrepreneurial twist to what had previously been born as the outlet of a passion and a mission".

What has always moved the two entrepreneurs is in fact the possibility of reduce the environmental impact of the textile sector through thecircular economy;however, over the years the way in which they try to pursue this goal has evolved.“First of all, our approach was very practical, we dedicated ourselves to sartorial upcycling: we guaranteed the recovery of old clothes so that they did not become waste, but that they were transformed into something different.The first step to do this was to create a network of designers, textile producers, tailoring ateliers and social tailors thanks to which we began to creatively revisit the waste we collected: the next logical step was therefore to create a marketplace aimed directly at the final consumer, to put the saved clothes back into circulation".

What did you learn from this first experience?
It was the first e-commerce of this kind in Italy, a great satisfaction, but we soon saw first-hand that this model, this type of process, was positive and had a very large social impact, but it was difficult to scale.The problem, to make it really work, was to achieve a very high diffusion;also because the steps were varied, from collecting the garments to cataloging them, from warehouse management to sales.This is the main reason that led us to change our business model:we evolved it so that it was increasingly scalable.

And this is where technology comes in…
Exactly:we focused on technological development and created a tool that allowed us to apply the concept of the circular economy on a much larger scale.This is how, from mid-2021 until today, we have dedicated ourselves to the development of this innovative technology that we have called Re4circular and which is based on the use of artificial intelligence and, in particular, on the recognition of images and clothing - action thanks in which it is possible to automate the selection and sorting process of clothes collected for reuse.

How does it work?
In a very simple way:this technology is able to extrapolate from the image of a garment and from its own label,  all the characteristics necessary to allow the recovery of the garment.Where recovery is not limited to upcycling, but also includes reuse, reuse in second hand collections, the recycling of textile fiber to create regenerated fabrics and obviously also upcycling, which is what we have been doing for some time.This allows on the one hand to extract all the characteristics, and on the other to record them together with the image, and therefore to digitize each cataloged item.

This means that all this information can then be transmitted to those who have to carry out recovery, reuse, recycling or upcycling projects.The various information is stored and transmitted through a digital platform, which is connected to cataloging technologies and is a marketplace platform aimed at corporate entities.The operation is simple:it works like a match, that is, it connects supply and demand to ensure that the producer is able to find the right type of material, or dress, and so on.

Who are the typical users of this platform?
The cataloging technology provided by Atelier Riforma is dedicated to all those companies that deal with collecting clothing:in most cases they are cooperatives, but there are many different types:from non-profits, which use technology to catalog and digitize the data they collect and can automatically resell it to other companies through the marketplace, to circular fashion players such as second-hand shops, companies that recycle textile fibre, or brands that do upcycling sartorial.We allow supply and demand to meet and manage the waste collected in the area in an efficient and circular way:the goal is precisely to recover the highest number of garments possible by saving them from landfill.

How many are you?
The actual operational team, which is also the heart of everything, is made up of two people:Sara and me;then we avail ourselves of the support of Huulke, a company that offers digital products and takes care of the technological part, and we involved three engineers and data scientists to deal with artificial intelligence.