From AI to DPP: making European textile businesses fit for the digital future
In partnership with Lectra (FR), SmartexAI (PT), ITA Academy (DE), CITEVE (PT), Finnish Textile & Fashion (FI), Politecnico di Milano - Dipartimento di Design (IT) and EURATEX, Textile ETP launched the DigitX Innovation Hub to serve as a central hub for textile companies, research organisations, brands, and retailers to converge, learn, network, and collaborate on the key topics related to the digitalisation of the textile sector.
As the textile industry faces growing demands for efficiency, sustainability, and customisation, digitalisation offers transformative solutions, ranging from AI-driven design to digital product passport (DPP) that streamline and modernise workflows, minimise waste, and enable more agile responses to market trends. This new DigitX Innovation Hub presents a unique platform for professionals from diverse backgrounds to engage in discussions, collaborate, access information, and collectively address the challenges on the horizon.
Combining online and in-person events, the Innovation Hub offers a wide scale of formats and targets a broad range of digitalisation topics from AI to DPP, so that textile professionals from different backgrounds can all find relatable and valuable content.
We look forward to welcoming you among our Innovation Hub members!
DigitX
Innovation Hub
Upcoming activities
Driving Digital Transformation in European Textiles
As the European textile industry embraces the digital age, adapting to an evolving landscape of efficiency, customisation, and sustainability becomes essential. The DigitX Innovation Hub offers a platform where professionals can explore the potential of digital technologies to redefine their businesses.
Aligned with Europe’s ambitions for a green and digital transition, this hub focuses on critical themes such as AI-driven product creation, digital manufacturing, and innovative supply chain solutions. Participants will gain access to resources, collaborative opportunities, and cutting-edge insights to navigate challenges and shape a resilient, digitally empowered future.
Together, we accelerate innovation and empower European textiles to thrive in the digital era.
Discover the calendar of activities in the brochure
Check FAQs. Read the Terms & Conditions
Strategic Roadmap for the Digital Transformation of the European Textile and Apparel Industry
Why now?
The European textile and apparel industry (194,000 companies, 1.2 million workers, an annual turnover of over €166 billion, and 99.8% SMEs) stands at a decisive inflection point. Three converging pressures make digital transformation an existential necessity rather than a strategic option.
First, the agility imperative: traditional slow product development processes and document-driven workflows cannot keep up in a world characterised by volatile end market demand, disrupted supply chains, and the algorithmic speed of ultra-fast digital-savvy competitors, whether in fashion, home or technical textiles. Second, the regulatory imperative: the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, the Digital Product Passport, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the Waste Framework Directive and a parallel wave of horizontal EU digital legislation (AI Act, Data Act, Data Governance Act, Interoperable Europe Act) are turning sustainability and digital capability into a non-negotiable licence to operate. Third, the traceability imperative for circularity and service-driven business models: resale, rental, repair, and performance-based contracts for technical textiles are structurally impossible without deep product-level data and their handling in seamless largely automated workflows across the value chain.
Objectives
The Strategic Roadmap for the Digital Transformation of the European Textile and Apparel Industry presents a coherent and forward-looking vision for the digital transformation of the European textile and apparel industry. It has been developed as a collective exercise within the DigitX Innovation Hub, bringing together industry leaders, technology providers, research organisations, and education and training experts from across the European textile ecosystem. The strategy aims to:
articulate a shared 2035 vision for a digitally integrated European textile and apparel industry;
identify the critical technology building blocks, innovation priorities, and structural enablers required to deliver on that vision;
assign concrete roles and actions to each stakeholder group across the value chain; and formulate clear, evidence-based recommendations to EU policy makers and programme managers.
It is intended both as a strategic compass for industry actors and as a structured input to ongoing European policy and funding decisions affecting the textile sector. The Strategic Roadmap for the Digital Transformation of the European Textile and Apparel Industry was published in May 2026 and presented at the Textile ETP Annual Conference 2026 in the Netherlands.
The Innovation Hub Activities
Learn
Gain knowledge through attending monthly webinars that focus on addressing the gaps within the value chain and staying updated on the most recent innovation trends. Delve into the recordings of the previous Innovation Hub activties (as well as our Textile Digitalisation Masterclass video library of 15+ hours of recorded expert presentations).
Network
Connect with stakeholders through engagement on the Community Platform and participation in trade fairs and events held within the Hub.
Collaborate
Meet relevant partners to establish business collaborations or build a European consortium to participate in projects.
Share
Publish your news in the Innovation Hub newsletter and share it with your fellow Hub members. Boost your visibility by sharing your content also via our LinkedIn.
Pricing and packages
A full-year learning and networking programme for the price of a 2-day conference ticket.
The membership in the Innovation Hub is a yearly recurring subscription, automatically renewed each year in January (see FAQs for the cancelations conditions). New joiners subscribing as of 1 July each year will be invoiced 60% of the yearly fee for the running calendar year. They will be automatically invoiced the normal yearly fee in January of the next calendar year, and all following years.
Who should subscribe and why?
The Innovation Hub is designed for textile professionals with a keen interest in artificial intelligence, digital supply chain and manufacturing.
Small, medium and large companies across the entire supply chain
Research/testing institutes and university departments
Professional associations and clusters
Consultancies and independent experts
The webinars and workshops are structured around the three most important innovation themes of digitalisation. They cover:
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More and more textile manufacturing processes move from analogue mechanical or chemical to fully digitally controlled and operated processes massively increasing the generation and exploitation of digital data. One of the most desirable features of digital processes is their extremely agility and efficiency even at small lot sizes. When digitally operated technology is seamlessly interconnected with real-time digital data flows, very precise and responsive on-demand production becomes possible, which is a massive value creator in highly complex and volatile end markets from fashion to niche technical textiles. Digitised and automated on-demand production systems have the potential to fundamentally transform todays global on-forecast textile manufacturing model and must be understood and explored by all forward-thinking companies.
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Being strictly data driven at the point of product conception/design allows to optimise the product not only for its functional performance and aesthetical value, but also enables smart decision making about production strategies & planning, sustainability and compliance, product placement and marketing messages as well as service and end-of-life aspects. For this designers and product developers need access to rich real-time data and powerful, but intuitive tools to rapidly turn creativity and innovative ideas into successful products. Understand what data is needed, what functionalities are offered by innovative AI-enabled technologies and what skills are required by industry professionals.
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The capacity to collect, analyse, exchange and strategically exploit digital data all along the supply chain will not only be a massive competitive advantage but literally a business license to operate. Regulators, public authorities and any consumer-facing company will simply demand all manufacturers, brands, distributors and retailers to produce reliable and verifiable data about all their processes, material, energy and other resource use, management and human resource practices. Companies that cannot deliver on those demands reliably and efficiently will risk being dropped from their respective supply chains. Whether such data becomes part of mandatory reporting, digital product passports, marketing claims, certificates, digital data spaces or blockchain ledgers is case-dependent, but companies without a digital data strategy will find it increasingly difficult to stay in business.
DigitX Innovation Hub’s News and Events
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The Innovation Hub Members
The logos displayed showcase only a selection of our Innovation Hub members. Some members have chosen to remain private and are not featured on our website.
