Fashion tech: Spreadshirt as an investor and cooperation partner for start-ups

Ordering textiles and merchandise with customised designs and lettering online – Spreadshirt hit a nerve with this concept in the early 2000s and quickly became one of the most successful start-ups in Europe. 20 years later, the Spread Group is one of the established brands in the German fashion and textile industry. A turnover of 169 million euros (2020) in 170 countries speaks for itself. To further drive innovation, the company has launched its own start-up programme – Spread Ventures. We spoke to Robin Nitsch, Head of Ventures and Innovation, about the background and the current cooperation with the start-up Living Ink.

Robin, what is the motivation behind your start-up programme?

Spread Ventures is centred around the core values that we have pursued at Spreadshirt since our early days: Technology and innovation as drivers of business development. As an investor and cooperation partner, we can support young talents and game changers in the field of fashion tech and at the same time bring expertise into our company in order to become more visible as an innovation leader ourselves.

How do you find suitable start-ups and what criteria do you use to select cooperation partners?

We find our partners through all kinds of channels, at start-up events and textile trade fairs, on LinkedIn or through recommendations from our network. We pay particular attention to companies from the fields of fashion tech, creator economy, circular fashion and digital fashion. As an investor, we are primarily interested in exciting technologies. When it comes to collaborations, we tend to look at whether we and the startup can help each other and whether our operational business will benefit from the technology.

How are your collaborations organised beyond investments?

I am very happy that we have a lot of creative freedom at Spread Ventures and can be really flexible in determining which type of collaboration is most suitable in each case. Depending on the product, we bring the founders together with the right contacts at our company. The aim is always to try something out together and then see: Does it meet our quality standards? Can it be scaled up? And is there any demand at all?

One of your cooperation partners is Living Ink. What excited you personally about this start-up?

Living Ink produces sustainable, CO2-absorbing ink from microorganisms. The exciting thing for me was that we were able to try out very quickly how this was received. In summer 2023, for example, we equipped the team at the Leipzig MACHN Festival with T-shirts based on Living Ink.

Were there any particular hurdles you had to overcome with this collaboration?

Yes, the ink has a few special features that require further testing. For example, it is not yet suitable for digital printing, which we use for mass production, as the ink can initially only be used in the screen printing process. We are now looking at how we can further develop the product together. And for customers who say that sustainability is important to them, thanks to Living Ink we can already offer a particularly environmentally friendly print in addition to T-shirts in the best organic cotton.

Can you give us an outlook? What is your current vision for Spreadshirt’s start-up programme?

Now it’s all about expanding our portfolio and our team. We hope that our work will inspire other companies to utilise new technologies and operate more sustainably.

Kontakt

Website: www.spread.ventures

LinkedIn: Robin Nitsch