Zilingo Builds on Sustainability Promise; to Showcase Sustainable Fabrics in ‘The Digital Material Show’ in Partnership with Material Exchange

Singapore, July: With an aim to exhibit its extensive sustainable fabric library, Zilingo will upload and showcase its sustainable fabrics in The Digital Material Show starting from July 15 till August 15. This is a further step in Zilingo’s partnership with Material Exchange to provide certified, organic, natural and recycled fabrics.

The ‘Digital Material Show’ will showcase over 4000 fabrics available to everyone with a participation of around 400 material suppliers paving way for clients, suppliers and sellers to connect and network and find the right industry connections.

Speaking on its participation, Jimit Shah, Sustainability Lead for Zilingo said, “At the start of 2020, Zilingo saw an increasing demand for sustainable fabrics that are recycled, organic or plant-based and sought to provide an accessible way for fashion businesses to discover a broader range of fabrics online. We also found digital samples to be more sustainable as they speed up the lengthy traditional sampling process, reducing the need for redundant samples and waste as a result. As a company, we have sought to open channels to this dialogue and are pursuing steps on providing ways to build efficient means like providing sustainable fabrics and adopting a sustainable way of functioning.”

Promoting the use of sustainable materials can introduce an environment-friendly change in the notoriously wasteful fashion industry. The company has worked with 30 sustainable fabric suppliers with approximately 400 fabrics and used proprietary methods from Material Exchange to digitize their materials where they were published on the Zilingo Trade platform, and on Material Exchange to enable brands to plug these fabrics into their product life-cycle management (PLM) software.

“The partnership with Zilingo is something we are very proud of, it is a great example of the industry working together to create transformational change and promote new levels of much-needed sustainability and transparency within fashion supply chains. Zilingo is a ground-breaking organisation that really breaks down barriers when it comes to driving change, and we are thrilled that they have chosen to take part in our Digital Material Show to showcase sustainable materials and discuss their ongoing work on sustainability with an interactive webinar,” said Darren Glenister, CEO of Material Exchange.

To encourage the use of digital samples for sustainable fabrics, Zilingo focused on improving digital discoverability, increasing transparency in the supply chain and lowering barriers to

trade finance. A range of technologies was used to trace raw material to the finished product to ensure that the properties claimed are present in the fabric, such as with organic cotton. And finally, we lowered the barrier to access to trade finance for various upstream parties by offering access to capital on our Zilingo Trade platform. This encouraged businesses to adopt the use of sustainable materials even if they may not have the liquidity to support the required payment terms.

Zilingo is also working with a number of world-leading mills across Asia (such as KG Group) that have the fabric and textile expertise to develop efficient and certified sustainable products without compromising on price and quality. These manufacturing hubs in India and South Asia are becoming hotbeds for sustainable materials.

Along with the digital showcase, Zilingo will also host a webinar “Supply Chain Sustainability; the Future of Fashion” presented by Indi Davis, Senior PMO and Jimit Shah, Sustainability Lead – South Asia, Zilingo on July 22. The webinar will expand on Zilingo’s efforts at the digital disruption to support sustainability in the material supply chain.

About Zilingo:

Zilingo is a technology platform powering the global supply chain. It was founded in 2015 by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor with a vision to use technology to put responsible and efficient business within everyone’s reach. The platform enables users to have a fair, connected and transparent supply chain for all and offers access to technology, financing and production solutions at the same time. Zilingo leverages cloud technology, data and AI to optimize production timelines and aggregate global demand.