“We want to show a completely new way to produce and sell fashion. Another world is possible” says Atacac founder Richard Lindqvist. With a renowned career as a fashion designer running his own studio as well as consulting mega brands such as Vivienne Westwood topped with a PhD he was ready for a new adventure. Together with Jimmy Herdberg, digital creative and founder of studio Kokokaka, he decided to try a new radical approach with starting a fashion studio that had very little in common with fashion production as we know it.
The studio – Atacac founded in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016, does not only apply innovative ideas on garment construction but also new models on how to sell and price products. Using 3D software traditionally used by the game industry, Atacac generates realistic 3D models of the garments and selling them online to customers instead of already existing products, cutting stock-holding and over production out from the production chain. The Atacac on-demand model is using pricing in the same way as flight tickets – the earlier products are purchased the better the price. Keeping the entire production chain in one spot can enable an end to end process of only a few days – something the bigger fashion brands can only dream of. Atacac is a fresh example of a small innovative player challenging a slow and unsustainable fashion industry, enabled by game technologies. But how does it work and what is its goal? Rickard and Jimmy elaborates on potential futures from their studio at Ringön.
Is Atacac a brand using new technologies in selling its products or a technology platform using a brand?
-We see Atacac as a creative fashion studio. This studio is elaborating with new technologies with the aim to reinvent the fashion industry. As a part of this, we do among other things run the Atacac brand and the Atacac micro-factory.
-We are currently elaborating with custom-made services together with some chosen customers. In this project, the customer downloads the 3D model together with the 2D pattern from our shareware section. She then re-designs the garment and sends the digital garment back to the Atacac micro-factory (aka 3d printer for garments) for production. We see a huge potential in making digital products available for consumers, which might eventually lead to major changes in how we relate to products, brands and production. Soon altering 3D models will be a public domain.
When launching Atacac as a service, what parts didn’t work as expected? What has been your main challenges building your business?
-Delays in producing abroad made us start our own in-house micro factory for being able to elaborate with super-quick turnover times. This was not a part of the original intention but turned out to be an important part of the creative work.
You are surfing global top trends using local manufacturing with short production cycles, on-demand production and unconventional pricing models towards a more sustainable fashion industry. Will it be possible for the bigger players in the industry to adopt this way of selling products?
-Our proposals for ways of working is primarily developed from a creative perspective. We believe that the consequences of a good creative work is profitable from many perspectives. Expressional, economical and sustainable ones for example.
-Yes, it will be possible for larger companies to adopt this way of working. Most companies will have to change the ways they work in order to still be around. Some will be successful in doing so while others will disappear and be replaced by new ones.
What is the end goal for Atacac? Will you scale up the core brand or rather keep it small selling the platform to other brands as a service? Will Atacac ever be a multi brand platform?
-Our goal is to develop creatively and to inspire. We change from day to day. We have no end goal, there is only the end of the day. Atacac as a brand will be scaled up, to which scale is an open question.
-In a way Atacac already is a multi brand platform. As a part of elaborating with the future of retail we recently we started a monthly Fashion-Art-Technology market, that we call F.A.T market, in our studio every last Saturday of the month. We invited other brands, artists and companies to sell their things next to our products. Some of the other fashion brands produce their garments in the Atacac micro factory. This could very well also develop into a virtual multi brand community as we deliver both a digital and a physical product from the factory.
