Sports & leisure
Challenge: Providing comfort and style with a clear conscience
More and more people are realizing that the fast fashion of the past cannot be a model for today – including when it comes to sportswear. They’re looking for beautiful, functional, and individualized sportswear that goes easy on natural resources and is produced in a more socially responsible way. Manufacturers face the challenge of responding to this need while streamlining and digitalizing their production processes. With our high-tech materials, we’re helping to realize the vision of an inspiring, more sustainable sports & leisure industry.
Status: Future-oriented creativity from head to toe
When choosing their sportswear, consumers expect maximum performance, comfort, and functionality. But they expect this to come with as little harm to our environment as possible – particularly those who enjoy outdoor sports.
Luckily, our INSQIN® technology combines both characteristics seamlessly. Functional clothing made with INSQIN® is characterized by excellent waterproofness. This is achieved by two layers of coating that are waterborne instead of solvent-based. Together with up to 56% renewable content, this can reduce the garment’s overall carbon footprint. And manufacturers can easily adapt the coating’s breathability and water resistance to its end-use, whether that’s in jackets, caps, gloves, backpacks, or sports shoes. INSQIN® can even be 2D printed onto recycled material, without loss of durability, touch, or feel.
Of course, to meet these ambitious consumer needs, sports & leisure manufacturers need to produce more and more quickly. This makes 2D digital printing an especially valuable technology. Products like Desmomelt® U – our hot-melt adhesives for automated application – reduce the processing steps and waste production associated with manual application, particularly for shoe manufacturers.
Next: Greener fashion and high-tech wearables
The transition from fast fashion to greener fashion has only just begun. Together with our partners, we will further expand our efforts to create the more sustainable fashion concepts of the future. In addition, we’re intensifying our research and development activities in novel, high-tech lifestyle components such as wearables and goggles. Not least thanks to functional coatings like antifog and polarization films, these can offer real added value for end-consumers around the globe.
