We boost the Circular Transition of Fashion

“EVERY SCRAP IS A RESOURCE“

Atelier Riforma is an innovative social startup with the mission of facilitating the sustainable management of post-consumer textile waste and promoting the transition towards a more circular fashion production and consumption model.

Once upon a time…

Born as a social project in 2019 and then becoming a company in 2020, Atelier Riforma started from an idea that was then out of the chorus: to create a network of tailors, designers and social tailoring workshops who would transform discarded garments to give them more value and put them back into circulation on a sales platform. This is how, when people was not talking about circular fashion yet, we launched the first Italian ecommerce dedicated to upcycling in 2020.

We used to collect discarded clothing from individuals and organisations, carefully catalogue them, and then distribute them to our network of ‘upcyclers’. Day after day, the network has grown to more than 25 sartorial entities, spread all over Italy. These included several social tailor shops, which promote the labour inclusion of disadvantaged people such as migrants, ex-prisoners and women victims of violence.

Never heard of upcycling? Find out in this podcast recorded for the documentary ‘Intrecci Etici’.

This experience allowed us to understand how difficult it is to manage used clothing in a sustainable way, and especially direct it to the best repurposing method.

Each garment has in fact unique characteristics that influence the chances of it being reused, recycled or re-tailored.

We decided to transform this challenge into an opportunity and so the idea of Re4Circular was born in 2021.

Re4Circular

Re4Circular is an innovative technology (for which we’re filing a patent!) that aims to help stakeholders in the end-of-life-clothing field to redirect each garment towards the most suitable circular destination.

It is a digital platform that connects the entities dealing with the collection or sorting of used clothes (as well as fashion brands with deadstock or take-back services) with the circular fashion businesses, that need them in their resale, recycling or upcycling activities.

Supporting such platform is an Artificial Intelligence technology for the automatic cataloguing and digitalization of post-consume textile waste, which extracts the useful data from the picture and label of each garment.

Re4Circular is not a technology that Atelier Riforma uses only internally, but a technological tool that we provide to any organisation that needs it, anywhere.
It is thanks to this lean and scalable business model that we are now able to apply our circular approach on a much larger scale.

Our dream? Making sure no garment becomes waste after being used, but instead keeps being re-used, transformed and recirculated, creating economic value and new employment.

To learn more and stay updated, visit our Re4Circular landing page!

Co-Founder

Sara Secondo, co-founder e COO

Born in 1991, Sara has an interdisciplinary, legal background, has always been active in association work and is certified as a social impact assessor.

Elena Ferrero, co-founder e CEO

Born in 1993, Elena has an interdisciplinary background in science, is passionate about dissemination and has gained experience in the startup and innovation.

Our Team

For the Artificial Intelligence part we collaborate with three young engineers, for the platform development we collaborate with the company Huulke, and every year great interns join our team!

Finally, supporting us is a long list of mentors and advisors as well as a large ecosystem dedicated to social innovation.

Check out all our partners on the Home page!

Over the years we have received several awards and constant attention from the press. Below you can find the most recent articles about us and the biggest awards we have won.