Fashion-tech, AKA the least sexy thing in the world.

At this point we’ve put out the investor May-Day signal for a whole year now, part in sincerity but mostly as a curious fool’s errand. This is probably among the worst times in history to propose fashion-tech, as Venture Capital locks in on Defence and “Sustainability” is leet-speak for consumer-friendly hyper consumption. And the truth is, we have no idea where to place ourselves because KURB isn’t a bunch of MBA students locked in a room trying to trick you into the truth. KURB is the truth, and we’ve just tricked ourselves out of the room. What I mean by this is, after a year’s learning journey in business events of all sizes and specialities- I’m here to tell you what you all already knew: Fashion-tech is just as sterile as it sounds.

We rebranded to KURB around this time last year. By serendipity it coincided with our participation at NEST. NEST is a short incubator program for fashion adjacent start-ups hosted between different INK labs in Sweden and headquartered in Borås. JP, co-founder of KURB, has a haphazard relationship to this city- it’s also where we first met, had McDonalds and swam together. What drew us back this time was our entrepreneurial curiosity to understand what the fashion-tech startup landscape looks like in Sweden. Though it was an eye-opening opportunity where we met a lot of interesting projects, there was a clear disconnect between what KURB was doing, mostly as an entirely digital product and what the NEST program specialised in accelerating. Nevertheless, we endeavoured to make the most of that opportunity and came out of it with more business chops then we went into it with. In reflection, it was one of the more sincere Fashion Startup environments I have been in. Would we do it again? Likely not. But to be fair - we had no expectations and also received next to nothing. Empty promises are a big part of early stage entrepreneurship, not one of KURB’s virtues unfortunately.

Around this time I was manically looking at what’s out there in the Swedish start-up ecosystem and somehow scored ourselves into The Drop 50’s, offering us attendance to The Drop hosted by Pale Blue Dot in Malmö over summer. This is a more general sustainability investment business conference. It’s largely composed of investors in the circular, sustainability and climate-tech sector. It wasn’t a perfect fit for KURB but there was clearly enough overlap given our inclusion. This was also a point of inflection for KURB where I learned that we’re skipping a few start-up steps being in this space next to million-dollar-invested startups. Really not because of our revenue difference but more that a lot of these companies need millions of dollars to make technologies that greenwash off-shore mining and rebrand disposability as circularity. Often I feel stupid for sincerely caring about circular consumption in these spaces where investors are more interested in reciting commercial lingo: LTV, ARR, TAM ad nauseum. Embarrassingly enough it took me some time to understand that the primary concern of any investor is getting a return, and anything past that is virtue signalling. Having said that, I really enjoyed The Drop, and met a lot of really great people and entrepreneurs. There were some eye opening moments for me during the event though I still felt largely disorientated in these spaces.

In November we went to SLUSH 2025, which was our biggest business trip, but also a large part was to meet (in my humble opinion) a legendary fashion tech-wear shit poster and hang out. SLUSH is interesting in a lot of ways, one being that for Helsinki being a relatively small city residing in a cold tundra, they attract an international crowd of entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and Investors, so much so it seems like the event takes over the city for its duration. Another element being how incredibly well organised and smooth it is for being run mostly by students and young adults. Also the calibre of international speakers was truly phenomenal. Though at times I found it hard to distinguish between the genuinely successful entrepreneurs speaking and these 20 min monologues about products which had me reflexively looking for the “Skip Ad” button. Famously as part of SLUSH there is a pitch competition where a startup has the opportunity to win €1,000,000 from established VC’s. This year felt extremely fake, the start ups who made the final round could barely be called early stage. The winner of this competition was perhaps one of the most sinister precision Defence technologies I have ever seen, had already secured millions of dollars in US defence contract money and had a Hollywood level CGI advert embedded in their pitch. I felt like it undermined the spirit of the competition, but it was a solid reminder that investors are looking for safe investments. And in this historical moment why wouldn’t you place your bets on the guys pointing revolutionary space imaging technology at high-profile military targets veiled by a James Cameron level CGI advert as the new lens for mankind. Yes I am bitter about that, but also many more things irked me about the event. Firstly, I really squandered our opportunity to meet more businesses and network more. Secondly, it finally struck me that the design of this whole event as being so nightclub-esque isn’t just reflecting the tastes of the organisers but also is to cater to the senior business people who attend. Wouldn’t Helsinki, a relatively remote city in the corner of the world, be the perfect place for you, as a middle-aged/elderly business executive, to turn-up the creepy promiscuity? There’s something to be said there, but I was really too busy desperately wanting to chill with the chronically online lads in discrete bars than participate in the afterparty antics. Which we did, along with a Sauna (where we saw a seal) and were taken to maybe my new favorite art gallery: EMMA. In summary SLUSH was great. I would go back, but ideally better prepared and with a clearer idea of what I wanted to achieve for KURB there.

This brings us to our latest and worst business event, TECHARENA 2026, here in Stockholm. This was by far our most accessible event- it’s hosted about 10minutes away from where I live. It felt kind of like a Walmart version of SLUSH, both in organisation and aesthetic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the kind of entrepreneurial clout to attract the same kind of start-studded line up of startup speakers and the technological problems were awful. There were really weird sort of “Adult ball pit esque” events scattered around the event, while I am all for schadenfreude they still left something to be desired. Despite all that, we met our most important business connection to date. After the one event at 8am on the first day that had an incredible match for KURB, we spent the remaining day and next day kind of ambling around talking to people, allowing me to stew on how fashion-tech is truly the most self-destructive thing someone can do with themselves at these events. I am excited to never return.

After a year’s long journey of trying to understand “what the fuck do we do at these business conferences” a lot was learned along the way. The events that mimicked the designs of gaming-arcade halls with dizzying RGB lights and flashy billboards did so to distract from their inability to project any kind of intrinsic business value- acting more like a glorified 48hour sponsorship reel. It resolved our suspicion that uttering “Fashion-tech Platform” to a culture which struggles to avert their gaze from Elon Musk’s Twitter feed is just as dreadful as we imagined. Ultimately, our sense of alienation from these spaces likely stems from our blind devotion to improving the fashion industry. While it may rank first among industries in terms of exploitation and waste we are not so cynical to believe another AI B2B SaaS will lead us to the promised circular fashion lands. Instead we believe that this shift will come from bringing together all the incredible flourishes of creativity within the ecosystem and harnessing that momentum for the world to see. And it’s that opportunity that motivates KURB to press on and do our bit to revolutionize the secondhand designer space.