From 11:00 am until 2:00 pm on 19 January 2021, industry insiders will be shedding light on the current challenges facing the fashion industry in keynotes, deep dives and panel discussions and providing valuable forecasts and solutions.

Starting the ball rolling is neuroscientist Dr Maren Urner, with her keynote speech entitled Change the mindset. The focus here will be on the attitude-behaviour gap: a scientific phenomenon that involves consumers increasingly stating in studies that they attach importance to sustainability and are willing to spend more money on sustainably produced goods, yet other studies confirm that the price is still one of the most decisive purchasing criteria. This means that their actual consumer behaviour falls doesn’t live up to their good intentions. Dr Maren Urner will explain how to manage this dilemma and how our brains can be reprogrammed from powerlessness to sustainable action.

In the subsequent deep dive with Karin Ziegler from Blutsgeschwister and Lutz Dietzold from the German Design Council, she will be reflecting on why people act differently than they intend to and how our own attitudes will reflect our behaviour even more in the future.

Government-run certification label Grüner Knopf (Green Button) is inviting guests to a panel discussion: Sebastian Herold from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development will be joining Axel Schröder from Tchibo GmbH and Hannes Weber from Fond of to discuss where the Green Button stands two years after it was launched, how much progress has been made in terms of due diligence obligations from a company perspective and how this development will continue.

The fact that brands aren’t immune to the attitude-behaviour gap either is being proven by Christian Salewski from research start-up Flip. In his insight talk Sneaker Hunt – What happens to our old shoes?, he will be giving us a peek behind the scenes of one of the most hotly discussed videos in the industry last year: together with media such as NDR, Die Zeit and well-known celebrities, Flip has exposed the truth behind sneaker recycling and shown that they aren’t always recycled how the brands say they are.