Blue Cast: Björn Bengtsson on the Downside of Data and His Love of Denim
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of Episode 605.
According to Untuckit’s chief product and supply chain officer Björn Bengtsson, e-commmerce’s rise at the turn of the century ushered in a massive shift in the fashion industry. Whereas fashion designers were once treated like “gods,” now the power lies with product. This trend has only accelerated as digital channels and adoption expanded, as he explained to Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan on the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast.
“Right now, we have a little bit of wild west in the industry, because we have so many different channels, and we have so many different things that drive businesses—from culture to subcultures to influencers—and all of these enormous, vast quantity of brands that is in the market,” Björn. “There’s a lot of brands that are great, but they might not reach the audience because there’s so much noise in the market.”
Digitalization has also vastly increased the data available to brands. However, just because companies can react to consumer demand, doesn’t mean they should “blindly follow” the data. Instead of playing things safe, he suggested taking risks in order to maintain an element of surprise for the consumer.
“We have just too much product that looks the same, because data has driven us all together a little bit. We better start to innovate and design again if we want to do something with this industry,” Björn said. “If we want to attract the consumers again and walk into our stores, come and shop our brands, we probably have to go backwards a little bit.”
The spark for Björn’s career in fashion started during college when he worked in a men’s clothing store. Post graduation, he worked at a neckwear company in his native Sweden before decamping for the U.S. to study at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. Decades later, he heads up design, product development and production at Untuckit. He is also an educator, having taught at Parsons School of Design for roughly 20 years.
His love of denim goes back earlier. In high school, it was Levi’s shrink to fit styles, followed by slimmer fits from Helmut Lang. Today, he is partial to a 15 oz., raw denim that he can “wear ‘til they fall apart.” With a closet of denim with varying levels of breaking in, he can pick pairs that are crisper to be more formal and distressed jeans for casual looks.
“The magic with denim is really you can…dress it up, but you can dress it down,” he said.
What Björn is not personally a fan of is manufactured wear like holes. “The true denim is the most beautiful denim, and fashion aspects of denim I think sometimes go a little bit too far,” he said.
Listen to the full conversation here.