FREITAG is a Swiss brand built on circular production: bags made from recycled truck tarpaulins, seatbelts, and bicycle inner tubes. Iconic, but operating in a market where scarce materials, rising costs, fast-fashion competitors claiming sustainability, and a holacratic structure that slows cross-team decisions all push at the same time.

We developed a strategic transformation plan to help FREITAG hold its position as a leader in sustainable fashion. The plan rests on three connected shifts: leadership and change management, digital transformation, and ecosystem collaboration across the value chain.

🔹 Three horizons
▪️ Digital Change Leaders. Embedding leaders within FREITAG's existing circles to bridge traditional craftsmanship and digital tools, addressing the accountability gaps that come with self-managed structures.
▪️AI Material Sourcing. Using AI and blockchain to accelerate the search for scarce tarpaulin materials and broaden the material portfolio, freeing FREITAG from a supply chain bottleneck that today depends on individual "truck spotters."
▪️ Co-creation F-ederation. Expanding FREITAG's existing loyalty program into a co-creation platform where customers, designers, and repair partners collaborate, turning customers into active participants in the circular system.

▪️ What this project taught me
A circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together. The interesting strategic question for FREITAG wasn't how to be more sustainable, but how to keep its circular model viable as it scales, and that turned out to be a question about people, partners, and technology as much as about products.
The core argument: a circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together.