The Mills Fabrica Hosts H&M Foundation’s Impact Accelerator Program in Hong Kong
The Mills Fabrica, the core partner of the H&M Foundation Global Change Award (GCA), hosted the 2023 award winners during "Hong Kong Week". As part of the GCA Impact Accelerator program, winners embark on week-long activities in Hong Kong, Stockholm, and New York to provide them with the tools, connections, and resources necessary for early-stage innovations to move ideas to scale as quickly as possible.
To enhance the winners' understanding of Asia's unique business landscape for planning and development in the region, The Mills Fabrica hosted bespoke investment workshops, branding and media workshops, as well as networking sessions with various brands and startup ecosystem players. The winners were also invited to a series of tours at the prototyping labs at The Mills Fabrica, research and development facilities at The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA), and manufacturers based in the Greater Bay Area (GBA).
Launched for close to a decade, the H&M Foundation Global Change Award aims to find, support, and scale disruptive ideas that can protect the planet and transform the textile industry into a planet-positive one. It identifies ideas that apply disruptive technology and new business models to change the way garments are designed, produced, shipped, bought, used, and recycled. Since 2019, The Mills Fabrica has been partnering with the H&M Foundation Global Change Award (GCA) to provide support to the winners. Each year, the 10 GCA winners are entitled to a year-long Impact Accelerator Program, which is tailored to support the winners in developing and scaling their innovation for impact. The program includes coaching and support from the H&M Foundation, and Accelerator Partners The Mills Fabrica, Accenture, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
As a core partner, The Mills Fabrica brought the H&M Foundation GCA Impact Accelerator Program to Hong Kong from October 16-20, and specially designed to offer the award winners the opportunities to learn, connect, and tap into the Asian markets through specially curated tours of manufacturers and research facilities, workshops and fireside chats by industry experts around investment readiness.
With the aim of showcasing the city and the region's strength in the fashion industry from research and development, production, and manufacturing, the Hong Kong Week program is designed to offer the award winners the opportunities to learn, connect, and tap into the Asian markets through specially curated tours of manufacturers and research facilities, workshops and fireside chats by industry experts around investment readiness.
In addition to Hong Kong, the winners also spent week-long visits to the major hub of the global fashion industry — Stockholm, and will be taking their next journey to New York in 2024.
