I went to visit Circkit expecting a conversation about sustainability software. What I got was a full-on masterclass in what the future of fashion could actually look like if we stop guessing and start measuring. Owner Joe Darwen and his team aren’t just building tools, they’re building an entirely different mindset.
If there’s one revelation I made during my visit, it’s that most fashion brands are designing in the dark. We throw around words like “impact” and “sustainability” and “circularity,” but we rarely know what that actually looks like in numbers, let alone build our design process around it. Circkit is trying to fix that. Not with campaigns, but with code.
Joe and the team took me through the platform and honestly, it’s not just smart, it’s necessary. And In hindsight I’m so surprised it hasn’t been done already. Their platform gives you real-time insights on the environmental footprint of your products before anything is made. I’m talking carbon, water, energy, land use, chemical exposure, even planetary boundaries, not as a generic brand statistic, but per product. It’s all mapped out from raw materials to end-of-life, and you can compare different design options right there in the system. Want to know whether a bamboo blend or a recycled poly is better for the planet and then your EPR bill on top of it all? The answer’s one click away.
This isn’t just a reporting tool. It’s a design tool. They call it Simulate, and that’s exactly what it does, it lets you simulate your designs based on real environmental data. So instead of scrambling to fix things post-production, you’re building impact reduction into your process from day one. You can optimise your materials, your Bill of Materials (BOM), durability scores, even tailor end-of-life strategies like repair, resale, or full recycling based on how your garments are built.
And this isn’t hypothetical. Joe showed me how brands can use Circkit to set reduction targets at the product level, which means those lofty brand-wide sustainability goals suddenly become a lot less fluffy. You’re not just “aiming to reduce carbon”, you’re physically designing it out, one product at a time. And that’s how it becomes business-as-usual, not a side project.
The other thing that blew my mind was their digital product passports. Every garment that runs through Circkit gets its own digital identity, visible via QR codes on the clothing label and a widget on your website. It shows the full lifecycle of that product: emissions, materials, care instructions, and where it should go after the customer’s done with it. That visibility isn’t just for brands. Consumers can access it too. So for once, transparency doesn’t just sit on a sustainability page buried four clicks deep. It’s built into the product itself.
We also talked about Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) which admittedly I knew nothing about and is the looming beast most brands are still underestimating. Circkit actually helps you model what EPR could cost you in different regions at the design stage. Joe gave the example of M&S potentially facing a £40 million fine for not accounting for their packaging waste and that’s just the start. Fashion’s about to feel this too, especially in Europe. Circkit lets you get ahead of that instead of waiting for legislation to bite you later.
Then we got into the really juicy bit, how this all connects to money. Joe wasn’t saying Circkit handles revenue modelling (yet), but he did make a very strong case for why fashion brands need to understand the potential for multi-stream income. Sell a product once, sure. But what if you could also rent it? Or take it back and resell it again? Or break it down and sell the raw material to a recycler? That’s three revenue hits off one item, and it’s not just theory, it’s already being trialled by forward-thinking brands. Circkit isn’t doing that side directly, but it is giving brands the insights to make those models work. If you can track your product from start to finish, you can start building actual circular roadmaps, not just vibe-based, shot in the dark style predictive strategies.
By the end of our meeting, I wasn’t thinking about greenwashing or reporting. I was thinking about how much more profitable fashion could be if it actually listened and accepted innovation. Joe and his team are building the digital infrastructure to finally make circular fashion make sense; technically, operationally, and financially.
Circkit proves that data doesn’t have to be dry. It can be empowering. And when done right, it doesn’t just reduce impact, it unlocks growth. I left our meeting genuinely surprised that this is something only being implemented now and the fact that not everyone is doing this already just makes me excited to be one of the first.