Can a clothing company survive without new products? Asket is betting on a yes
The Swedish independent brand is ending new launches and shifting to a permanent collection after releasing its final product, betting on quality and sustainability over fast fashion.
This autumn, independent Swedish menswear label Asket will release its 50th and final product for men: a pair of Italian merino-wool trousers. The move is part of the brand’s ambition to refine its collection into a permanent catalogue. Instead of chasing novelty for the sake of catching customer interest, it aims to perfect the manufacturing of each piece. In other words, Asket is eschewing a business model followed by pretty much every other fashion brand.
“There’s talk about improvements needed to address sustainability in the fashion industry,” August Bard Bringéus, co-founder of Asket, tells Monocle. “But it all comes down to overconsumption and overproduction.” His business partner and fellow co-founder, Jakob Dworsky, agrees. “The industry hasn’t figured out how to make a business work by selling fewer but better products,” he adds. “There is short-term thinking in that sense. We put the product first because it’s what our customers come back for.”
Since the brand’s founding in 2015, Asket has built a reputation for its European manufacturing, natural fibres and fair price point. The company’s 2024 turnover was SEK156m (€14.1m) and this year’s projected growth is conservatively pegged at 10 per cent. With a flagship in Stockholm and a new outpost in London, the brand is expanding its retail footprint, if not its inventory. Still, minimalism remains the order of the day, and the aesthetic – plain white T-shirts, straight-leg jeans and neutral knitwear – most definitely reflects the philosophy. “It’s easy to get distracted but we’ve stayed disciplined when it comes to sticking to what we said we’d do,” says Bringéus. “That’s part of the reason why we’re still around.”
asket.com
