Benim Denim: The Worlds First Startup Designed To Shut Down

Many brands come into the market with the idea to grow and develop as a staple. One brand is changing that motto with a mantra to shut it all down as soon as possible. Benim Denim is aiming to shut down. Founded by Haisam Mohammed and Noah Bramme, Benim Denim;’s launch on December 27, 2022, marked a new journey for the lifecycle of fashion.

As its success pillar, Benim Denim is the first start-up designed and structured to shut down. Simply, once all the material is gone, the doors on the studio will clothes. But, to the avail, brands old and new have an opportunity to adopt this in arbitrary ways.

“When companies scale up, production does as well. Even the most clairvoyant operations are likely to over-order or overproduce. From time to time, [it’s] leaving the company with inventory that can’t be sold – otherwise known as dead stock,” says co-founder Noah Bramme.

Most brands have no vision to shut their doors once their material has diminished. They tend to innovate in ways that require more consumption. Benim Denim is exploring and experimenting with a concept of a closed-looped fashion design trend.

Bramme describes it, “our idea was to take the dead stock at hand and turn it to life. Starting a brand that is only running as long as the dead stock denim roll allows us to. As soon as we’re out of the 170-meter roll, we’re shutting down the brand for good.”

The ready-to-wear brand Benin Denim conjured a question between the two founders; “How do we start a brand today when the fashion industry accounts for 8-10 percent of global emissions?” As noted by Benim Denim CEO and co-founder, Bramme. Mohammed has already broken ground in the fashion industry with his Unifrom fragrance brand, another passion project stemming from East African cultural influences.

“We’re both interested in fashion and have time and time discussed the possibilities of founding a fashion brand together. Sometimes more serious than others. But the discussions kept circling back to the same subject,” Bramme recalls.

In 2021, the founding duo met with Nora Eslander, Head of Communications for Renewcell, a fast-growing Swedish textile recycling company with innovative technology changing the global textile industry. The goal is to recycle the equivalent of more than 1,4 billion t-shirts every year by 2030.

Renewcell produces Circulose®, a textile for fashion that is 100 percent recycled, recyclable, biodegradable, and of virgin-equivalent quality. The branded dissolved pulp is 100 percent textile waste, worn-out clothes, and production scraps.

”This is such an intriguing concept,” notes Renewcell Head of Communications, Eslander. “Working through an analogy, Benim Denim subversively connects ’hype-marketing’ tactics to the abstract but very real physical constraints of climate and environment. No Drop B, No Planet B. It is also a comment on a dilemma that this generation’s emerging creatives are struggling to solve. How do you turn your born-sustainable deadstock brand into a living once you get traction? Can you escape compromising on your values as you grow?”

“We believe this will be the zeitgeist of modern-day creatives going forward,” Bramme identifies. “Simply building brands out of lust and profit will lose its cool. But we’re firm believers that the next generation of creatives will continue to bring cool, fresh, crafted ideas to the world – just in a quite different way than the generations before us.”

The idea is a bold attempt to change the thinking of fashion designers, or any designers, for that matter. Utilizing materials according to availability rather than preference challenges the artist, and keeps trends in looming threat, something fun to think about in fashion.

Bramme concludes by explaining that “‘Start-up, shut-down,’ is a system more than anything. Even though we intend to put Benim Denim to the grave, we still see opportunities in turning more brands’ dead stock to life. Say that next time we’re looking to make furniture; maybe we could collaborate with an eyewear company with excess acetate.” Ideas are endless concerning the fleeting canvas, the recycled textiles.