ETSA News

As part of our ongoing series highlighting ETSA members, we spoke with Retroflex, a specialist in retroreflective solutions for professional safety wear with more than 40 years of industry expertise.

In this interview, Allart Scholts, CEO of Retroflex, and Christof De Bruyn, Strategic Sales Advisor, share how the company is supporting the future of safe, durable, and more sustainable workwear through high-performance reflective materials designed for demanding industrial laundering environments. From certification and compliance to circularity and long-term garment performance, Retroflex brings a unique perspective across the entire textile services value chain.

What motivated your organization to join ETSA, and what do you hope to achieve through this partnership?

Joining ETSA felt like a natural next step for Retroflex. As a specialist in retroreflective solutions for safety wear, we operate at the intersection of product innovation and the textile services sector, supplying the materials that make workwear visible, safe, and certifiably compliant. ETSA brings together the full value chain of textile services at a European level, and we believe that being part of that conversation is essential.

Our CEO Allart Scholts, a second-generation owner and experienced specialist in retroreflective materials, is personally committed to this partnership and will be happy to work with ETSA members to find new solutions around circularity and sustainability. We hope to contribute our technical expertise to the broader community, gain insight into how our products perform across the rental and laundry cycle, and help shape best practices that benefit the entire sector.

Could you briefly introduce your organization and highlight the key strengths or areas of expertise you bring to the textile services sector?

Retroflex is a Dutch company with over 40 years of experience in the development,  processing, and distribution of retro-reflective materials for professional safety clothing. We operate between material producers, garment manufacturers, laundries and end-use applications, giving us a practical view across the full lifecycle of professional workwear.

We specialize in high-visibility and flame-retardant solutions, both sewn-on and heat-applied that meet and exceed the requirements of EN ISO 20471 and EN 469. Our customers, spread over Europe, also rely on Retroflex for tailor made solutions (designs, patterns, composition of materials), even in smaller quantities.

Christof De Bruyn has recently joined as Strategic Sales Advisor, with a specific focus on connecting Retroflex across all levels of the supply chain, from material development through to garment manufacturing, laundry, and rental services. Christof is active in the PPE & workwear & protective fabrics domain for more than 30 years. Together with Allart, they bring both technical expertise and broad market experience to the ETSA community.

Beyond expertise, Retroflex plays an important role in the European market by maintaining reliable stock availability for retroreflective materials and supporting partners with technical guidance on product quality, certification, and long-term performance compliance. Critically, we also take an active role in verifying the certification and quality of products on a European scale, providing partners with the assurance that the materials they use genuinely meet the safety standards they carry on the label.

How does your organization approach sustainability across its operations, particularly in areas such as resource efficiency, circularity, and extending the lifetime of textiles?

Sustainability is embedded in how we develop and engineer our products. Retroreflective materials that wash out prematurely or degrade quickly are not only a safety risk, they are a waste of resources. Our focus has always been on durability and wash resistance, which directly contributes to extending the useful life of safety garments and reducing the need for early replacement.

We invest in developing materials that maintain their reflective performance over a high number of industrial wash cycles, a particularly important quality criterion within textile rental and leasing systems. We strongly believe that safety solutions should not only perform in laboratory testing, but also under real industrial laundering conditions throughout the garment lifecycle.

CEO Allart Scholts is personally engaged in exploring how retroreflective materials can evolve to support circular garment models, and he brings decades of material knowledge to that challenge. We are committed to being a constructive partner for ETSA members seeking solutions where safety performance and sustainability goals go hand in hand — rather than in conflict.

How do you plan to leverage your membership in ETSA to exchange best practices and collaborate with other stakeholders across the textile service value chain?

We see ETSA as a platform for genuine, cross-sector dialogue. Retroreflective materials are often evaluated at the point of garment production, but their performance is ultimately proven,  or disproven, across repeated laundering cycles.

Christof De Bruyn, our Strategic Sales Advisor, is specifically tasked with building these connections across the supply chain, ensuring that Retroflex is present and engaged at every relevant level, from fabric and garment producers to laundry operators and textile rental companies.

Through ETSA's working groups and member network, we aim to collaborate on wash testing protocols, share insights on material behavior under industrial conditions, and help close the knowledge gap between garment manufacturer, laundry operator, and material supplier. Our experience with product quality, certification, and industrial wash performance also allows us to support partners when questions arise around compliance and long-term material performance within their supply chain.

Looking ahead, what are the main challenges and opportunities you see for the textile service industry, and how is your organization preparing to address them?

The textile services sector is facing several challenges: tightening sustainability regulations, increasing expectations around circularity, and the ongoing challenge of maintaining product performance and compliance within rental and lease models. For Retroflex, the biggest challenge, and opportunity, lies in developing retroreflective materials that can genuinely support circular garment systems without compromising on safety standards.

We are also watching the evolution of EU legislation closely, particularly around product durability and extended producer responsibility. In a market where long-term performance and compliance consistency are becoming increasingly important, we see growing value in supporting partners with technical guidance around product quality, certification, and compliance with relevant European safety standards.

Partners can rely on Retroflex not just as a supplier, but as a quality reference in a market that does not always make compliance easy to navigate. CEO Allart Scholts and Christof De Bruyn are both actively engaged in shaping how Retroflex responds to these shifts, combining deep material expertise with broad supply chain connectivity to ensure we are ready for what the industry demands next.