Lindström’s circular business model and We Care culture are highly motivating for me.
The culture and the circular economy business model attracted Tiina Tapionlinna when she joined Lindström. She found even more. “I love working in an international business environment where I can develop and make strategy come alive and see changes happen. My mission in the company is to develop our competitiveness, build enablers for scaling the business, and through that help save the planet”.
Prior to joining Lindström, Tapionlinna worked for other Finnish household names like Nokia, DNA, and the Posti Group. “Textile industry was a completely new field for me. However, the more research I did on Lindström, the more excited I became about the opportunities. I have vast experience in strategy and business development, program management, and business leadership, and I wanted to bring that to the company.” In her current role, she leads global development of Lindström’s service concepts and product portfolio and is responsible for IT in the group management team. She also owns the company’s transformation program that involves major IT and process renewal.
“We work closely with our customers and our customer interface to understand customer needs, gain insights about the trends in our customer industries, and incorporate them into service and product development”, Tapionlinna explains. “Lindström has been brave to start its digitalisation journey early on, and we keep on embracing new opportunities on that front. I fully believe in Lindström’s ability to adapt and evolve”.
With 23 countries of operations, fast-growing business, changing regulations and diverse customer segments, determining where to focus new service development efforts and resources becomes a complex task. “Luckily, we have recently implemented an agile operating model. We prioritise development activities together with our business leaders in Europe and Asia, we test the developments iteratively with customers and continuously adjust our priorities to best meet the customer needs.”
Lindström has been in business for more than 175 years. Tiina Tapionlinna is excited to see what the future holds. “By 2030, we will see substantial changes in materials, which requires new ways of thinking from our end as well. Renting will become much more common and take a bigger market share in the textile industry because it is so much better for the planet than the widespread purchase of new products”.