Claire Baillet (ikonō) Uncovers the Real Business Case for Standards at the SME Assembly

When Claire Baillet took part in one of the SME Assembly’s most technical sessions in Copenhagen, the room was already dense with founders, regulators, standards experts, journalists, and other entrepreneurs. The format was deliberately interactive — a workshop designed not for speeches, but for problem-solving.

Its objective was clear: to demonstrate how engagement in standard-setting can free time and money for SMEs, reduce compliance risk, and open access to new markets.

At its core, the session tackled a deceptively simple question: why should a small business invest scarce resources in standards, instead of focusing exclusively on day-to-day operations?

Baillet, founder of the Belgian swimwear brand ikonō, was invited as a concrete case study. Her company exemplifies how standards can help an SME build trust, streamline market entry, and reduce operational friction.

Sitting alongside Eszter Batta, Mette Peetz-Schou, and Andrea Raffaelli, she added a practical perspective to a debate often dominated by policy abstractions, discussing textiles, bodies, distribution networks, and the detailed mechanics of product credibility.

konō is young — two years old, three employees — yet the product it brings to market is structurally complex. The company designs inclusive, technical swimwear for women whose bodies have changed through breast cancer surgery, pregnancy, reconstructive procedures or age.

The concept emerged from Baillet’s own post-treatment experience, when she discovered how narrow the offering remained for women needing both support and aesthetics. Products were often either purely medical or targeted at younger bodies, leaving a large and growing market underserved.

In Belgium, France and Germany alone, over 140 000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, a figure that does not include the many women who experience non-oncological body transformations.

Baillet set out to fill that gap with precision. She collaborated with a designer trained in major luxury houses and with medical specialists at the Institut Bordet in Brussels to engineer swimwear that addresses specific physical constraints: supportive yet flexible fabrics, UV50 protection, reinforced zones for scar sensitivity, hidden pockets to stabilise prostheses, and fully recycled fibers certified by OEKO-TEX and GRS.

The brand’s name itself carries intention. “ikonō” blends the idea of an icon with the Japanese art of kintsugi, which repairs broken objects with gold. Every swimsuit contains a discreet rose-coloured trim and a vibrant pink lining — a direct reference to this philosophy and a subtle nod to the fight against breast cancer. It is not a marketing flourish; it is a structural part of the product’s identity.

Market validation arrived quickly. During its first year — a proof-of-concept phase focused on Belgium — roughly 1 000 women purchased ikonō products, a notable milestone for a brand with no initial visibility. From there, the company expanded carefully across Europe: 21 points of sale in Belgium, 6 in the Netherlands, 3 in Germany, and 6 in France, complemented by a growing e-commerce channel.

Each expansion required clear, credible and comparable documentation, especially given the medical-adjacent nature of the product.

This is where the workshop’s theme intersected directly with Baillet’s experience.

How standards become growth infrastructure for a micro-enterprise

The workshop was structured around a central dilemma: for SMEs operating under resource constraints, why should they allocate time to standardisation processes? The panelists explored the question from different angles — macroeconomic, regulatory, operational — and in this article, we focus on the practical insights shared by Claire Baillet, illustrating how standards can support SME growth.

Retailers, physiotherapists and medical boutiques did not evaluate ikonō like a conventional fashion brand. They requested proof: skin compatibility, textile safety for sensitive areas, UV resistance, prosthesis stability in water, environmental certifications and traceability. Without recognised standards, answering these demands would have required case-by-case persuasion in every new country.

Her co-speakers expanded on this logic. Standards reduce duplication of compliance efforts; they lower operational and legal risk; they provide SMEs with a shared technical vocabulary; and they streamline access to cross-border markets by reducing the need to adapt documentation for each national regulator or retailer. They also create comparability — a key asset for companies entering supply chains dominated by larger players.

But the workshop did more than highlight benefits. It examined the practical tools needed to make standardisation accessible: clearer pathways for SMEs, simplified documentation, more targeted support from Member States, and affordable participation in standards development processes.

It also emphasised the macro-economic stakes: Europe cannot regain competitiveness if standards — one of its comparative advantages — remain out of reach for the companies that make up 99% of its economy.

Baillet’s contribution made these ideas real. ikonō received very limited European support — a trademark registration grant and small design consultancy funding. Everything else, from certification to production scaling, was supported by private investors and a bank. Her challenge to policymakers was pragmatic: the standards themselves are useful; the issue is access.

The strength of her intervention lay in its operational relevance. She did not speak of “regulatory burdens” in general terms. She spoke of stitching tolerances, supplier documentation, the cost of textile testing, the expectations of medical distributors, and the need to align small-batch European production with stringent quality requirements.

In a week dominated by macro-level discussions, this was the granular perspective many attendees were seeking.

Ikonō’s expansion remains deliberately measured. The company continues to refine three core models rather than diversify too quickly. Future possibilities include activewear or post-operative apparel, but diversification will only occur once the current line is fully stabilised across markets.

Baillet’s approach prioritises product integrity over speed — a discipline increasingly rare in consumer goods, yet economically sound for a category defined by trust.

In the broader narrative of Europe’s competitiveness, ikonō illustrates a valuable insight. Innovation does not always emerge from frontier technologies or heavily capitalised scale-ups. It also emerges from micro-enterprises capable of engineering high-quality physical products, integrating standards from the start, and building cross-border credibility with minimal resources. For these companies, standards are not administrative obligations — they are infrastructure.

As the workshop closed, Baillet offered a final line that summarised her entrepreneurial philosophy: “Dream big and make it happen.” In the context of the SME Assembly, it read less as a motivational slogan than as a strategic principle: ambition matters, but execution — grounded in quality, standards and disciplined expansion — matters more.

By Dorothée Oké, journalist