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Tailored Industry, a knitwear manufacturing startup based at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in New York City, is pioneering automating knitting sweaters and making them order instead of making thousands that then have to be trashed if no one buys them.
At present, in the era of fast fashion. Fashion’s trash is a titanic problem. This is partly a planning problem: When brands try to project demand for a particular shirt or dress, they often end up making far too many clothes.
By one estimate, 30% of the 150 billion garments produced each year are never sold.
By using software to connect brands to its 3D knitting machines. Tailored Industry, at its facility, uses Japanese-made knitting machines that can knit the sleeves and body of a sweater simultaneously without any cutting and sewing–another step that reduces waste compared to some other methods of production.
Tailored Industry’s on-demand model drastically reduces over-production throughout the fashion supply chain.
Tailored Industry’s on-demand model enables fashions brands to launch new products both quickly and affordably, while providing production solutions that aim to precisely match supply with demand. This is all made possible through the tremendous work of its employees, including software engineering, advanced manufacturing, and marketing.
“Right now, fashion brands are really stuck in long planning cycles,” says Alex Tschopp, one of the founders of Tailored Industry.
“The whole process takes a year to two years. What really results from that is a lot of overproduction because they’re producing based on the forecast of what they think they need. And what we’re doing is basically bringing the minimum order quantity to zero, so that we can produce exactly what they need when they need it,” Alex Tschopp added.
Sustainability
Tailored Industry’s on-demand model drastically reduces over-production throughout the fashion supply chain. On-demand is a pull-based system, where demand from a customer prompts a garment to be made, instead of the traditional push-based system where forecasted demand drives production quantities.
Its 3D knitting machines virtually eliminate raw materials waste; each garment creates less than 1% excess material. As well as local manufacturing reduces shipping and creates advanced manufacturing jobs.
