Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep 28. AI Robotics for Fabrics and the Future of Stitchless Garment Making with Cam Myers
151 Plays1 day ago
This episode goes deep into the complexity of how our clothes are cut and sewn today and what it will take to rebuild apparel manufacturing for the 21st century. Mili Tharakan is joined by Cam Myers, Founder, CEO and Board Director of CreateMe Technologies, who shares how his team is pioneering an autonomous, stitchless tailoring platform that brings together robotics, advanced adhesives and what he calls “Physical AI.”
Cam is a seasoned entrepreneur and inventor with two decades of experience across automation, hardware, software, and apparel tech, he has built CreateMe from concept to industry pioneer, securing 25 patents for apparel automation innovations. Before CreateMe, Cam played key roles at DoubleClick (during its $3.1B sale to Google) and Group Commerce, a venture‑backed e‑commerce platform later acquired by Blackhawk Network. He began his career in investment banking at Allen & Company and holds an MA from Cambridge and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School, with further studies at MIT in advanced manufacturing.
Key takeaways
- Why apparel remains one of the most labor‑intensive, offshored industries in the world, employing tens of millions of people and relying heavily on manual sewing.
- What makes sewing so hard to automate: unstable textile physics, extreme variability in fabrics and fits, and the need for human‑like perception and dexterity in three‑dimensional space.
- How CreateMe’s bonded garment technology uses printed adhesive patterns that mimic stitch files, enable fully automated assembly, and can be made thermo‑reversible for disassembly and recycling.
- Where this platform is already being applied—starting with categories like women’s underwear—and the range of fabrics, constructions, and embellishments it can support, from fine silks to complex laminations.
- The vision for on‑shoring and “microfactories of the future”: compact, high‑throughput production cells capable of million‑unit annual output, shorter lead times, and closer proximity to key consumer markets
- What this shift could mean for inventory risk, responsiveness, sustainability, and the economics of producing apparel in high‑wage regions.
- Cam’s founder journey from investment banking and high‑growth tech and e‑commerce ventures to building CreateMe into an apparel automation pioneer with a growing portfolio of patents—and why textiles should be seen as critical infrastructure, not just fashion trends.
London Sewing Machine museum: www.museumslondon.org
🎧 Recommended listening:
Ep 6. AI for Zero waste fabric, Sustainability and Traceability in Textile Factories
Ep 13. 3D Weaving yarn to garment and zero inventory circular fashion
Connect with me
Mili Tharakan: Linkedin I Insta I Website I Buy me a coffee
❤️ If you enjoyed this, please share the episode with a friend or colleague. Subscribe and leave a review, I love to hear your feedback.
Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash
Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to No Ordinary Cloth Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we explore innovations bubbling away at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, sustainability, and craft.
Meet Millie Tharakin: Host and Textile Researcher
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm your host, Millie Tharakin, a textile researcher and innovator.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we stitch together a rich tapestry of textile innovations, one episode at a time. I'm your host, Millie Parakin, a textile innovator and researcher. And in this podcast, you get a glimpse into the future, shedding light on innovations bubbling up at the intersection of textiles, emerging technology, craft and sustainability. Join me as I sit down with pioneers who are radically reimagining the very way we make, use and remake textiles.
AI and Robotics in Stitch-Free Apparel
00:00:51
Speaker
What if the sewing machine was about to become obsolete? In this episode, we sit down with Cam Myers, founder and CEO of Create Me, an industry pioneer using physical AI, robotics and advanced adhesive technology to reinvent apparel manufacturing as stitch-free, automated and radically faster than traditional sewing.
00:01:12
Speaker
We explore how this innovation is solving one of manufacturing's toughest challenges, that's automating the apparel sewing industry, which has remained stubbornly manual. From understanding the complexity of fabric physics to reinventing garment engineering from the ground up, CAM takes us inside the future of stitchless apparels, onshore microfactories, and why now is the pivotal moment to finally automate the sewing industry.
Create Me: Cam Myers' Journey and Innovations
00:01:40
Speaker
Over the past six years, Cam has built Create Me from concept to being a pioneer, holding over 25 patents for apparel automation technologies. He's an entrepreneur at core and has successfully built and scaled several tech and e-commerce companies in the past. Whether you're curious about robotics and AI, apparel construction or the future of manufacturing, this conversation will shed some light on the bleeding edge technologies needed to construct your everyday t-shirt autonomously without a single stitch.
00:02:12
Speaker
So let's meet Cam and learn about the technology that could potentially replace the sewing machine.
00:02:23
Speaker
Hi, Cam. A warm welcome to the No Ordinary Cloth podcast. It's so exciting to have you here with us to help us understand how cutting-edge technology is quite fundamentally transforming the very way we construct
Complexity in Garment Construction
00:02:36
Speaker
garments. So when we talk about making garments, there are two things usually, cut and sew. And it sounds so simple, right? Garment construction...
00:02:45
Speaker
Sounds very simple, but it's garment engineering. And it's such it's this beautiful dance that I see between fabrics and hands and a sewing machine. and the sewing machine has fundamentally been the way we've constructed garments.
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, first with hands and then sewing machine, but sewing was the method of doing it. And a little aside, actually, I found out yesterday, i don't know if you know about this, Cam, there's a ah sewing machine museum here in London. And as part of their collection, they have one of the very first sewing machines that were that was invented by the Frenchman Barthelémy Thimonier in 1839. I was like, I have to go see what this looks like. But the sewing machine is really complex piece of technology.
00:03:27
Speaker
and totally transformed the garment making industry. And here we are today, almost 200 years later after that invention, with you to talk about how your technology is going to enable garment making that is completely stitch free and hands free. So it's an autonomous tailoring platform aiming to once again revolutionize the future of garment making. So it's very, very exciting, Cam. Thank you for joining us. Let's dive straight in. Before we talk about your business, you're on a mission to redefine how apparel is made in the 21st century, right? And that's no small feat. So before we go into how you do this, let's paint a picture for the listeners about what the current apparel manufacturing process looks like. What happens there?
00:04:11
Speaker
Well, first of all, Milita, thank you very much for having me on your show. Really really excited to share what we're doing with your listeners. I'm Cam Myers. I'm i and the founder and CEO of CreateMe. And as you said, our our mission is to redefine how apparel is made.
00:04:26
Speaker
You know, I think i think if you you took took a sketch of how the industry looks, today, you know i would say that the apparel industry is the poster child for offshoring. It's the industry that's really driven that as a global economic model.
00:04:41
Speaker
ah you know Apparel is fundamentally, for the better part, made with sewing. it it doesn't have a lot of automation. It's it's very much, and this is something that for people outside the apparel industry, they may be less aware of. you know It is fundamentally all made with human hands. and It is very different from really most other the large scaled you know manufacturing industries that have ah high levels of automation.
00:05:06
Speaker
Certainly cutting is a step that does use automated steps, but by and large, beyond cutting and certain finishing steps, the actual assembly and putting together of garments is manual. It's a very complex, diverse supply chain. um When you think of things sort of up upstream, where you get the materials from, know, I always think that the example that really typifies this is a cotton. The United States is in the so top three or four largest pieces of cotton textiles in the world still today. But really, most of that goes offshore for milling and then and put into fabric. And then, you know, there's this kind of boomerang um trade where, you know, it's milled and then it's assembled and sewn into a garment and then it comes back to the US. so very complex when you think of fabric and then all the other hardware, trims, rivets, buttons, zippers. It's diverse supply chain that's happening in multiple countries. Lots of different handshakes and it's done on an enormous scale. I mean, probably that's the last thing I would say on that point. By most measures, it's the second largest industry in the world from the point of view of manufacturing output, because everyone in the world is a customer. And so, you know, the statistics I've seen is typically the total global output of apparel is between 100 and 150 billion units per year. So after chipsets and kind of transistors, it's
00:06:36
Speaker
by many measures, considered to be the largest industry for kind of industrial output. So it's enormous, complex and industry. You absolutely hit the nail on the head when you said it's very labour intensive. So according to the International Labour Organization, it's believed that about 60 million people are employed in the apparel sector alone. so why is that? Why has it been so hard to automate sewing?
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, i think you can so look at that from kind of two angles. One in general, and you you know can take this perspective across different kind of manufacturing industries, looking at assembly or automation for things that don't have stable physics. you know it's It's not a sheet of aluminum, that kind of thing, which textiles obviously are. they They move and bend and flex and they move and blend and flex across a huge variety of of textiles that people use, they have different physics in terms of the flexibility, grid, all these types of things. That is is something that's not very nice for for automation. So that's why it is still an industry that fundamentally is very high in labor.
00:07:47
Speaker
i would say the second reason, and perhaps some more nuanced and interesting reason, is that sewing in of itself from a first principles engineering perspective is actually quite hard to automate.
00:08:02
Speaker
And so you can think of that for probably really two two reasons. one is that if you think about software systems that that are used in industrial automation manufacturing environments, that they have to use software to perceive, like the human eye does, how something is moved and orientated, doing that in a static, stable environment there's one level of complexity.
00:08:29
Speaker
So you think of like how metal would be welded in an automated process with a car is one it's kind of one concept. The next level of complexity is actually doing that under motion. And if you think about what a sewing has done, the human eye and hand coordination, you're bringing fabric together, you're edge aligning it, and then you're having to keep it in edge alignment under under motion. So that's that's at that that adds a lot of complexity. but The second reason is because it requires two sides of access. if you If you think about a sewing machine having ah having a cavity where the bob in it
00:09:10
Speaker
it's It's punching between two pliers of fabric. That act of requiring requiring access makes it a lot more complex to to interplay with the toolkit that you would use in automation. So things like vacuum systems, molds,
00:09:26
Speaker
um you know, conveyor systems, these types of, you know, core tools that you use in automation don't play nice because you need access from two sides. So, you know, I can talk in a minute about how we approach it differently, but those two things are really big constraints that actually say it's a lot harder than theyre saying, hey, ah can I put a a sewing head on a robot, will will it work its fabric? No, because the environment that you need access on two sides and you need to have things working in motion actually make that a very complex engineering problem.
00:09:58
Speaker
Absolutely. It looks so simple, but you explained so beautifully that it is such a complex engineering work going on over there.
Adhesive Technology and Garment Assembly
00:10:06
Speaker
So with that picture painted, tell us about Create.me and the problem you're solving for the apparel industry and how you're doing this.
00:10:14
Speaker
you know Our technology platform stack brings together you know three three core technologies, the the use of you know robotics, which is certainly having a real estate at the moment, the use of proprietary software, which is built on a foundation of of some algorithms that come from um you know machine learning, computer vision, but really where this is really going is into the use of physical AI for the perception to so that a robot can understand at the level of human dexterity that human hand, eye coordination with. But the real unique perspective, the real unique part of the technology is the use of adhesive. And the assembly process is a printed form of adhesive, meaning it is a it' ah it's a little dot, this position, that's put down with little breaks. it actually mimics what a stitch file looks like. you know It's a stitch, it's not a continuous line, it's points on a, on on a
00:11:13
Speaker
and piece of garment but that, you know, it functions, so has that stretch and recovery and flexibility. And it's this use of adhesive that sort of unlocks the the platform by which you can look at automation. It's a very efficient method because it can, A, it's all static assembly, what I what i was talking about before about like cities of motion. If you think about how something gets bonded, you apply adhesive and you stamp it to bond it. And it requires only one side of access of the toolkit that you use. So it's a very efficient method. We actually take inspiration from other industries that have gone through the journey of very high levels of automation. So if you think about consumer electronics, a Nokia phone, 25 years ago that would have rivets soldering, fast sitting, but you take your iPhone or your Samsung today it's printed laminate adhesive that builds phones. So those are some of the properties. And look, the last thing I say adhesive is used today and they're parallel to speak, certainly footwear. You think of
00:12:20
Speaker
so you all your sport shoes that that's that's used with adhesive, it's a much more efficient assembly process. And certainly in apparel, seam tape is something that is used. If you think of your Nike dry fit or Lululemon leggings, but they have constraints because it's tight, it's a little bit bulky, it's a little more heavy, it doesn't move and flex. This is taking a principle that mimics a stitch pattern, which is good, you know, it has all the efficiencies and properties that you would have with a stitch, but it doesn't have either the the the draw the drawbacks either. And that can show up from a consumer standpoint in terms of being a lighter gram weight, better breathability, even higher flexibility than a stitch file.
00:13:03
Speaker
but also it's it's more efficient from manufacturing perspective as well. Tell us a bit more about the adhesive. So you you're gluing fabric together. Of course, this is going to you know survive in washing machines and all that. But what happens when you want to sort of take it apart or you pick stitches and you take things apart if you want to repair it or do something to that garment? What happens in this case if it if it's glued together?
00:13:31
Speaker
the The process that we've developed for the assembly has, from a washability, you know strength durability perspective, it's at parity. We're actually stronger than thread. And we use some of the adhesives that have been on the market for a short period of time in our assembly process, are principally used in women's intimates. It's a product that uses the printed bonded approach, but it's a much more comfortable product. So the consumer has driven process that pull.
00:14:01
Speaker
um But your point about assembly to disassembly, what we what we realized when we started the company is, hey, actually, there might be some very unique things from the point of view of disassembly that you could do with adhesive that simply isn't possible with Thread. And so over the last three, three and half years, we have been working with the University of Warwick in the UK. and have developed our own proprietary adhesives. They have a property which is called thermoreversibility, which is basically a fancy way for saying that you can you can use heat to activate and and bond it at a certain temperature,
00:14:38
Speaker
and then at another temperature above wear and care in recycling, you you can delaminate or de-bond it. And so that's very interesting. and And that's a principle that's used in other industries that use adhesive, like e-waste. And you can make the process by which you can scale recycling a lot more efficient because you the hardest part or one of the hardest parts but of looking at the the flow with with the recycling is that it's simply in that separation of of waste streams, you know, so that you have polys in one place and cotton in another or hardware, you know you know, in terms of zi zippers, that kind of thing. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about recycling in apparel, but really a lot of it is happening and and in that post-industrial waste stream, medium
00:15:27
Speaker
scraps that are from the factory floor because they know it's unadulterated. They know, hey, this is all cotton or this is all poly. The the conundrum or how you deal with disassembly for Garmin is a lot more complex to know how you manage the waste streams. And it's hard because in stitching that requires destitching or shredding. All those processes aren't so efficient for Garmin separation of different textile types.
00:15:53
Speaker
Adhesive is one part, and then this is a key part of the manufacturing process. You very quickly mentioned physical AI. Could we kind of go a little bit deeper into that? Because the physics of textiles is so complex. You you know you mentioned earlier the drapeability of different cotton versus silk versus linen is so different. So it's been actually really difficult to even make textile, digital textiles and get that true feel about that fabric digitally. um So what is physical AI and how are you using that in this manufacturing process?
Physical AI in Fabric Manipulation
00:16:26
Speaker
It's a great great question to kind of double click on. So I think int textiles, in apparel, one of one of the highest requirements
00:16:34
Speaker
problems of of complexity, there's a notion that you have this kind of tension between extreme scale and extreme need from a solutions perspective for high manufacturing output and also extreme variability. And and variability is across, you know,
00:16:52
Speaker
several dimensions. What you talked about, you know, the the the physics of fabric. It's not just that the physics of fabric are not stable, they're infinite almost, different types of textiles. what a ah a cotton at 140 gram weight, how that behaves, it tensioning of how it's woven and then what the fabous yeah that fabric, does it curl? you know A lot of fabrics do curl. That's also something that doesn't play nice with robotics. you know Is it a net? Is it a woven? All these different things have have different properties. And so you know probably in the last
00:17:30
Speaker
probably in like the last two years or so, you know, there's been this kind of leap forward in artificial intelligence moving beyond, know, what people mostly talk about it in terms of is from a software perspective, know, chatbots, that kind of thing. And it's starting for it to move out of the lab into how it can perceive things differently. in three-dimensional space so that I can almost understand what the properties that you know the human eye does. And that's you know one model or format so I can understand you how pul something that doesn't have structure can move, how it can move in three-dimensional space. but also other you know other properties of the physical world. you know what What does it feel like from a tactile, you can have tactile senses. What's the force feedback if you pick something up lightly versus you know with with a high grip strength? Will it move between the you know the fabric? Will move between the grips? These are techniques that are starting to come into the fore. And so I mentioned that we we have this kind of toolkit of software
00:18:38
Speaker
that that we use um in our assembly process. Slightly more mature methods rely on sort of machine learning, so that more rule a rules-based assembly approach. And that can work for certain met manufacturing steps, But really the high level of human dexterity, if you see what a tailor does, if you had a camera looking at a tailor and you know sewing something, a very fine tailoring task, that's not a rules-based process.
00:19:09
Speaker
A lot of feel and feedback that's going in. Maybe you're flexing the fabric as you're moving it around a joint These types of concepts, but they won't play with a sort of machine learning approach. Said another way, you can get a level of automation with machine learning, but to really step in to solve the more complex joinery that you have once once you move away from um assembly that could work in two dimensional space. Once you move to assembly that needs to happen in three dimensional space, things like a neck band, things like a shoulder joint, you know, there's a very, you know, the tailors in and and your audience, you know, if you you take part of a sleeve to a body, it's a very complex joint. It's irregular, it's soft.
00:19:53
Speaker
Those types of techniques, as well as moving across the variability of fabrics, that's a very, very complex problem for robotics to understand. We're just at the kind of bleeding edge of it. But some of these tools, these new models to understand how to perceive, for a robot to perceive, which a human can do easily in three-dimensional space. And these are some these software techniques that are really accelerating the potential potential for this type of similar. And it's going to bring a lot of benefits in terms of standardization. I think every consumer knows, you know, if you buy from even the same brand, a t-shirt or pair of denim, the same brand, but it shows up at a different retail location and you overlay one t-shirt on top of the other, pair, you know, 34 is a 34, 34 denim jeans is not the same. Yeah.
00:20:47
Speaker
it's And that's you complex. it Humans are building those things. um Standardization is going to give people much more clarity that they're going to get the same product wherever they are on the wall. And I think it's a really exciting thing, I think, can consume and that's why consumers believe in brands because they know they like you know the same product and ill stand behind that book more, I think, is is one of the really exciting possibilities that's very common as this technology gets adopted more widely.
00:21:13
Speaker
I loved how you talked about the feel and feedback that Taylor, you know, works with. And your robots are sort of trying to mimic that in a way, if I understand correctly. How are you achieving that?
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, so they they talk about, in a software perspective, having multimodal models, quite an alliteration, yeah so that that's sort of um information coming from multiple sources. And so, you know you may start some of these new models, is is yeah know they're called vision models.
00:21:47
Speaker
language action models. So it's it's a perception, you know, visually of of how something shows up. Some of them are also using tactile models so that these are spaces actually on the end effect, there's on the little g grippers on the robot that that can feel that that feedback. and and And, you know, we've developed tools that actually mimic And you know there are also some materials or or mechanical ways that you can do this. There's certain there's certain materials that kind of can grip in one direction and not grip in another. you know You think of like a ah gecko.
00:22:21
Speaker
they They have properties on on their little pads that can have high friction in one direction, but then if you lift, it doesn't have friction. And so if you think of your point of what a tailor has to do, they have to flex and move fabric. And so we can use some material properties, some material techniques with our software to be able to flex and move fabric just in the way that a human does with easing. So we actually have technologies that can mimic, and we have patents around technology that can mimic
00:22:53
Speaker
yeah the very small micro movements. are that that And that's really and that's that's something that's very hard for a robot. If you think about a human, if if they're building something and sewing, and there's a little you know but a bit edge that's a little longer than the other, you can kind of push it around that it'll line A robot, typically, the way they're built is much more yeah rigid. And so you know these are some these kind of techniques that we developed that could give that that last little bit of human dexterity, which which is everything between something that's mostly working and something that is 100% working. Wow.
00:23:29
Speaker
wow I mean, that sounds like a very intelligent toolbox that you're building right there. Are there any limitations to the kind of materials that can be used with your system? Yeah, so we we have we've we've tested the adhesives that we use from a material compatibility perspective across about 100 different textiles. yeah I think sometimes you can see some issues if there is some type of coating between you know the the surface of the textile, which could impact the embedding or the wetting of the fibers. But it hasn't been really anything so significant because, as I said, you know it works very well across the around 100 different texts. although It's not to say that you know where there is a barrier that there isn't a way to to address that. um It's just you know we haven't needed to spend the R&D time because it works the right way. So it works across synthetics, it works across organics, it works across very fine fibres. So the temperature is about 50 to 70 Celsius. So it can work with you know silks or organics, like like like cash cashmere wool, lamb, so it's very wide in its application and that's different from the mental model that a lot of people have you know with using seam tape adhesive which which is kind of much more restricted to sort of high curing temperature, you know synthetic fiber so it's got a much broader yeah remit that that it can work across.
00:24:56
Speaker
as well that's probably the other important thing so it can work across wovens and and net so it's not sort of defined not only work on you t-shirts it you know it has we haven't focused as much on all the wovens but it could be just as before and with an oxford shirt or you know and yeah something like that we talked about bonding being used for the seams can it also be used for adding things like trims and embellishments onto the garment as well Absolutely. And, you know, we, on our on our website, we we we have a whole light box that shows how some of these techniques show up So for your audience, if they're interested, they they can go, know, on the bottom of our homepage is how the light shows both the cross garments as well as embellishment techniques. So yes, we' we've actually pioneered and developed techniques that can that can be used for embellishment effect. We've developed patents around that. So we can do different treatments. And so the adhesive can actually be used as an embellishment effect. it It has a um sort of a sheen property to us it. So looks a little bit like a sequin, actually, which is quite cool. And but because it's a...
00:26:03
Speaker
CAD driven process that's working off it, of almost like a CNC, a gantry process, you can create linear and nonlinear geometric patterns. And you can do all these kind of surface level treatment processes with the adhesive as well. So that can show up in terms of things like laminating fabric. So literally from a design point of view, doing things that don't translate or aren't possible in the same way with sewing. So you could have, if you think about a a cocktail dress or um some kind of quite off kilter stylized t-shirt, it could have layers or gowns of fabric and it could move and have a lot of movement and and that can be kind quite exciting. um But it can be sort of almost, we use the kind of metaphor of spot welding, you know, so it's still kind of together, but has has the movement um at the same time. Or you can do other kind of interesting things with the adhesive in terms of very fine tailoring techniques. It might take
00:27:04
Speaker
you know, so ten tens of minutes, you know, certain kind of pinch plates or knife plates or other kind of more three-dimensional pleating. You can use the adhesive and do that sort of tens of seconds. It still has some human element to putting it together, but much, much faster than how it would be done with you know conventional thread or lastly you can laminate fabric so meaning a fabric conversion how do you take different layers of fabric and and bridge them together whether it has you know sort of batting or something in between and it can look like quilting but be much more minimalist because it doesn't have
00:27:41
Speaker
any threads So yes, there a although our focus is on kind of big volume categories, there are some really interesting things. We we work with some fashion houses um about techniques that could show up from a ah or a design you know ah PD so audience and how that shows up for the consumer as well. So the the automation system that you have right now, what kind of garments lend themselves for this process at the moment?
00:28:09
Speaker
High volume gut garment categories, so certainly we're we're focused um in the sort of mid mid-term. So we we are we're commercially um live with women's underwear. As I said, we picked that cat category you know intently because it's already a category that uses bonding in the digital you form, but but it's ah it's a more manual assembly process because it has benefits to the consumer. Our second product is in t-shirts. you know We probably will look at other variations of t-shirts in terms of yeah polos, how you integrate a soft collar into that. Probably over time, other high um volume consumer staple categories like men's underwear, those types of categories. What I what i would say is the the vision is very much about having a lot of variability within
00:29:02
Speaker
a parameter of a government. So yeah we we pick something like t-shirts, it's a digitally driven manufacturing process, meaning it's obviously driven from the CAD, you know it's obviously the workflow that factories already use, they use CAD, they use cutting systems, but we we continue that through the entire assembly process. Whereas in ah in a traditional factory, you know that would be moving them from the cutting room um yeah to to sewing. And so because we're tracking things the whole way through,
00:29:29
Speaker
that that variety is very much playing into what we can do. so what i what I mean by that is, you know a brand might have a classic T-shirt, a classic tee, but to move across the micro-gradations of, I want a big and tall, I want a athletic cut, I want a slim fit, I want to have smaller vari variability in terms of a pocket square, I want different widths of neck bands, I want to have a long seam sheet t-shirts, all those smaller gradations that still fit in what is fundamentally all a t-shirt, we can build and and develop very flexibly. And what I mean by that is the tooling that we use is not defined to say, for example, a particular size. A lot of factories, a lot of ways it's a traditional more analog manufacturing is you have different fixtures and jigs four different sizes. And that, you know, that means that, you know, you look at building things within the six core sizes from double X to small to double X to large, but Hey, you know, this is a world where there's lots of body shapes and something that might bleed more into tweens or go up to triple, you
00:30:39
Speaker
triple or quadruple five times XL, you see where the shape where world is moved. you know They've understood the market that you want to half sizes and a broader range. That's the consumer side, actually making that sausage work on the manufacturing, that's not very easy.
00:30:56
Speaker
Our tooling is designed to actually the tool will adjust So it can pick something up that's extra small or a Ford XL, that type of thing. So that's where we play from the point of view of offering lots of variation for for for the brand and and and manufacturing audiences. Yeah. Yeah. I love the granularity that you're able to bring to automation. Wow. So how big is the system? I'm just trying to imagine if this is a new you know manufacturing process, what does it look like if I walked into a factory?
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, so we have um sort of trademarked the architecture of our our tools. And the reason we did that is there's a lot of thought to your point about like, what's what's the size, what garments can it support, that kind of thing. And so when we built our technology, we said,
00:31:47
Speaker
how do we build a platform that deals with the velocity and and and the flexibility and how we approach that problem is we said, well, there are actually many parts of the assembly of a garment that are that are common. so So whether it's a t-shirt, an underwear for men, for women, a crew neck. And so we call this architecture MERA. It stands for Modular Engineering Robotic Assembly. And the principle behind that is is we standardize what we can build in two-dimensional space. So if you think of a garment with a t-shirt or a underwear or a crew neck jersey, you know, there are parts of that are the same. you know, you're having to a cutting step, you're having to build panels. And so we said let's build as much in a common architecture. So when it goes into your category, when it goes into t-shirts versus women's underwear versus men's underwear, it's not the entire system that's changing. it's
00:32:43
Speaker
cell at the end that does the three-dimensional parts are peculiar to that garment that change. and So I say that from the point of view that there's a common architecture that you would see if you went into one of our facilities that we use common tools across garments. So in, for example, t-shirts, it's about a 1,200 square foot cell. And I apologize, I'm originally from more of the Anglo sphere, but I've been in the U.S. enough that I've ah kind of trained up with the system as but But that would be around a 1200 square foot cell that would be able to do about a million units of capacity on a five day three shift model. Whereas for women's underwear, it's actually a lot less than that um because it's a, you you build a lot of the government in a single ply form versus t-shirts.
00:33:32
Speaker
with two pliers, that would be about 550 square feet you know foot for that foot
Scalable Deployment of Create Me Technology
00:33:37
Speaker
footprint. And again, would also do about a million units of of output at a max level. yeah Yeah, let's talk about the time that this process um helps to cut down in the manufacturing process as well. Could you compare from traditional sort of CAD to it being in the in the store versus your production line? Yeah, so from ah from um an order to delivery perspective, you know what what we're going after is 7 to 21 day turnaround time.
00:34:08
Speaker
you know That's obviously very different from you know off offshore or ordering, which could be 45, 60, maybe more days on a boat. Even the air freighting from ordering it, if it's overseas, that could still be sort of of a three-week timeframe. But once once you put the whole order sampling to delivery process, you know you can easily be be talking about nine nine months. This is a much shorter 7 to 21 day um turnaround time. And then in terms of but velocity, you know we talked about a million units, but to kind of break that down to a more digestible kind of unit of measure, you know we're we're looking at sort of mass mass production speeds for and in women's underwear. about 250 units per hour at at mass production and for t-shirts about 220 units per hour and that's you know that's orders of magnitude you know for but faster than than sewing you know some of the stats we've seen is is what we're modeling is about 20 times you know faster than a sewing process Wow, that's amazing. How do you envision this sort of scaling this technology up? Are you creating modular parts that you you sell out to manufacturers? Or are you selling like a machine in a box kind of thing that people can take away and install and and start, you know, press play, get it running?
00:35:31
Speaker
What is what is the scale up to be? And, you know, tell us a bit more about the sort of micro factories of the future that you've been thinking about as well. Yes, we we have we have a 35,000 square foot facility in sort of the Fremont area, which for those overseas, that's sort of where Tesla's main factory um is in the Bay Area. So we're we're in a and the suburb of of that and in San Francisco. So we can actually run in pretty pretty decent capacity for actually quite scaled you know pot piloting. I think we can fit about 20 underwear lines that will be producing a million units.
00:36:05
Speaker
So that there would be you know something we wouldn't step into if we would scale up that many systems. I think it can fit about eight t-shirt systems. There'll be about um a million million units. So we will we will pilot out of our facility. And then in terms of deploying it to the customer, yeah we're we're talking with you know brand brands and manufacturers. They both have to be there at at the end of the day because you know Brands want to understand that with their supply chain, you know, the production scalability, that's obviously where, you know manufacturers have been, you know, really dynamic in terms of investing in that scale. um But they also want to know from the from the other side of the of the coin that, you know, that the brands like this technology have tried it. So we we have to we have to kind of talk with both. And then in terms of deploying the systems, we're gonna focus on deploying the systems probably first in in the United States. And then we're gonna look at like, you know near shore, near the United States. And and similarly, you know in high wage rate places, this model sings when it's kind close to these big consumer markets.
00:37:09
Speaker
whether that's in and in you know places like Japan, South Korea, or in Western Europe. And so we will focus on exactly to your question, these kind of fact, it is a factory in a box. It's a very efficient yeah manufacturing process. There are new techniques to learn with working with adhesive. versus thread, but it's it's very efficient. So you think about factories that have to have spooling and have safety stock to cover all these different colors when they move between garments. That all completely goes out the window because it's translucent. So you can you can move across garments. This kind of high flexibility is pretty cool. Now you asked something very interesting in your question was, well, what what about for you know a component of assembly rather than kind of the the
00:37:58
Speaker
thing that's that's something that actually a lot of know brands and manufacturers are interested for um what i would call compiled high tie tailoring so it's not about actually building a full garment it might be more of a universal tool that can do assembly of parts of a garment whether it's you know belt belt loops or a trench coat or or a pot yes those Those are things that that we are we are looking as well. Like potentially, can we offer a tool that's more universal, but less in scope? It's not building an entire garment. But I think our focus initially is on very high volume categories. As I said, you know, women's underwear, T-shirts, it'll probably be another big category. consumer staple category after that.
00:38:43
Speaker
And the last thing I'd say is there's this idea of providing these so systems in a box. It's a this list operational overhead for for a brand or a manufacturer to deploy the systems in countries and environments where labor has got very expensive for sowing. So it's not just about automation in the sense of high wage rate countries are, are you know, there's a high cost to labor. It's actually more so it's more decided and specific than that.
00:39:13
Speaker
you know, sewing is a skilled art and people outside the apparel industry may sort of think, oh, it's it's a minimum wage thing. It really isn't. It's a very skill it's a very skilled, takes a lot of time.
00:39:26
Speaker
Because you have this concept of static assembly, you you don't have this, which takes years to train someone to be very good. You know this kind of human dexterity, this hand-eye coordination, that that's not required with this process. So it actually opens up a much larger labor pool that can get involved with these these types of products so it it opens up the um the ease of of of training because every every you know if you think of a sewing person in a factory they talk about days to train because ah you you you get the road and repeatability for a specific type of t-shirt and then there's a ramp period with a new t-shirt you know that that's compressed down to less than a day because there's no there's no dexterity involved it's all
00:40:09
Speaker
static assembly processes. And so that's a huge part of what this unlock is that makes it very exciting for customers to get involved. And then probably the last customer type i would mention is, you know, the the the print on demand world, you know, which is which is obviously had a huge sort of growth in the last 15 years, know, there's really advanced automated printing systems, um you know, the types of companies that play into the licensing world, the embellishment world, that's all near to the consumer produced product that makes sense when you have all these demand signals from licensing and sport, meme, all these kinds of things that do that very close. and that's very much an on-demand embellishment.
00:40:50
Speaker
Well, wouldn't that play nice with on-demand assembly? You don't need to have huge factories of warehouses of blanks, you can produce it. So that that that kind of um vertical is also very interested in our product. It makes a lot of sense. And the the the operators that work on these printing machines, it's the same labor pool can work on the assembly process. Because, you know, you think about platinum, you put a T-shirt on that to be printed.
00:41:18
Speaker
same type of process for our assembly steps. You're putting a piece of fabric in a place to be bonded. um So it's very aligned for that market as well. I see a lot of opportunity, like you said, for a lot more people to to be trained up in using these new tools. What does that training look like? What kind of skills do they need? What are the new skills that people need to have to be able to work in these new factories of the future?
00:41:45
Speaker
You you have certain people that, you know, I would put them in the workforce class of of kind of tech technicians, um and and then you have sort of ah operators. And, you know, I think that's a so a parallel, a similar process, you know, if you if you think about a a textile printing facility, you know, there's there's people who have to work with the the changeover of the consumables of of the ink, you know, the same thing that is, you know, and and working with kind of chemistry and and how you um at the end of ah a session flu flush that out. And um obviously there are still, you know, cutting tools as consumables for that. That technician and workforce is is pretty trained. that you know it's' It's a new set set of skills. you know that there is There is its own form of complexity, you know dealing with chemicals, dealing with adhesives. These are all very stable not... you know, harmful chemicals, but there's curing time. You know, if you if you don't handle the adhesive in a certain way, it's it's going to, you know, there's ahs a window in which you can use that. So there's there's a skilled tech technician level workforce. And then I think there's ah a broader
00:42:56
Speaker
operator-led workforce that affords a much bigger universe of people that you can go out to. So as I said, there's people that are doing kind of platen-type work, how you put a piece of fabric to be printed, very similar kind of training. But really anyone that is working in the environment of um yeah warehouse workforce-type work, workforce you know type type labor can very easily come and into this met manufacturing environment. We we talk about you know days days to train as is often a step that's used in and in apparel manufacturing. um you we're We're talking about in in many cases one to three days, but even in some cases less than a day. Whereas, you know, and sewing for a new process, you could be talking you know more than 15 days um to really get that effect.
00:43:47
Speaker
full efficiency going. So it it opens up a big labor pool. And I would say, yeah, anyone that's working in the warehouse, your e e-commerce you know type type of labor force is is going to be you very adept to move into this and and will be exposed to much more your tech technical knowledge in terms of working around um robotics and machinery that that is much more sophisticated actually than what you would see in a typical warehouse automation space where they have autonomous mobile robots, these kind of robots can understand how to move and work around people um and, and yeah frankly, a lot a lot more um sophisticated. And so you know it's ah definitely a good curve of exposure um you know to two to technology, but it's it's the kind of the opening to start is is is a very broad universe. universe
00:44:38
Speaker
And that's still lot la that's that's something that I think the manufacturing partners that we've talked to have been very interested in because what i hear from the the very large OEMs overseas is, hey, if I wanted to go into you even centers that are known for textiles like El Paso parts of North Carolina, it's it's not easy just to say, hey, I'm going to find 1,000 sewing operators.
00:45:00
Speaker
yeah The other thing, of course, is sowing around the world, but perhaps even more in the US, the average age of the workforce is very old. I think I've seen stats somewhere between 55 and 57 is the average age of the existing sowing labor force in the United States. It's certainly not as high as that um in parts of Asia, but directionally, it's it's all it's all moving in that direction that early in age problem and i and I think this opens up a much a much broader you know universe of people that can work on the farm.
00:45:34
Speaker
And there's roads, you know it's less road kind of work, which I think is, which is I think why people, understandably, you know it it is it is not easy work sewing. Like if you see it, it's it's i always like the Adam Smith but of fan channel because it's it's like literally the the division of labor is what is Carol manufacturing and one person just doing The one person and and the variety of work that would happen in our facility is much broader as well.
Timing for Innovation in Apparel
00:46:04
Speaker
Cam, why is now the right time for this technology? Yeah, I think there's, um you know, we we've we've been thinking about this problem for for quite a long time. And I would say, know, we started the company at the end end of 2019. I would say the apparel industry is much more attuned than many other big industries to the challenges around supply chain shocks tariffs, that that that kind of thing. So I'd say the Parliamentary has been quite smart thinking about this, you know, because obviously, at least in the United States, you know, you had the tariffs kind of shocks in the first Trump administration, but also you had people... that we're feeling that you know places like China were getting too expensive. And so you know people are buying to Vietnam and things like this. Well, look look what's look what's happened. A singular sort of strategy for geography like Vietnam maybe wasn't the way to go. you you need to sort of manage it that risk. And so what what I hear from a lot of supply chain leaders and brands is the notion of moving away from a low cost, a purely low cost supply chain to a more de-risked supply chain. And that's obviously come really into fore since April, since we we saw these kind tariffs across the board, across really all countries in the world as a reset. So I would say certainly that this kind of has come a lot more into focus post April and the notion that it's not about kind of de-risking to one year, if it's about having more of a mattressed approach. you know Still, obviously, a lot of peril is going to have to be made offshore to make the numbers work.
00:47:37
Speaker
but maybe moving away from like 85% to 95% offshore to maybe more like 70% offshore, you know, 10% to 15% onshore, you know, 10% to 15% near shore. So I think that's that's one of the big reasons is this a geopolitical thing, you know, with tariffs.
00:47:55
Speaker
I think people have seen a lot with the supply chain shocks over the last couple years, not just COVID, you know, we've had the stuff with Red Sea, you know, with the Houthis, you know, we had, I think also...
00:48:06
Speaker
There was a big tanker that literally got plugged in. Stuck. And people realized that this is bad. Now, there's only other reasons I think have really kind of come to light, you know too to your point of about kind of why why now, is I think the technology has has moved a lot in the last couple of years.
00:48:27
Speaker
the The hardware cost curve has really come down on some of the componentry. You know, there's really good standardized platforms for robotics. that' That's only a reason. The the software, um and in terms of physical AI, that's you know's that's moving at an incredibly fast pace. and And so, you know, I always get reminded by my team, yeah it's the worst it will ever be. And and that curve of how understanding how different fabrics move and that's accelerating a huge clip so even even 12 months ago it was nowhere near you know where where it is today so that is a thing and i i would say probably the more interesting reason is i think there's a there's a growing awareness i think it's been stimulated by things like the tarot shots that there's a growing awareness that it's about time to relook at the business the business model side of side
00:49:18
Speaker
I think the really smart people in in manufacturing and in brands are really focusing in on that. And and what what do I mean by that? What I mean is this is a business that has been very conditioned to manage around low cost, but you have a natural effect of of when things are very stretched out from a supply chain perspective that the signaling between demand and supply is not it's not particularly great. So I think as an industry average, it's about 65%. of what is made is sold through.
00:49:49
Speaker
and So moving the sell through rate from 65 to 70%, 70 is 75, that's really important from a waste perspective. And I love this idea that you can think about waste, obviously from the environmental perspective,
00:50:09
Speaker
but also you know economically. And so what can help drive a better sell through? It's better signalling, better kind of tactics between your your your orders and and when you can have them available. You don't need much safety stock if you can replenish you know faster and so you can have the right thing for the consumer. And that comes with proximity.
00:50:32
Speaker
It comes with having things made close to the consumer. And I think if you look back 30, 40 years, the sell through rates, you know, um when when a lot more was produced in in Europe and and the US, it was 65.
00:50:44
Speaker
five You know, I think I've heard i seen numbers in the 80, 85 percent you know range. And so I think that's a really other important part of the why now is is people are realizing that producing things close to the consumer and you need automation to do that. You can't. you know, the economics and the labor don't work.
00:51:04
Speaker
But if if you can produce things close to the customer, that's a much better outcome, obviously for the environment, but also for the industry, you know, writ large. I think that's that's really starting to come into focus now. And that's, you know, you you've got to you got to line more than one thing up.
00:51:20
Speaker
to get these movements because we're talking huge industries, huge supply chains, huge complexity of orders, of building infrastructure capacity. So it can't be just like on one end, you're saying the technology is there. It's like, okay, well, how is it going to show up for the industry from the point of view of of the business model? And I think some of those things are really starting to come more more sharply and into focus that the technology is coming at the right time there's been geopolitical things and a realization that there needs to be some movement in terms of the business model. And so these things yeah these things are starting to come together, which I think is what's really helping shape and move the industry.
00:52:01
Speaker
ah Definitely Create.me is timed us right. But what next? What does the future for autonomous tailoring and garment manufacturing look like?
Future of Bonded Apparel and Mass Customization
00:52:10
Speaker
And what kind of technologies do you imagine will disrupt this sector in the next eight to 10 years?
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, for us as a company, scalability is is really important. and And these systems are fundamentally built for scale. And I think you can you can use the, you know, the reference point of, you know, 3D netting machines, which are great technology, but, you know, you're talking about sort of 15, 20, 25, 30,000 units that a machine like that you know can can produce a year. These mass production systems are designed for a million units.
00:52:48
Speaker
But this is this is an industry that thinks in tens, if not maybe ah north of 100 billion units. So we're not trying to change everything, but we would love to move, for example, in the US, it's 3% of apparel that's consumed. This is manufactured on on on shore.
00:53:06
Speaker
I think I've seen numbers that about 50% of that 3%, so about 1.5% is for the US government. So move that from like 3% to 10%, there's a huge scalability approach. So we we we were very focused on on building these systems and scaling them and employing them and so we will be very focused on these big large consumer staple you know apparel category i think men's underwear is is a natural next step people care about comfort and and the idea of seamless and that's just as women's underwear does so that that would be a natural place to to be looking at because you know you do want to think about what are the consumer benefits for for for you know the new type of apparel not
00:53:51
Speaker
pure economics play. So I think we will focus on those big consumeristic categories. In terms of other things that I think will happen over the next 10 to 15 years, I see this as actually quite akin to the sort of EV revolution.
00:54:06
Speaker
if you think about, you know go back to the late, or early 2010s, penetration was very low with EV. But I think you when when that first Model S came out, yeah people could see that it wasn't just about being a sports car. It was like across all these different dimensions, yeah a more software-driven approach, model releases, yeah you know all all the amazing software tools, the torque, the range, all these type of things. And people realized it was a fundamentally
00:54:37
Speaker
yeah I use in simple speak, a better mousetrap. It was a better product for mobility, for commuting. And then you saw over the 2010s, this penetration and adoption. And I think people will realize that bonded apparel is fundamentally a better product. And this shows up, it's it's not unidimensional, it shows up across almost every dimension, it's a better way to make clothing. And so I think you'll see actually this adoption curve, it's better in terms of the fit, it's a softer hand feel, it's a lighter gram weight, better breathability at the seam, you don't have the chafing issues. It looks aesthetically identical from the exterior to sewn apparel. Obviously, there's these benefits from a point of view of how you can automate it. So I think what fundamentally you'll see is you'll see actually a significant percentage of apparel be bonded over the next 10 to 15 years. and i think you'll see double digit percentage points of apparel. I think the other thing that the technology is going to unlock
00:55:39
Speaker
is this concept of digital manufacturing at a much more scale. So obviously people thought about your on-demand printing. There are certainly companies out there that are doing on-demand fit information.
00:55:54
Speaker
But a platform that doesn't require different tooling for a small to a medium to a large and can digitally adjust how it picks up different panels of different size product is going to unlock and open that entire world.
00:56:11
Speaker
I think it's really exciting from a consumer standpoint, which is always really important to understand how it benefits people. consumers, and customers, there's this vision of mass producing custom fit product or extreme variability. i think you know people who might be a little bit odd shapes, whether they're very petite or very, very tall,
00:56:35
Speaker
you know those types of things they have this visceral experience of going to e-commerce things and things being sold out and i think in this world where things can be digitally driven and much closer you're going to have this much greater of size variability custom size and so i think that's a very exciting vision and the last point to connect to that is printing companies of finishing companies that can do All these interesting techniques that that people have loved and and that a business has just absolutely blossomed in like the last 15, 20 years. If you think of companies like Printful and Printify and Fanatics and even what Amazon does in that space, the ability to mesh on-demand assembly with on-demand embellishment and have the right thing for the customer at the right
00:57:23
Speaker
and not have loads of blanks that yeah or will printed goods that don't sell, ah you know that's that's really exciting. you know I know like when they have big sports events, they sort of probabilistically try and determine who's the winner. It's not 50-50, maybe it's 60-40. The idea that you can produce that product for that for the winning team um in in like the right volumes and not sell out um you know that's That's really exciting. So I think that kind of, to bring that together, I think kind of consumer end of of custom products, what that can do with embellishment, and then just a general adoption of bond and power. I think these are all really exciting trends with a lot with a lot of headwinds that you'll see over the next 10 to 15
00:58:07
Speaker
Wow, that's fascinating, Cam. mean, you've just got me so excited about manufacturing. And I love the passion that you have for it as well. And I guess, you know, looking forward in the next five to six years, it'll be really interesting to see. And hopefully I'll start noticing when I buy things as well that maybe we have moved away from sewn garments to bonded garments. So I'll be keeping an eye out for that when I go shopping.
00:58:31
Speaker
Now, going a little away from ah your business and to get to know you a little bit, Cam, where are you from? Where did you grow up? Yeah, so you can probably hear a little bit of an accent. It's a little bit a blended accent. So originally from New Zealand and I have been out of New Zealand, gosh, coming up to 25 years or so. So I've been out for a long time. I go back, I have family there, all that stuff. I'm definitely... a very strong all blacks, you know, We care a lot about it. But yeah, I spent some of my formative years in the UK, went to university in the UK, and then actually started my career in the software side. So I worked at DoubleClick for a time, very dynamic time actually, when DoubleClick, which is an ad tech company, was bought by Google and seeing the big platform moves there. And then with... was one of the founding members of a e-commerce platform company that was founded by of the executive management from DoubleClick. And through that worked in some e-commerce businesses that had exposure
00:59:51
Speaker
to the apparel industry from a from a software e-commerce perspective and and saw kind of firsthand the complexities of of supply chain as it as it relates to you know stockouts, yeah like liquidation rates, all bal these kinds of things. And that really got me attuned to um you know to some of the problems in the industry. And um yeah I have a background as as an inventor, so I've got about 25 patents to my name are around around the technology. We've got a very strong portfolio, so we've got about just just under 100 patents around technology across various verticals, including so so software, mechanical tools.
01:00:32
Speaker
adhesive. And probably the other part to the story is when I was kind of exposed to some of these issues and in apparel from a ah business model disconnect perspective, shall we say, the the very high liquidation rates, I said it was was kind of obvious to me that looking at business model approaches that could allow things to be made closer to consumer, to be made more flexibly for consumer demand,
01:00:57
Speaker
I mean, this is all a war period where it's become a much more demand driven model. you You know, you think of the TikTok yeah generation, you know, that's that's where these trends are coming from. that's obviously people like Shiana pick these things up.
01:01:09
Speaker
In that world, I realized that, you know proximity, making things close to the customers was very important. And so I cast it around yeah in Silicon Valley to yeah colleagues and associates and friends that were in high velocity manufacturing environments. So to kind of circle back the start of the conversation, I realized that there were some things that the apparel industry could learn from other industries. And I use that example when when we started about yeah a Nokia phone being soldering rivets and fasteners, fast forward to you know an iPhone printed laminate adhesive that assembles it. And I could see also footwear is an industry that's a lot more automated. The values of the companies that play in footwear are much higher than apparel. As I said, there's things that we can learn from outside the industry.
01:01:57
Speaker
yeah I'm fundamentally an outsider and and into the industry. And so said, well, look, how can we use some of these manufacturing processes? And that's what's kind of driven out our and innovation path. And so the head of our engineering comes, he's worked in the apparel industry at manufacturers, but he also um yeah comes from at Apple and Microsoft, um you're building things like touchscreens with adhesives. We're used to this high velocity manufacturing environment. I'd say that's been absolutely a part of our story as a company. There's a few companies that are trying to think about new ways to manufacture. What's very different about us is using an adhesive as a cornerstone for us.
01:02:37
Speaker
and And that's just driven yeah a phenomenal amount um ah on an innovation from a product point of view, as as well as obviously from a manufacturing process. You said you were from New Zealand and I found out that you were the New Zealand indoor rowing champion. Yeah. that Tell us a bit about that. How did you get interested in rowing and do you still go rowing now? i Unfortunately, I i don't um ro row much anymore, but I did it for a long time. i had pretty good successes um at at the um national level in new zealand both on the water and and off the the the water i also rode at university rode i rode at cambridge so it's it's a sport that i that i love a lot and uh you know it's a sport that new zealand traditionally and you know outside of sailing and rugby it's probably our third sport i don't know maybe it's because there's a lot of
01:03:37
Speaker
a lot of water in New Zealand, a lot of lakes in New Zealand, a lot of rivers. So it's it's it's a sport that's very popular and in in New Zealand. And I don't know, maybe maybe I like the punishment. It's definitely a sport that's about um not perfection, but the vision of perfection. Doing the same thing over and over. So it is a sport that sort of focuses on yeah but but perfection.
01:04:04
Speaker
It's great to have a national champion on the podcast then. What are maybe ah some of the learnings that you've had from your rowing days that you brought into running a startup?
01:04:16
Speaker
you know, rowing may have so some some kind of um met metaphors or stereotypes that you you kind of love love pain, that you you love the kind of but the the journey. And that's, you know, something that shows up, obviously, in other endurance sports like yeah like like cycling. I think, you know, running running a startup, building a company, that that notion of like leaning into adversity, like leaning into pain,
01:04:45
Speaker
to some extent is is is something that's very important. that The concept of resilience is very much is very much there. And, you know you know, I would say actually rowing, like other sports like so sailing and and cycling and things like that, tech technology is actually pretty pretty important. And so that kind of perspective on, you know, the boats you use are very, very advanced, extremely lightweight.
01:05:09
Speaker
they're They're all um carbon carbon composite shells. Things... about how you can comport your body to to to drive force, because force around a pivot. So these kind of engineering principles um yeah are things that you certainly attune your body to and and your mind to in rowing. There's certain angles of of things that going to put more force or pressure. And so that kind of mindset of of thinking about efficiency and principles
01:05:39
Speaker
engineering, you know obviously things in in a company like ours that are really important. And um you know it's not obviously one-to-one translatable, but but a mindset, I think it's i think it's i think it's very been very helpful. Yeah.
01:05:52
Speaker
Sorry, just one more thing I would would say about Rowan to someone. So satorily, rowing you know and it has this great history of rowing blazers and jackets and things like that that show up when you're awarded. So yeah I did also have some kind of exposure um to apparel and fashion you know through through through that as well.
01:06:10
Speaker
You know, running a startup is extremely painful and it's a lot of blood, sweat and tears. um There's moments of huge success and but there's more moments of failures as well. So are there any favorite failures, you know, projects or experiments that didn't work out as you planned at the time, but ended up opening new doors or ah new opportunities that were otherwise overlooked?
01:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think there there's certainly a lot of that, yeah you know, failure or spinning your wheels or or kind of that that pressure, you know, is is part and parcel of startup life. I would say that, you know, we we we spent a decent amount of time on our journey, you know, focusing more on automation solutions around embellishment earlier on and our not just automation of of assembly of the underlying textiles, but automation of how different embellishment techniques, because, you know, if if you take, so for example, printing, it it actually has sub elements to it between a pre-treat solution that goes on how it gets printed and and how you know curing systems work you know we spent time and in that area I think one of the things we learned from that is is ah maybe twofold one the printing or embellishment space is a much more sophisticated much more automated part of the value chain already you know in apparel and so
01:07:42
Speaker
Said another way, the opportunity to make an impact is actually smaller because there are some really great companies that that have done, you know, really, really great things. And so looking at kind of Blue Ocean is maybe bigger. but I would say we'll just lift the comment comment up a little bit. You know, I think the the art of being successful, my personal opinion, um you know, in ah in a start startup, you know,
01:08:06
Speaker
and building a real company that has longevity, compounding is really important. And it doesn't matter so much if you're making small mistakes or even quite big mistakes on the top.
01:08:19
Speaker
It's like the resilience of keep on keeping on is is so you know so important. And um this kind of concept, if you can be like 1% better or even half and better each week, but you compound, you know do the math, that that is very true. And I think people that are working and physical innovation, physical industries, which hardware obviously is, the idea of compounding is really important because, you know, you will build hundreds of prototypes. Many of them will fail, but you will learn a lot and it'll get better. So this idea of building and iterating is is very important. know, hardware,
01:08:55
Speaker
you know that expression hardware is hard, it takes longer than software when you when you're when you're dealing with with atoms and not just bits. And and so this idea of resilience and and kind of there these small improvements, but you know week on week, month on month, yeah year on year compounds so over time. And that's why your hardware, when you built it out and you've gone through 1,000, 1,500 process tests and 200 prototypes and you built the IP, the the foundations, the solidity of that innovation is is incredibly strong because you have all this knowledge that can turn up in patents, but you have also all this kind of process engineering, this tribal knowledge that doesn't turn up patents. And it's not very easy to you know to to to to to rep replicate yeah at um at a hugely grand scale. you know And NVIDIA is a great example, right? So thatve they've built for a long time, GPUs became sort of quote unquote so sexy in the mid 2010s, but they were on this journey for a long time before that in video games. And so the infrastructure, their knowledge and in designing chips and and how they get built, how you integrate software with hardware, there's no no hardware product is purely mechanical. There's always controls, there's always software that goes with it.
01:10:20
Speaker
this builds this really strong position over time, but you definitely get taught along the way all all the painful things you go wrong in the physical, when you go wrong in the physical corner, it's very visceral, versus you know, a software bug or something, you know, crashing.
01:10:36
Speaker
I loved the way you talked about compounding effort and how that really takes off at after a certain point. And great advice for other hardware startup builders, especially in textile manufacturing. There's you know some activity in that space that's starting to pick up and hardware is hard, as you said. and So that's a great bit of advice there.
01:10:57
Speaker
So we talked about constructing garments and, you know, fashion is beyond just the performance of the garment. It's about identity. It's about emotional connections. And this is a question I ask all my guests. Could you share with us about a garment or a piece of textiles that holds deep personal value for you? Something that you hold on that has a personal story that's connected to it, if you're happy to share that.
01:11:22
Speaker
You know, connecting back to the comment said about rowing actually having quite tutorial connection. So many many people you know who are not rowers might not know this. There's ah there's a peculiar thing in rowing that the award for great achievement is a blazer, a very colorful blazer for for winning. yeah know like Obviously, they they talk about that and um you know and in golf at the Masters. Well, that that concept, that idea that's used in the Masters, that actually comes from rowing. And so you can you can win particular blazers. blazer is a garment comes from rowing. You can you can win particular types of blazers, certain colors, certain trims.
01:12:07
Speaker
based upon you achievements that you make. And that and that happens um both at high school, university and the club level. So I do have certain blazers in my kind of collection.
01:12:21
Speaker
that have a lot of, um you know, sort of emotive value to me from put points and in that kind of career, as it were, and athletically. um So that, yeah, that that would be something that's that's very special. and and it's how I love that. So it's a little ecosystem or a little a little world that that that it thrives on extremely bright colors. um That's also quite quite fun as well.
01:12:48
Speaker
Most garish colors, most garish combinations somehow seem to work together and that's very much a of it. I'm going to have to Google this and look at some of these
Communicating Innovations to Broader Audiences
01:12:58
Speaker
blazers. They sound fascinating. So this question is actually from my previous guest, Amanda Parks. She's the CTO of Mothership Materials. And so she's left a question for the next guest, not knowing who that is. This is her question. I think a good one for you as well.
01:13:13
Speaker
Textiles are central to to us and is part of many supply chains, agriculture, manufacturing, materials, and it impacts, you know, very much how we live and work. Yet public perception often treats fashion and garments just as trends and styles.
01:13:31
Speaker
So how can we shift that narrative to recognize textiles as a vital part of our daily life and tech and technological innovation that it is, you know, similar to food and auto but and the automotive industry, etc. so in your career, how do you think about changing this perception that people have about clothing? And what steps can the industry take to bring this deeper value to the forefront of the public consciousness? Yeah, I think that's a great question. i think a narrative storytelling is is really and important there, you know, to pick up on a couple of concepts that you talked about. So um I love this little notion that when you think about the apparel industry, everyone in the world is a customer.
01:14:19
Speaker
And when you think about it, of course, right? Everyone has to be clothed. But it's little mental models like that took to remind us how ever a present apparel is. Everyone is a is a customer. So I think that's, you know, these like little little narrative, you know, hooks, yeah again, about...
01:14:40
Speaker
self-identity you know i think there's something you mentioned there' about self-identity or expression you know clothing is the most personal it is the most fundamental the most intrinsic way that people have self-identity you and and expression um you know for for who for who they are you know both in terms of the the silhouette you know you know you think of uniforms across many not just the military but you know many different things you know occupation you have is is self-defined by what you wear. So, you know, even if you think about, you know, it industries that are kind of anti-fashion, you might say the the the tech industry of having, you know, I always think of punk, you know, the the the joke is, is that that there was so anti-establishment that made their own establishment because having your own identity, which is ah an anti-identity, but it kind of falls apart because it becomes its own identity that you have to have pens on your jacket and you have to, you know, sort have holes in your jeans and you put studs on your clothing. And so but this concept of identity, I think, you know,
01:15:48
Speaker
thinking about that um is is really important because i think, you know, expressing who one who one is, you know, is is ah is a very, and very important thing. so i think I think those kinds of hooks are very, you know, important, you know, and I think the impact of apparel, I think, you know, whether whether that's in terms of the scale of the industry. As I said, yeah I think it's a stat that I talk to a lot of people they're very surprised by, that the manufacturing output, so that's really the the intrinsic importance of this as an industry, maybe not monetarily, but from just a sheer scale of an industry, it's the second and largest in the world in terms of the number of units that are produced. So I think having these like these narrative hooks are very important for people to reset like the impact of the industry. Again, you know
01:16:38
Speaker
If you take things like certain parts of the and the and the industry um from like from a sustainability perspective, that's an impact as well. It's not a good impact, but we should we should change it. And so I think these narrative hooks are very important. So I can give you one last example. One of our investors talks about the – he's on this very publicly on podcasts and things – talks about the the impact of the apparel in a negative sense in terms of liquidation. you know he says, what would the world say 35% of Ford 150 pickup trucks went straight from the factory
01:17:17
Speaker
to the dump there would be a shock but like what goes on in the industry so i think the narratives hooks of storytelling are very powerful about where the industry needs to move but also where where people more broadly need to understand the really positive impact that it makes in terms of self-expression identity um or just you know how it how impacts across so many different stratas of life. So I think storytelling is always a really great way because in something like Carol, it can kind of fade into the background, ironically, because everyone's wearing it every day. Yeah, exactly. And it is in one sense a commodity, but obviously not in another because brands are so important. So think storytelling is very important to crystallize these kind of big abstract trends and things like that.
01:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, and also to help people understand the complexity of creating a garment. and mean Because, like you said, it's so ubiquitous, it's everywhere, that people don't realize how complex just engineering a shirt or a blouse or a t-shirt is. And we've just spent you know all this time talking about how complex that system is and you know how difficult it has been to automate that industry because of how complicated it is. Yeah, i would i would agree with that a a thousand percent.
01:18:39
Speaker
What question would you like to leave for the next guest? I would say, so I think i think you you you have lots of very interesting and in innovators on your program.
01:18:50
Speaker
But to what we've just been talking about, the industry is very ah abstract. and And I mean that in many senses, because it's like this ubiquity has actually kind of created some ah abstraction because where things get produced, know, the process, further upstream but materials, you know, stuff just shows up provebially at your door, you know you know, innovation in this area tends to to be quite complex and and it and it touches lots lots of different things it's like the opposite of you know like when the iphone came up and you know you okay you don't have a keyboard anymore you can use your finger yeah two to to manipulate that that's like something you could explain to you know a three-year-old
01:19:40
Speaker
But I think a lot of the innovation that I see, and there's great innovation, um I'm a little bit familiar with my my mother show, you know know and and and obviously a lot of people across the material science. I would ask, how you how do you communicate your innovation in such a way that be understood very very very broadly to people outside of the apparel industry. I would say that's a ah really great thing to go after, but it's also quite tricky to do because of the types of innovation. There's so many steps in the belly and chains that a lot these
01:20:12
Speaker
seeing like how do you show where the impact shows up for someone that's not in the apparel industry. I think there's a great, great things to pause on. so that would be more how do you how do communicate these great innovation ideas, but they're often quite abstract and the average person outside of apparel probably only spends less than 1% of their time probably thinking about some of these things, even though they have a big impact.
01:20:35
Speaker
So that that would be maybe my question. Brilliant. That's a great question. Well, Cam, thank you so much for your time. That was absolutely fascinating, mind blown. And I wish I could just walk into your factory and see how all of this works together. but I know there's some videos online on your website, which was really helpful. Definitely going to be keeping an eye on where things are going to go for you guys and wishing you all the best in sort of starting to scale this up and really showing the impact of what this technology can do. And I also wonder what whether one day you're one of your robots um can be in the the London Museum's sewing machine, you know, alongside the first invented sewing machine as well. I know there's no sewing involved here, but it's just nice to see the evolution of constructing garments. So thank you again, Cam, for your time. Just opened up a whole new world for me, apparel manufacturing. Absolutely. thank Thank you very much, Marlena. It's great great to share what we're doing um with the audience. And I think that's a really nice, um
01:21:34
Speaker
but point to close on that you know the idea that but maybe there could be this handshake yeah you know in a museum about you know passing the baton as as a absolutely so yeah i love that thank you
01:21:50
Speaker
Wow, that was absolutely
Conclusion and Further Exploration
01:21:53
Speaker
fascinating. It blows my mind when we really pause to think about fabrics and sewing. and These are the most mundane materials and acts of construction. But if you really think about it, if you really pause and think about it, fabrics are such complex materials and the very simple act of sewing, I say simple, but it's actually such a sophisticated method of construction.
01:22:17
Speaker
Cam really pulled back the curtain on just how complex, labor intense and globally entangled the apparel manufacturing really is and why the industry is ripe for transformation.
01:22:28
Speaker
Create.me's stitchless, adhesive-based construction and physical AI-driven robotics is all set to radically transform the apparel sector with high-precision engineering, enabling onshore microfactories faster lead times and reduce waste.
01:22:43
Speaker
The sewing machine is a remarkable piece of technology and I don't believe that it will become obsolete. But I do believe that autonomously made stitchless garments will be in our wardrobes in the very near future. So do look out for it.
01:22:57
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about other advanced textile manufacturing technologies, I can recommend a couple of past episodes we've done. We had ah Gilberto Loreiro from Smartex AI sharing with us about AI technologies that's used for detecting defects during the manufacturing process. And this can lead to reducing huge amounts of waste during textile production. And this is episode number six. And in episode 13, we have Beth Espineta sharing about Unspun, another Silicon Valley startup. Their 3D weaving technology constructs 3D garments on the loom and is looking at similar concepts of onshoring with zero inventory on-demand production at microfactories.
01:23:40
Speaker
You can find the links in the show notes to these episodes or just scroll down on your podcast platform and these episodes should pop up. So that's episode 6 Anthem. If you're interested to visit the London Sewing Machine Museum, I'm definitely making a trip there. I'm so curious about this place. um I have left a link in the show notes for more information. Apparently, it's only open once a month. So do check out the dates before you head there.
01:24:06
Speaker
Please share the episodes with anyone who might find it inspiring or valuable. Your support to spread the word about this podcast is deeply appreciated. If you enjoyed this episode, consider buying me a little or coffee using the link in the show notes, buy me a coffee. It helps fuel those late night editing sessions as I bring you these stories. Thank you again for joining me. Stay tuned for more episodes and don't forget to subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of textiles, emerging tech, craft and sustainability. Until next time, I'm your host, Millie Thurkin, reminding you that there's no such thing as ordinary cloth.
01:24:40
Speaker
Every thread tells a story.