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Apr 23, 2023

N.Y. startup previews 'future' of apparel making at Newark R&D facility

Next week, a young East Coast startup will step up its pursuit of a fully

Next week, a young East Coast startup will step up its pursuit of a fully automated future for clothing production at a new 35,000-square-foot research and development lab in the East Bay.

CreateMe Technologies Inc., founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, plans to launch an R&D Innovation Center at 6701 Mowry Ave. in Newark on Jan. 10 to beta test its proprietary mechanical- and cloud-software-enabled clothing production line. The line combines fabric cutting, adhesive bonding and assembly into a single process ideal for on-demand, customized apparel.

With more than 140 patents secured or pending, CreateMe said its process will reduce manufacturing costs and speed by orders of magnitude — bringing designs to market within weeks, rather than months — and disrupt the global industry with local production at scale. While embellishment is traditionally done laboriously with needle and thread, CreateMe's method makes use of adhesives.

"This was a multimillion dollar project to create an automation facility that's one of a kind, which we feel represents the future of apparel manufacturing in the 21st century," said Campbell "Cam" Myers, who co-founded and is co-CEO of CreateMe with Vibhav Prasad.

The process, which emphasizes adhesives rather than needle and thread, is designed to achieve 60% gross margin for cutting and sewing functions over the industry's standard of a 10% to 15% gross cost margin. The CEO said there's an industry precedent for this kind of leap in the move from traditional knitting to machine-assisted 3D knit manufacturing.

In theory the machine will also be able to produce at 10 times the velocity of traditional manufacturing methods.

"This means, all things being the same, a 35,000-square-feet facility can have the same production output of a facility (that's) into the hundreds of thousands of square feet," Myers said. "This is very attractive from a business perspective in terms of capital requirements and ability to localize facilities to be as close as possible to market."

"To our knowledge, no one has attempted to do this and it's a first-of-its-kind-system," said Michael Tanguay, CreateMe's chief hardware engineer, in a company statement. "(It) will enable cost-effective garment production in any region, anywhere in the world."

The large Newark facility will host CreateMe's beta testing phase throughout 2023 while the company simultaneously continues development of a separate process for automating clothing embellishments. It will have around 31 employees and that he plans to add more closer to commercialization, Myers said.

The site includes a product studio where CreateMe can showcase its product for current and future apparel partners, who Myers called "some of the most illustrious apparel companies in the world." The company currently provides client services to brands including Levi's, Louis Vuitton, Nike and Luxottica, according to its website, with operations in fashion capitals spanning four continents.

CreateMe was founded in 2018. The company has not disclosed its total fundraising or investors to date, but the CEO told me it is "significantly higher" than $1 million.

The company previously acquired a U.K.-based firm, YR Store Ltd., which specializes in on-demand product customization at live events. CreateMe has begun showcasing the ability in recent years, producing thousands of customized garments, water bottles, tote bags and stickers for a 20-day pop-up with Ralph Lauren at Wimbledon in 2021.

Another event at Levi's London flagship customized the brand's denim jackets with designs from British tattoo artists, and in early 2022 CreateMe offered on-demand Warner Bros.-themed add-ons at Austin's trendy SXSW music festival.

The startup made headlines in 2021 after it hired away Gucci America Inc.'s top lawyer, Brooke Crescenti, for the same role at CreateMe that September. She joined CreateMe's senior director of intellectual property, Rambod Nader, former patent counsel for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.