Next-gen material startups are deprioritising fashion

The furniture and automotive industries have longer development times because the performance standards are so high, but they also work with larger order volumes, she says. Fashion can offer a faster turnaround, but it doesn’t provide the volume of demand, especially at first, that a material production company needs to be able to significantly increase production capacity.

For fashion brands, materials and technologies need a lot of trial and error to be developed, they need investment to be scaled, and the scaling process inevitably requires more trial and error. If startups find other industries to step up and do that work, fashion can get a metaphorical free ride.

However, this diversification should also be a wake-up call. What if those other industries end up focusing a startup’s attention on refining a material for something other than apparel or footwear? If it’s developed for some other purpose entirely, fashion risks losing out, says Valerie Langer, fibre solutions strategist at the non-profit Canopy. At the least, their production capacity could be limited for at least the first year and likely longer.

“If the diversification means [innovators develop] processes that are not suitable for textiles [relevant to fashion], that is a threat,” she says. That’s because next-gen materials are expected to be pivotal in fashion brands’ ability to comply with EU requirements coming down the pike — which could drive a spike in demand, and leave brands unable to meet stricter sourcing standards if supplies of next-gen materials fall short. Given current trajectories, that may well happen, considering it takes at least 18 months to build a commercial production facility once investment is secured, says Langer. “If I were a fashion brand, I would not want the top performers in the innovation field moving too far away from me right now.”

Fashion’s risk aversion

Commercialisation — the stage between development or proof of technology and its widespread availability on the market — is what some call the ‘valley of death’. This is true for many industries, yet insiders say it’s especially true in fashion, where brands are accustomed only to buying finished garments, and not to developing or improving the supply chains needed to produce them.

“It’s a very new thing for fashion to think about venture-backed companies. Computers, IT and software, their lifeblood is venture. Others too: automotive, pharma, a lot of sectors. But for fashion, it’s really a new phenomenon. I don’t think the C-suites are thinking about how to tap into this innovation market,” says Peter Majeranowski, CEO and president of textile recycling startup Circ. It’s equally true for the logistics involved in rolling out new technologies. “Brands are trying to push the supply chain — but the supply chain’s saying, ‘Look, you’ve been pushing us for decades on margin.’ I would say that’s the organic structural challenge in this industry,” he says. “You have brands wanting [the material innovations], but they don’t really understand how it’s going to fully happen.”