Textile Innovation

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is David Dillon, smart apparel business lead at W L Gore.  Founded more than 60 years ago by Bill and Vieve Gore, the company makes everything from consumer products to medical components to fibres and vents. Its most well-known product is arguably Gore-Tex – a waterproof and breathable membrane added to outdoor clothing – and recently it has expanded into wea...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Zimri Hinshaw, CEO of Bucha Bio.  Based in New York City (US), Bucha Bio is a biotechnology company that creates materials using bacterial nanocellulose. The company was founded in 2019 and the team plans to use this material to replace animal and plastic leather.  In this podcast, Hinshaw talks about how long it takes to create the company’s biomaterial, h...

This week’s guests on The WTiN Podcast are sales and marketing director Neil Green and technical director Paul Geldenhuys from NUtec Digital Ink.  Based in South Africa, the company began its journey in 1995, when it was an early ink manufacturer for airbrush printers used for commercial printing. The company’s name and focus has since changed a couple of times after being acquired by Scitex Visio...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Martin Flora, VP, Business Development, Green Theme Technologies.    Founded in 2013, Green Theme Technologies is an emerging textile innovation company based out of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, US. The business’ mission is to create products that out-perform existing technologies while eliminating water usage and pollution, hence the development of its EMPEL pl...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Dr Jan Blenkinsopp, head of research and development at Aqualab (the innovation arm of Speedo).   Based in Nottingham, UK, Speedo created its first swimsuit in 1928, and has since helped to pioneer Lycra swimsuits. It has also developed the controversial Fastskin Racing System and contributed to countless gold medals at the Olympics and other competitions....

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Topher Anderson, manager, technical embroidery application at ZSK Research and Training Center.  Founded just a few years ago, the ZSK Training and Research Center is a subsidiary company to ZSK Embroidery Machines. Based on the West Coast of the US, the Center has been set up to help anyone from students to established companies to find solutions concerned...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Georgia Parker, innovation manager at Fashion For Good.  Founded in 2017, Fashion for Good is a global innovation platform that is on a mission ‘to make all fashion good’. By sparking and scaling innovation, by offering practical action in the form of support, funding and roadmaps, and by fostering sector-wide collaboration rather than competition, the orga...

The WTiN Podcast is back for another series, and this time we kick off by talking to Jackie Corlett, founder and director of Motif and Motif Handmade.   While founded decades apart, Motif (1990s) and Motif Handmade (2010s) share a vision to support traditional weaving practices in Bangladesh by making them part of today’s solutions. Motif focuses on the production of woven fabrics and getting peop...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Dr George Sun, CEO, Nextiles.  Founded in 2019 and spun out of MIT and the National Science Foundation, Nextiles is a wearable smart textiles company that uses its patented sewing technology to apply circuitry directly into fabric. Through this, the team creates a cohesive hardware-software ecosystem where it can leverage machine learning technologies to tr...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Michelle Zhu, CEO and co-founder of Huue. Founded in 2019 by Zhu and Tammy Hsu (CSO), and based on UC Berkeley-invented bioengineering research, the company uses biotechnology to create the ‘world’s most sustainable dyes’, with its first mission being to create indigo blue for denim makers.  In this episode, Zhu explains what she means by ‘bioengineering’ a...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Jessica Schreiber, founder and CEO of Fabscrap.  Founded in 2016, Fabscrap is a non-profit organisation rethinking commercial textile waste by providing convenient pickup of unwanted textiles from New York City businesses. The team ensures maximum diversion from landfill by utilising the most current recycling technologies and engaging the local creative co...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Sydney Gladman, chief scientific officer at the Material Innovation Initiative (MII). Founded in 2020, the Material Innovation Initiative ‘exists to make the sustainable option, the easy option’ by accelerating the development of next-gen materials that are high-performance, animal-free, and more sustainable for the fashion, automotive, and home goods indus...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Andreas Andrén, CEO at We aRe SpinDye.  Founded in 2014, We aRe SpinDye has developed a colouring method that focuses on the coloration of the recycled material before it is extruded to fibre and spun into yarn. By melting colour pigments and the recycled polyester mass together, homogenously coloured yarns are created, without the use of water. This method...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Debbie Luffman, product director at Finisterre.  Founded in 2003 by Tom Kay, Finisterre is a British outdoor clothing company that has adopted a sustainable approach since its inception. The business started in a flat above a surf shop in Cornwall with an innovative fleece, and now it is offers wetsuits, T-shirts, jackets and more.   In this episode, Luffma...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is John Elmuccio, COO and co-founder of Evolution St Louis.  Founded in February 2020 by Elmuccio and his business partner Jon Lewis, Evolution St Louis is a high-tech knitting 32,000 sqft facility that uses 3D and complete garment seamless technology to create the manufacturing facility and supply chain of the future.   In this episode, Elmuccio talks about s...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Teddy Seyed, a senior researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft. Headquartered in Redmond in the US, Microsoft is a multinational technology company that I’m sure we’re all familiar with. The RiSE group in particular focuses on advancing software engineering research, which includes working on smart textiles since around 2014.  In this episode, Seyed talks...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Shawn Mealey, technical service and development scientist at Dow.  Founded in 1897, Dow is a multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, in the US. Back then it was just a science start-up but now it is known as an ‘innovation powerhouse’, developing and supplying silicones, coatings, plastics and more to almost all industries. In...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Robina von Stein, founder of RE-NT.  Founded in 2018, RE-NT began as a clothing rental platform for the end consumer. But since 2020, it has turned its attention to helping other brands and retailers integrate a rental model into their own businesses. To do this, the company has devised a holistic system that helps brands adopt RE-NT’s customised software a...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Liesl Truscott, director of Europe and materials strategy at Textile Exchange.  Founded as Organic Exchange in 2002, Textile Exchange is a global non-profit organisation that works closely with all sectors of the textile supply chain. It identifies and shares best practices regarding farming, materials, processing, traceability, and product end-of-life to c...

The WTiN Podcast is back for another series, and this time we kick off by talking to Peter Hill, director of Woven Fabrics at Heathcoat Fabrics.  Based in Devon, UK, Heathcoat is a market-leading manufacturer of knitted and woven textiles. The company is well known for its work in many industries including automotive, defence and PPE, and for the last 30 years its fabrics have also been adventurin...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Feico van der Veen, founder and CEO of The Movement (a company offering sustainable fibre and yarn solutions for the textile industry) and its integrity technology company called AWARETM.  Founded in April 2020, AWARE has a mission to eliminate greenwashing by offering a secure traceability system that can be integrated into recycled materials. Firstly, a t...

This week’s guest on The WTiN Podcast is Dalia Benefatto, a consultant at REMOkey. Founded in 2010, the team at REMOkey has created a label and communication solution for textiles made with recycled materials. The process involves three steps, the first of which is calculation. To determine the definite percentage of used recycled content in a product, the company maps the production trail through...

This week on The WTiN Podcast we speak to the director of the Textile Recycling Association, Alan Wheeler.  The Textile Recycling Association is the UK’s trade association for collectors, sorters, processors and exporters of used clothing and textiles.  The main objectives of the association are: ·       to represent the interests of its members locally, nationally and internationally ·       be a...

This week on The WTiN Podcast we speak to Petri Alava, CEO of Infinited Fiber Company, who is representing a new EU-funded scheme called New Cotton Project.   In a ‘world first’ for the fashion industry, the project connects 12 key players to break new ground by demonstrating an entirely circular model for commercial garment production. Over a three-year period, textile waste will be collected, so...

On The WTiN Podcast this week, we speak to Michael Cattanach, global product director at Polartec.   Based in Massachusetts in the US, Polartec has a rich history that dates to 1906. Back then the company was known for making military uniforms, as well as its work with wool and much more, under the name of Malden Mill Industries. But it was in the 1980s, when it developed the world’s first polar f...