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How can we move from a design-make-sell model in fashion, to design-sell-make? Danish supply chain startup Rodinia Generation thinks it has the answer. The company has raised €3 million to fund the creation of a global network of ‘microfactories’ — starting in Europe then expanding to the US — that will provide fast, nearshore, low-impact production, turning fashion’s current bloated production model on its head.
Rodinia is not the only one exploring the potential of microfactories, which it defines as having a small floor space, a water-free process, a ‘brain’ (the software to run the operation) and automated data harvesting. Others include Teemill, Unspun, Son Supply and Fashion Enter, while tech companies such as Gerber and Kornit are packaging the concept up as a product. What Rodinia hopes to do, with the new funding, is scale the model.
Rodinia’s original 200-square-metre microfactory in Copenhagen has been operational since 2021, working mostly with local Scandinavian brands such as Isnurh, Underprotection, Hummels and Mads Nørgaard, alongside what CEO and founder Trine Young describes as “big global players”, which the company declined to name.
Across just five machines connected by software coded by Rodinia, fabric is printed, cured and cut to specification, all without the use of any water or toxic chemicals (a stark contrast to conventional production, which can cross borders and involve thousands of litres of water and many toxic chemicals throughout dyeing and processing). Finished pieces are sorted via robot arm then sent to a separate facility to be sewn into garments by machinists, the only step is yet to be automated. The sewing process will become vertically integrated in future iterations of the microfactory, says Young.
Rodinia plans to open its next site in Europe in the second half of 2025. While the company doesn’t disclose startup costs, it says a microfactory makes back those expenses within approximately six months of opening, when running at full capacity.
Brands have long employed small nearshore manufacturers to trial new styles and respond quickly to trends. What the latest generation of microfactories bring to the table is more sophisticated automation, and technology-driven, low-impact manufacturing methods such as waterless digital printing and 3D weaving.
The main sell is their ability to reduce overproduction via a two-pronged approach: low minimums (the smallest number of garments a factory will commit to manufacturing) and shorter lead times. A standard factory could have minimums in the hundreds, and a lead time of three months plus. Rodinia’s minimum is just one garment, and lead times can be as short as 48 hours. This allows brands to respond directly to customer demand, making only what has sold, rather than forecasting and hoping for the best.
“In big business the biggest inefficiency is lead time. We’re working really far ahead, and we’re also committed to so much product, to such high minimums. Sometimes it’s better to buy 1,500 units to get a better price and mark half of it down than it is to buy the 500 that you needed,” says sustainable fashion consultant Natalie Binns.
Kasper Juhl Todbjerg, co-founder of Rodinia client Isnurh, praises the flexibility the microfactory offers, as well as the transparency of being able to cycle from the brand’s Copenhagen HQ to the Rodinia site, to watch how the collections are made. “One of the key benefits for us is the ability to adapt quickly to changing market demands and produce smaller batches of products economically,” he says.
Using tech to bring down costs
Rodinia describes itself as a tech startup rather than a manufacturer. Its processes are highly automated, and the technology improves over time, identifying inefficiencies such as fabric wastage and adjusting accordingly to the next run by reorganising the lay plan, for instance.
Its proprietary automated system distributes the economies of scale between clients. Opposed to manufacturing one style per brand at one time, yoga pants, leggings and baby clothes for various labels can all be manufactured in one run, as long as they’re made from the same fabric. Young likens this approach to carpooling — maximising a single resource by sharing it and collectively reaping the rewards.
The tech also helps tackle the cost issue. “[Microfactories] usually have prohibitive cost structures, relegating them to tiny niche markets. Rodinia has solved this problem with a level of automation that brings the costs down to a point where they can compete with Asian suppliers on large segments of the product portfolios of their customers [such as swimwear, sportswear, childrenswear and casualwear],” says Stefan Mård, general partner at venture capital firm Climentum Capital, one of Rodinia’s recent investors (alongside the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark).
It still can’t compete on price with very basic, cheap-to-make products like plain cotton T-shirts (in fact, Young says block colours in general aren’t suited to the technology because it wouldn’t be economical to print a full piece of cloth). Though once pattern and print are involved, that’s where brands will start to see savings on what Young calls “shadow costs”, such as import, shipping and warehousing.
A limited choice or an opportunity for innovation?
Rodinia has a selection of base materials for its clients to choose from (knits and leather are excluded as they don’t suit its automated process), an approach Binns says is already well established in the swimwear sector. It’s efficient, but for Isnurh’s Todbjerg, the trade-off is a limitation on what they can actually produce at Rodinia. “The range of products that Rodinia can print on is quite limited. This is partially due to their demand for certifications and the fact that their machine is not able to print on ‘thick’ or ‘hairy’ yarns, and fabrics such as wool and cashmere,” he says.
Other companies refine the model even further. Knitwear manufacturer Knitup, for instance, has a library of silhouettes, materials, prints and textures for brands to pick and mix.
Could these parameters refocus the design process and press brands to innovate within the boundaries of what’s on offer? What’s more likely is a mix-and-match approach, where brands distribute their production between factories according to what each one can offer, as Isnurh does. “For smaller brands, it’s an attractive route to market,” says Binns of Rodinia’s model. “But a lot want to put their own stamp on things and apply their own brand handwriting. It’s very hard to engineer that model into a brand that already exists.”
Young argues that the product range is extensive for a 200-square-metre facility, spanning sportswear, sleep and leisure, swim, shirts, trousers, shorts, skirts, tops and simple fabric bags. Keeping the material selection tight allows a level of transparency and control, she adds. The company sources from a handful of European suppliers, selected in line with internal sustainability policies. GOTS certification and OEKO-TEX 100 Standard are non-negotiables, and Rodinia does not use virgin polyester, favouring recycled synthetics instead. The raw materials it works with are mainly sourced from innovative textile company Lenzing, Young says.
Fabric replenishment is automated so the microfactory has exactly what it needs, when it needs it. An internal algorithm identifies when a material will be popular — according to season and by drawing from past demand — when it will sell through, and when it will therefore need to be replenished. Lead times for each specific material are factored in too, so stock always arrives timely enough to meet demand. “We don’t want thousands of base materials. We don’t need that,” Young says. There may be a future where brands can order suitably certified materials directly to the factory to widen scope, she adds.
Like Rodinia, Danish menswear brand Son of a Tailor, which owns microfactory Son Supply, focuses on purchasing fabrics and other materials in small batches with shortened lead times. The brand’s CEO and co-founder Jess Fleischer says he has already seen the micro-supply chain shift in action. “We have seen washing, printing and logistics facilities accepting to adjust their processes according to the cadence set by manufacturing, so from our experience, demand-driven manufacturing has had a very positive impact on the entire supply chain,” he says.
What’s next?
Depending on the product categories in production, Rodinia’s microfactory can operate at a capacity of approximately 700,000 to 1 million garments per year. As the figures highlighted via The Or Foundation’s ‘Speak Volumes’ campaign demonstrate, this is more than enough to cover the needs of smaller brands yet represents a drop in the ocean when it comes to the production volumes of larger brands.
Currently operating at capacity, and unable to answer all manufacturing requests — a clear-cut case for its expansion — the real impact will come with extensive growth, at a level where it could take responsibility for a meaningful share of a larger brand’s impact. An extended network of microfactories with different specialisms will also be crucial to enable brands to adopt the manufacturing model throughout their product range.
The move to a circular economy also presents an opportunity. Rodinia prints only the sections that are being cut out; therefore the raw, unprocessed scraps left over from production are easier to recycle and could in future, Young hopes, be fed into a circular ecosystem that regenerates those scraps into new base materials.
It’s here where Philipp Meister, global fashion and sporting goods lead at Quantis, sees an opportunity to partner with novel material innovation companies to double down on sustainability efforts. “Lots of those innovators are still in the incubation phase. And that’s an interesting phase to then collaborate with microfactories, because they don’t need to set up large-scale material production,” he says. Meister calls the potential link-up of multiple small-scale entities a “micro-supply chain”, which could see the agility and efficiency of microfactories echoed across different tiers of production.
With less waste, shorter transit to market, and the use of fewer chemical inputs and less water, the microfactory model certainly appears to be able to reduce the impact of production where it’s applied. Though the experts Vogue Business spoke to agree that the limitations of microfactories mean they cannot replace the wholesale operations of traditional factories, nor can they simply plug into the fashion industry in its current guise if they are to have meaningful impact. “If we don’t reduce the amount of products the fashion industry is producing, it’s useless,” says Meister.
Young, though confident in the potential of microfactories to “make exactly what people want and not a single garment more”, concurs that microfactories are not the sole solution. Rather she hopes to forge partnerships along the way to push industry-wide change. “These are all pieces of the supply chain puzzle, and Rodinia is just a part of it,” she says.
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