“That’s where I saw first- side the disconnect between what’s happening on the front end, with stream development and the supply chain, which is usually very behind”, Lam says.
He did n’t know it at the time, but his work would lead him towards co- founding Unspun, an innovative textile company that now has some 50 employees, based in Hong Kong, California and London.
Unspun’s specialty is 3D spinning, a production technique that eliminates pattern cutting and the related inefficient offcuts.
The spinning in 3D creates a combination of the garment’s manufacturing and the knitting itself, which uses less energy, uses less energy, and releases less greenhouse gases.
Lam spoke to the Post about his start-up and its optimistic vision to fix the gap between supply and demand.
What led you to Unspun and 3D weaving?
We were well-versed in mass production and shipping to Western brands because we were raised in a home that produced candles.
I went to grad school in California and that’s where I met my i- founder Beth Esponnette.
She was frustrated [at the same things as I was] from a pattern and product development standpoint because she had a background in fashion design and fabric technology.
She was thinking about 3D printing as an inspiration and wondered if it could be applied to various industries as well. Why not in clothing? She dreamed of creating clothes common to the regular customer, and that’s when she landed on 3D knitting as an method.
We teamed up the day before graduating and began working on Unspun; we didn’t start full-time until 2017 because it was difficult to raise money.
That’s our concentrate: preventing spend that eventually ends up in landfill.
Before that, I joined athletic clothing company Lululemon]as head of plan for the Asia- Pacific area] and learned about manufacturing as well as some of the pain points businesses of that size have.
By then, I’d developed this notion that if you want to solve the climate problem, you can’t just produce software – the solution needs to be tangible. It’s best if you can create something so compelling that you don’t even need to talk about sustainability.
It’s like preaching good food: telling people everything is good so they should have it, that’s difficult. But if you make a delicious solution that’s even healthier, you’ll make an impact.
Show us about Unspun’s tailor-made- healthy fabric products.
We were aware of the need to create a 3D spinning system and that it would require years of diligent effort to launch it. So any goods we were producing on the fashion aspect had to be woven, which meant we had to keep a hemisphere of a quarter.
When we first started talking to 300 people, we learned that many of them struggled to find tops that worked, especially clothes. Skinny jeans were fashionable.
Our first design was created by scanning Kevin Martin, our co-founder and chief technology officer, in his kitchen underwear, and then we grew it to fit various body types.
In order to allow people to download an app, use sensors on their phones, and order custom-fit jeans for them during the Covid- 19 pandemic, we switched to smart scanning.
Was it a time when you realized something was wrong?
When we first started, it seemed a little premature, but over the past few years, we’ve seen more confusion that comes with a global supply chain, with geography and natural materials.
The elements are in alignment, but we’re still in the early stages of companies being able to fully prepare on demand.
Our goal is to reduce the global human carbon footprint by 1%.
That’s our concentrate: preventing spend that eventually ends up in landfill, by creating on demand.
Around the beginning of 2023, we started talking about 3D weaving in public, but we’d been working on it for five decades. We worked with New York fashion label Eckhaus Latta in September 2023, and recently launched a collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Ana Kraš.
We’re also working with a few international brands in Europe to finally bring manufacturing closer to where consumption takes place.
Can you introduce the steps involved in the way you collaborate with these companions?
Eckhaus and Ana were working together to create anything novel that was pushing the boundaries of probability.
We used our tools and abilities to create 3D-weaving designs in the tapestry style with the intention of producing items that were also more resilient.
It aims to fix design problems by combining artistic design with systems. It’s very pleasant because the designers are drawn to concepts that we as technologists are unaware of and by popular culture.
We were able to use materials that we hadn’t previously considered and tap into that.
With Walmart, it’s more about solving supply chain issues. Usually, this involves looking at existing collections – pants, for example– and what we can resolve with on- demand production to make it cleaner, faster, and – finally, in the long term – cheaper or price competitive.
The goal is frequently to match and exceed an existing product’s performance.
What are your main goals?
Our goal is to reduce the global human carbon footprint by 1%., and, depending on which information source you trust, that would mean influencing a pretty significant portion of the industry – about a quarter to a third, and we need to do it quickly.
We’d need to take action and scale before the end of the decade with climate science in mind. We want to eliminate garment waste in particular because, prior to Covid, supply and demand imbalances had caused about 20% of garments to be created.
In this industry, you can see something go from zero to a hundred quickly because you’re tapping into people’s psyches and trends
If we can solve that issue with on- demand production, it would go a long way.
The technology has the ability to fundamentally change. Let’s say we make a pair of pants out of yarn and then later turn the pants back into recyclable yarn because the process needs to be meaningful when it comes to scaling the volume.
In your own wardrobe, are most pieces from Unspun?
Thrifting is definitely growing in my closet, but generally if you see me out in the wild, I’m in Unspun bottoms. With tops, I like to support smaller local brands, like Aim Higher Club]founded by Hong Kong high jumper Cecilia Yeung].
What aspect of working at this particular intersection of technology and fashion is the most difficult?
In this industry, you can see something go from zero to a hundred quickly because you’re tapping into people’s psyches and trends. But when the trends show up in the charts and numbers, you’re probably already too late.
The tension of newness or the desire to learn something new are the other two. I don’t believe the industry has ever found the ideal balance.
Although it is obvious that there isn’t as much newness in the most sustainable thing, newness is the main driver of business. It’s a tricky balance as well.
Third, there is a vested need for larger brands to be using sustainability or innovation to tell stories, and many of the innovations turn into one-off marketing campaigns.
If you’re selling a material, once you’ve collaborated with a brand it’s less desirable for other companies. The more you scale, the less appealing you become. Because you need cost parity and scale to achieve it, it’s an interesting challenge.
It’s a paradox. You must find a way to understand each other because we all speak different languages.
Yeah, and our two worlds don’t really intersect. The engineers, the hard science people, they do n’t really intersect with people at the centre of culture.
That’s why, with Ana’s collaboration, with the Eckhaus collaboration, it’s really important for us to be working with them because that’s where the cross- pollination happens.