Fabdesigns, Inc. Disrupting 3D Knit Manufacturing Since 1988

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What we do makes us who we are. We are Innovative disruption

FABDESIGNS IS ALL ABOUT DISRUPTION, NOT DOING WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES, FLYING IN THE FACE OF CONVENTION, AND FINDING THE BETTER PATH.

We’ve spent decades developing cutting-edge 3D knitted products for major companies, reimagining the machinery, innovating parts and materials, and teaching these new technologies to major brands, individuals, and engineers around the world. Chances are you're wearing, driving, sitting on, or playing with something that we've touched.

Many others take credit, including machine builders, but in all honesty, they’re the last to find out what we make with our clients, and just take the orders for the thousands of machines. Our names are on more than 120 patents for:

Revolutionizing 3D knitted Footwear
Next Gen 3D Footwear
Game Changing Sporting Goods
3D Medical Devices & Bracing
Advanced Aerospace Composites
Innovative 3D Automotive & Vehicle Structures
Ligamental Supported Sportswear
Reinvigorating the Knitting industry with a combination feeder
Smart Textile Device for Embedding Multiple Wires and Conductive Materials

Since 1988, we’ve disrupted manufacturing through smart design, customized on-demand manufacturing, and 3D knit additive manufacturing with nearly zero waste.

Today, Fabdesigns offers confidential in-house development & knit trials. We work in many fields from 3D knitted composites, footwear, and in a variety of markets where the fabrication types, whole piece panels are integrated with many yarn types and knit to shape components that fit with other product parts, molds, and manufacturing processes. We produce prototypes on production quality machines for your proof of concept purposes. Our original programs and expertise optimize production with nearly zero waste from first prototypes to post-development production. All the secret sauce is kept in-house, which mitigates the hazard of knock-offs overseas and elsewhere and maintains quality control and assurance.

We've always felt, why follow, when we can translate vision into reality.

To us, knitting is additive manufacturing, integrating many types of materials exactly where they need to be, repeatedly, consistently, and far more efficiently than WYSIWYG off the shelf software.

In the words of John C Maxwell, 'We know the way, we go the way, and we show the way.' We build new pieces to the puzzle. We bend the rules of knitting machinery that we were all taught were unchangeable, to make things that were never made before. And, we have always programmed with hyper-efficiently and nearly zero waste. We've led the industry for successful R&D of first to market products, and programming excellence in sustainable 3D knit textiles in many industries for 3 decades.

We're about a lot more than just making prototypes. We're about scaling mindfulness in manufacturing to make an impact. We don't just dream about success, we work for it every day until your prototype and manufacturing platform are right for you.

SUSTAINABLE LEAN MANUFACTURING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE IS OUR MISSION.

Bruce Huffa LCG

CEO & Master Knitting Engineer

We've all heard about 3D knitting, right? Well, this is the man who brought 3D technical knitting to the mainstream with the FIRST 3D knit running shoe in 2008, to win awards all over the globe for world class design, engineering, sustainability and using our Fabdesigns game changing technology. Numerous patents bear his name. An alumnus from Hinckley Poly-Tech in the UK and a world-class certified Stoll flat knitting master, trained in Reutlingen Germany, s one of the priveledged few under the mentor-ship of Mr. Thomas Stoll, a brilliant man who saw the future of technical 3D knit textiles in 1978, and who built the infrastructure to create almost anything with knitting as additive manufacturing.

Bruce is is adept in envisioning, creating, engineering and programming the most difficult knit fabrications on many generations of knitting machinery. As a master technical expert , he finds opportunities and devises solutions. He is certified by Stoll in adapting, programming, repairing and installing machinery and instructing others for more than 25 years. He is among the few in the world that are considered programming elite, having concentrated knowledge in electronics analytics, mechanical systems of textile machinery, which has allowed him to create intellectual property for several global brands and Fabdesigns.

His forte is building complete manufacturing platforms for 2D and 3 D shaped structures with minimal or no sewing, which integrate multiple yarns and strategic functions. Ahead of his time he wrote a digital automated software for customized on demand knit manufacturing of 2D, 3D and shaped knit structures in 1989 which has been used and employed by such companies as Rand Designs, Jelyn-Old Glory, French Rags, and most recently as reported in 2018 by Variant,

Stoll Germany recruited him from the UK to be the training instructor for North America at Stoll America New York. Eventually he'd run the entire West Coast, where he pioneered the flat knitting industry, selling, installing and training new clients. He has successfully planned and set up factories, manufacturing processes, and supply chains all over the world, including installing hundreds of machines himself, and training staff on programming, knitting, machine handling, QA and QC for their own success.

He is internaltionally known for inventing the Flyknit shoe using his own foot dimensions, machinery, and materials, and is named on more than a hundred patents in footwear alone, though he contends vehemently that he nor Fabdesigns has ever assigned any patent, nor transferred any Fabdesigns' pre-existing techology. The rift is what caused him to leave the footwear giant.

Currently, he's an international advanced textile engineering consultant, creating specialized programs and confidential in-house training, innovative 3D knitting yarn renderings of designer and engineering ideas on state-of-the-art Stoll Knitting Machinery, for many brands and on location at manufacturing partners around the world, improving production in manufacturing facilities.

His focus is the most difficult complex,where the impossible is made possible including the several patents pending on the next generation of knitted footwear, complex composte structures with carbon fiber and ceramics, as well as new devices for feeding challenging materials into machinery.

Connie Huffa

Textile Engineer

Connie is part of the husband and wife team at Fabdesigns, Inc. that invented 3D knit running shoes for those guys in Oregon. Though, Fabdesigns doesn't get the credit and has disputed the patents. She graduated with a BSc from Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, where she also wrote and taught product development in the Masters of textiles program '94, '95, '96. Connie has designed and engineered knits, wovens, and non wovens for top apparel brands including PhillipsVanHeusen and Tricots St Raphael in NYC and their manufacturing facilities around the globe - as well as extreme aftermarket automotive brands for Shell Oil US in California. If you've seen the Hawaiin seat covers, interior products, and dolphin air fresheners over the last 20 years, she is the point person resposible for bringing fashion to a dying industry through material science and innovative product development infrastructure, reviing the Shell aftermarket division from a waning $100 million business unit into a $450 million power house in less than 3 years and later Kraco Enterprises. She speaks marketing, design, risk analysis, operations, and EBITDA fluently.

Knit background: At Somerset Knitting Mills in '80's Philadelphia, she learned and programmed Shima Seiki SEC machines, Universal, Jumberca and Mecmore as well as designed for many other types of knitting equipment for top brnads around the world.

In the mid-80's Stoll America recruited her from Tricots St Raphael to assist the West Coast office of Stoll America, where she cultivated and trained new clients, shortening their learning curve after acquiring new machinery, programming, and running knitting machinery. She was one of few women who actually worked hands-on the machinery, creating new fabrics at that time. It is with this zeal and passion for materials that she pays knowledge forward, speaking at prominent conferences and creating the on-line Learn With Leaders program.

Over 30 years, she's built a solid reputation for building 'fiber upward' textile materials focus, infrastructure, supply chains, and cutting edge product development and engineering processes for first to market launch success stories in several markets and has several patents and patents pending. She is an industry writer and contributor (Knitting Trade Journal, Knitting Industry, Textile World, Advanced Textiles Source, Specialty Fabrics Review, Textile innovations), an International Consultant and Conference Speaker on innovation and textile technology (IFAI, Techtextile, ANPIC, CITME, TTI Vanguard), and has developed customized in-house technical workshops for many fortune 500 brands around the world. She is also a mentor in the Make it In LA program in Los Angeles and has been written about in Forbes, Voyage LA, IFAI, and others.