Who is Fabdesigns?

 Many know that Bruce and I have spent over three decades shaping our industry. 

We started young—two twenty-somethings at Stoll, pioneering the West Coast flat knitting scene—selling, installing, training, and programming. Owning our own machines wasn’t even on the radar. Then, when we were fired for getting engaged, we had no choice but to go out on our own. 

In 1988, backed by the support of U.S. and Canadian knitting mills, we began developing our own technologies, techniques, and know-how. The Los Angeles knitting community welcomed us in, and together we drove the West Coast’s styling edge—working with legends like Bernard Lax, Eddie Drasin, Brenda French, and more. Tastemakers, celebrities, and designers worldwide chased L.A.’s knit trends, wearing the pieces born from our push to take the machinery further than anyone thought possible. 

 The projects we created for Brenda French’s French Rags in 1998 featured over 140 possible garments in a single program We servied both the designer knitwear industry and her distinctive trunk show business.

Owning a contemporary knitwear brand was the farthest thing from our minds. But in 2000, when another client abruptly exited their business due to family reasons—leaving open orders and sales representatives scrambling—we stepped in. Using our own machines and sourcing yarns from Grignasco in Italy, we fulfilled their orders.

From there, we developed our own customized, on-demand women’s contemporary clothing line—automated, nearly zero waste, and far ahead of its time in knitting techniques - Concetta Bruce. Our innovations included cable inserts, pockets, channels, tunnels, 3D shaping, distinctive styling, and more. Our factory in North Hollywood was a fully vertical operation: yarn in, finished customized garments out—delivered in just three weeks. 

We maintained showrooms and worked with exceptional sales representatives in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

In 2008, we received a call from Stoll to assist a client in Portland with a technical challenge. We later learned this client had been attempting to develop a knitted shoe for nearly a decade.

Their representative explained they were making five separate shaped pieces to sew together. From an engineering and production standpoint, we could see this approach created unavoidable inconsistencies—each piece would stretch and distort differently in the machine, making precise assembly nearly impossible. Producing and bundling tiny curved components by size, and expecting repeatable results without high waste, was far from ideal.

Our first question was simple: Why not make it in one piece? The rep was surprised—“You can do that?” Bruce’s answer was immediate: Of course. We had already achieved similar results across children’s wear, menswear, womenswear, and technical applications. We then placed hundreds of swatches and finished products on the table, and the rep asked to take samples back to demonstrate to his team our capabilities were.  We relunctantly agreed.  For three years, they borrowed swatches, garments, technology, and ideas. 

In 2010, we paused our own clothing line completely to move to Portland to focus on this major footwear brand, even lending them our machinery for a year.  Ultimately, when we discovered members of their team taking public and legal credit for our work—despite three signed contracts to the contrary—we made the decision to leave Portland and shake the moss and dust from our feet.

 Today, in 2025, our technology is used worldwide—in footwear, aerospace, composites, performance sportswear, sporting goods, smart wearables, and more.

Yet, the potential of this technology has barely been tapped. In recent years, progress has slowed, held back by short-sighted thinking, leaving much of the industry stagnant. What is currently accepted as the “standard” is essentially the same ground we advanced in Portland back in 2010.

That was fifteen years ago!

Much of the market continues to revisit ideas from decades past, rooted in approaches developed in the 1980s. Even with the introduction of advanced platforms like the Stoll ADF and Cixing/Steiger Aries in 2012, their capabilities remain underutilized. 

The opportunities for innovation are still vast—and we’re focused on leading the next wave forward. Our technology pushes today's machinery into next gen footwear, Wearables, VR, Advanced Sports Gear, Medical Bracing, Implantables, Industrial Composites, Automotive,  Aerospace, Armour, Compression, Architechtural, Prosthetics, Functional Apparel, and so much more.

 Like many of our generation, we are designers, engineers, and free thinkers—innovators and inventors who refuse to be confined by boundaries, gates, or obstacles. Our work is driven by the belief that industry should always move forward.

Over the past decade, Bruce and I carved out our own space in the midst of what many call the “dark ages” of our industry—a time marked by lawsuits, the shark-infested waters of IP disputes, and the erosion of trust where NDAs, gentlmen's agreements, and contracts often meant little against corporations with hundreds of lawyers on retainer. 

Creativity was suppressed by short-sighted machine builders with leadership who rather than drive forward, chose a U turn, and pushed technology backward by decades.

Today, Fabdesigns holds 14 functional patents in the high-value, future-focused field of three-dimensional textiles—engineered with nearly zero waste.