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What we do
Fabdesigns advises and collaborates with brands, start-ups, and individuals on how to improve their technical textile design perspectives, product pipelines, and internal technical knowledge pool by providing excellence and the CREATIVE EDGE in best practices for developing and producing technical textiles in 2D, smart and 3D structures. Our prototyping saves, time, money, and materials in a world where everyone else is taught the same mediocre WYSIWYG tools and is stuck competing on price. We produce products, components, and assemblies with precision and accuracy exclusively in-house.
Over the last three decades, Fabdesigns Inc. has independently conceived, developed, and owns a time and money-saving system for optimizing the development and manufacture of extraordinary flat knitted textiles. Fabdesigns' system includes programming secrets, manufacturing optimization techniques, electronic technology, mechanical enhancements, coding shortcuts, interface code, and other trade secrets, some patented and some not. We call this “Fabdesigns Background IP”, which Fabdesigns uses as 'best practices' in its business of the development, engineering, and production of flat knitted textile, fabrics, components. composites, material feed systems, manufacturing platforms, and other textile technical know-how in respect to various and different applications in the International Textile Industry and a variety of end markets, including footwear, aerospace, medical, automotive, composites, home furnishings, smart-textiles, architecture, geotextiles, sporting goods, tactical equipment, protective gear, and apparel.
Fabdesigns consults, coaches, and builds prototypes and manufacturing platforms internationally utilizing various textile manufacturing processes, cutting edge, research, and ever-expanding skillsets in technology, materials, electronics, and machinery. We drive innovation with our teams while growing our clients' product bases, and value to stakeholders through advanced textile science, and specifically 3D and 4D knitting with nearly zero waste.
Fabdesigns' Services span a range of potential client needs, which are unique to developing flat knitwear, flat technical textiles, smart textiles, footwear, composites, three-dimensional flat knit textiles, and producing components, assemblies, and finished products, which are not available elsewhere in the world.
Fabdesigns provides a multi-tiered offering of technical services. Each service has a clear set of deliverables, budget, manufacturing strategy, and legal responsibilities for Fabdesigns and clients. Each level of service is dependent on the client’s required level of need and exposure to the processes and best practice trade secrets of Fabdesigns.
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GENERAL AND BASIC SERVICES utilize Fabdesigns Intellectual property on a non-exclusive basis. No programs need to be shared with the client. A mutual non-disclosure and statement of work or quote may be executed.
· General Services - consulting & textile instruction
· Basic Knitting - swatches, fabrics & components from clients existing programs
· Basic Development of Prototypes - swatches, fabrics & components from clients existing design brief, resulting in a tangible set of prototypes. Programs are not provided.
- Post Development Production - tangible swatches, fabrics, components, duplicates, and graded sizes of projects in post-development. Programs are utilized in-house and are not provided externally.
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COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT SERVICES utilize Fabdesigns Intellectual property (Background IP) on a non-exclusive basis, resulting in a tangible set of prototypes.. A mutual non-disclosure and statement of work or quote may be executed, as well as a consulting agreement, prior to start of work. Programs are not provided.
· Technical Consulting - best practices in design, structure & fabrication
· Technical training - best practices in operation, programming, & maintenance: swatches, fabrics & components from Fabdesigns' library. Tangible set of prototypes.
· Mid-Level Development - swatches, fabrics & components from clients existing design brief
· Collaborative Pre-Development - inspiration & ideation to develop a client's design brief.
· Collaborative Ideation inspiration & ideation to develop a client's design brief & swatches, fabrics & components from Fabdesigns' library, resulting in a tangible set of prototypes.
· Collaborative Prototyping A - prototyping based on clients' existing design brief, client's inspiration, product definition & ideation, resulting in a tangible set of prototypes..
· Collaborative Prototyping B - prototyping based on clients' existing design brief, client's inspiration, product definition & ideation, resulting in a tangible set of prototypes.
· Pre-Production Engineering - Prototyping iterations, grading, and any modifications based on client's Proof of Concept, resulting in a tangible set of multi-sized prototypes.
· Production Engineering Set Up Post Development - On-site Production planning & factory setup, modifications to machinery based on client's Proof of Concept, resulting in tangible duplicates and goods.
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Licensing of Fabdesigns’ Patented IP is subject to availability and is also governed by a separate Licensing Agreement. Any development is with separate agreements if Fabdesigns' assistance is desired in preproduction.
Fabdesigns offers hourly rates, SOWs based o deliverables, and also recurring rates for individualized in-person services or Zoom meet-ups for coaching and consulting. Choose the path that's right for you.
Customized Consulting: Flat Knit & Advanced Textiles
•Long-term manufacturing vision, & product trajectory
•Resources needed for entering new markets
•Product portfolio review & advisement
•A-team skillset review & coaching
•Individualized R&D team configuration & technology coaching
Strategic Consulting & Operations Consulting
•Process management
•Procurement options
•Quality control benchmarking
•Supply chain establishment & management
•Costing & efficiency
•Optimizing existing manufacturing setup
• Factory setup & machinery optimization
Collaborative Project Development
Fabdesigns is a sandbox for companies, brands, inventors, and individuals to test out their ideas without having to invest millions of dollars in equipment and years learning it. We program and prototype state-of-the-art industrial equipment in our facilities. The difference between us and a sweater factory is we're not a sweater factory. We specialize in developing complex technical textiles that require precision, calibration of materials and machinery, and we build entire processes for products that last in a client's portfolio for years. You get the time and attention you need, questions answered and textile engineering expertise to design your product. You control what is made public and when. You also get to make your own design and technical decisions at your pace, rather than be rushed through someone else's cookie-cutter process. Plus, we are completely vertical. Everything is completed in house, confidentially, and securely.
Proof of Concept Prototypes
Fabdesigns offers confidential in-house development & knit trials. We work in many fields from 3D knitted composites to a variety of fabrication types, whole piece panels integrated with many yarn types, and knit to shape components that fit with your 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.
Mid-level Development
Fabdesigns develops 3 D knitted prototypes for many industries that want to make with nearly zero waste: apparel, accessories, home furnishing, uppers, seating, and many more. Think of machines like robots. There are efficient digital ways to make things and less efficient ways, like cutting yards of fabric and sewing the cut pieces together. Why not knit just what you need, where it needs to be, and make a better product?
Technical Training
Our textile engineers have taught at the university level and are available to provide in-depth technical training on machinery, types of materials, and knitting technology that is needed for your end product. Learning how to operate and run a machine to make it give you what you want is very much like learning the piano. It takes practice, learning technical theory, and proper maintenance. Sometimes it's important to learn just the things you need, rather than the entire field of textile science. Check out our online classes.
General Textile Consulting
•Textile 101
•Polymers, fibers, yarns
•Processes, machinery, treatments
•Fabrics
•Knits, wovens & non-wovens
•After Processes
•Print, embroidery, embellishment
General Product Development Coaching
•R&D 101
•Where do I start?
•Stages & gates
•Best practices in Setting Goals
•Traditional vs Technical Products
•On-demand & Custom
•Process architecture
General Sustainable Design & Engineering
Fabdesigns focuses on how your manufacturing process is structured from the beginning: mindfulness in material selection; recycled materials; circular design economy - cradle to cradle. We save as much time, distance, and material as possible. Knitting to shape means that all edges are finished with no cutting, and no material waste. ANd, we're local, not thousands of miles away.
Why Fabdesigns?
How much time and money have you already wasted?
Who wants to spend 5 to 10 years learning machinery and millions of dollars on equipment only to find they have been listening to the wrong people, have the wrong equipment, and after all that time, basic sweater WYSIWYG makes basic sweaters and not shoes, bags, or technical textiles?
Fabdesigns, Inc. is a well-respected team of multi-disciplined textile engineers, with over three decades of experience in providing consulting, advanced knitted textile engineering, professional services, and post-development production - PERIOD. Clients utilize Fabdesigns’ studio as a skunkworks type sandbox for developing market-changing products that reduce waste, improve margins, build long-term product portfolio pipelines, and change how people think - and ALL is done confidentially. Fabdesigns’ inventions over the last decade have created a renaissance in 3D knitting, reduced carbon footprints exponentially, and created an explosion in international sales of flat knitting, circular knitting, warp knitting, finishing, and support equipment for footwear, automotive, sporting goods, aerospace, automotive, and other industries. Fabdesigns has put revenue in our clients' pockets and kept every project confidential.
These best practices of Fabdesigns (depending on the product, materials, machine age, maintenance, and knitter experience) create significant and measurable advantages to clients:
· by integrating structure, function, and additional characteristics into the same panel or component, with nearly zero waste.
· incorporate trade secret methods, our own code shortcuts, techniques, and processes that save 25% to 50% of manufacturing time over machine builder’s WYSIWYG standard off-the-shelf programming methods. Less production time translates exponentially in potential production capacity, labor savings, reduced floor space, and other operations cost reductions in our post-development production.
· save up to 65% of raw materials, which are cut away and wasted in a traditional cut and sew production process.· require minimal assembly and are repeatable and consistent assembly methods with fewer opportunities for human error.
· Fabdesigns’ interactive development process fast tracks each client's timeline from idea to tangible proof of concept and shortens the learning curve for building most clients' post-development manufacturing platforms, through highly hands-on methods, during prototyping and exposing each client to Fabdesigns processes, insights, and best practices including code, short cuts, and processes for manufacturing, our in-house programming expertise and techniques.
This process and best practices are trade secrets of Fabdesigns utilized in the construction of a customized and optimized manufacturing platform, supply chain, and hyper-efficient prototypes for each client's product, and the process and best practice trade secrets of Fabdesigns for getting each product ready for optimized production, which is shipped around the world.
