Anton Wohlgemuth is the co-founder and CTO at Silana, a startup automating fashion production with robots.
What led you to found Silana?
I met my co-founders back at university. At the end of our bachelor’s degree, we were thinking about solutions for the fashion industry. At first, we wanted to create an online toolkit where you could design your own custom-fitted fashion. Then we looked deeper into the production process and saw the crazy challenges the fashion industry faces – extremely long lead times of 6-9 months from order to delivery, rough working conditions, and over 44% of fashion items at risk of being produced by child or forced labor. With my background in mechanical engineering and automation, we pivoted to developing a robot that could automate the sewing process to help solve these systemic issues.
How does your robot work?
Our automated sewing robot mimics the intricate hand movements human sewers use to handle garments and feed them through industrial sewing machines. It operates on a 2×2 meter footprint and specializes in sewing pre-cut fabric pieces. We started with pre-cut fabrics because while other production steps are optimized, sewing is a major bottleneck for the industry. This is especially true for brands relying on labor in developing countries where the average age of sewing workers is 55. Manufacturers struggle with employee recruitment and retention, so many of our first customers needed automated sewing to add production capacity and meet customer demand that their aging workforce couldn’t handle.
Our robot is the first of its kind as we are automating the full range of sewing motions. It integrates machine vision to automatically locate garment pieces and detect wrinkles or defects. A unique capability is imprinting customized coded seam patterns, enabling digital twin technology and supply chain traceability. For example, on a straight seam, we can subtly encode a scannable serial number for anti-counterfeiting and for forthcoming regulations like Europe’s digital product passport. The coded seams provide transparency into what the product is and where it was made, without needing obtrusive embedded electronics most consumers dislike for privacy reasons.
The sewing robot can produce 150,000 t-shirts per year which is four times faster than human workers. While automated sewing is our core offering today, we’ll continue expanding into other production points where automation can drive sustainable progress. We first focused on high-volume basics like t-shirts but through conversations with close industry connections we quickly realized tank top automation was the first step in the grand scheme of things, so we prioritized that. The next step is integrating sleeves, and then layering more garment pieces together to automate a wider range of clothing styles as our team grows.
What does the current fashion landscape look like? Why isn’t automation the industry standard yet?
The fashion industry faces three major problems: extremely long 6-9 month production lead times from design to delivery, poor working conditions, and labor violations like child/forced labor – especially in developing nations where much production is located. With all that being said, the industry also suffers from massive overproduction and waste, with a staggering 40% of inventory getting destroyed or heavily discounted annually.
With our automated sewing technology, we’re in a unique position to address these issues by enabling sustainable nearshoring of production at competitive costs and with shorter lead times.
In terms of our competitive landscape, there were a couple of past attempts by large corporations to automate sewing, but they failed because the technology wasn’t mature enough at the time. While some companies automate other production steps, we are the only ones who have successfully cracked the code on automating the core sewing process itself. We’ve not only developed the solution but are in the process of delivering automated sewing robots to real customers.
Asian manufacturers don’t pose a direct competitive threat, as there’s an urgent need in Europe and North America for nearshore production that their aging sewing workforce can’t fulfill over the next decade. Our extensive industry diligence suggests we are currently the sole company to commercially offer automated sewing that replicates the full scope of human capabilities. While different approaches exist, none match our robots’ versatility.
Where is Siliana now and how does the world look different if you’re successful?
We’ve been working on this for four years and we recently finished the first prototype last summer. We have already pre-sold eight machines and closed our pre-seed funding round two months ago. Currently, we are scaling up production capabilities by building out our engineering team in the U.S. to reach commercial readiness and ship our first batch of customer orders.
Our vision has two phases. First is highly automated production factories where the entire process is optimized through a digital pipeline. Young designers could simply upload their clothing designs and have them produced and ready for sale within two days through automated manufacturing.
The other dream is enabling true on-demand production for retailers. Customers could browse styles, get body scans for perfect measurements, and have their custom-fitted garment produced in that same retail location while they wait – picking it up just two hours later. By producing only what is actually purchased and worn, rather than the current overstock model, we can counteract the “fast fashion” overconsumption problem.
Overconsumption is a huge issue today because retailers drastically overstock inventory by up to 40% more than they can sell to avoid running out, leading to billions of garments being destroyed or sold at massive discounts annually. We’re working with leading European and US brands to enable nearshoring – moving production closer to the point of sale rather than overseas. If successful, Silana’s technology enables a sustainable digital-first fashion ecosystem – from design to individualized custom manufacturing. This upends the traditional overconsumption model with minimal waste, unmatched speed, and an enhanced experience for consumers and designers.