
How Electroloom's clothes-printing revolution died - MandieD
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/14/electroloom-clothes-printing-startup-death-aaron-rowley/
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abakker
CNC Machine Owner here, I'll add my very limited take. I do mostly one-off or
small run projects at my shop, mostly in furniture. Sometimes I make jigs or
other tools to help myself work. I'll say this 1000 time: the tools are seldom
the problem, it is usually the CAD/CAM. Even if this tool could abstract away
some of the complexity, it is still very difficult to model textiles or other
wrapped components on a solid. My friends in the Textile business constantly
talk about the difficulties in doing that.

While this might have meant you didn't need seams, even creating the model of
what you wanted is more of a professional endeavor than an average hobby. 3D
machining of solid parts, by contrast is much easier. Some of these CNC for
the masses projects like glowforge and Wazer look easy, but that's because
they're really just 2D cutters. The level of complexity that occurs when you
go to 3D is big. The additional complexity of dealing with materials that need
to stretch is even greater. It is just beyond the average hobby audience.

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crispyambulance
As the son of a master tailor, I second what you said. The literal Italian
translation of tailoring school is "cutting school." It's where students learn
how to construct the patterns, in paper, which are then used to cut the
fabric. In addition to the difficulties of just dealing with fabric, there is
also tradition of materials, taste, and folk knowledge involved which simply
can't be "dialed" into a machine process.

There is some room, however, for "made-to-measure" clothing where you get
measured and a modern supply-chain can get you set-up, in a semi-automated way
with good-fitting clothes. Brioni does this. The tailors are still humans, of
course, but you get measured and the clothes are made elsewhere.

~~~
MandieD
The modern German word for tailor is Schneider (feminine: Schneiderin) -
"cutter".

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mgleason_3
So would the TL/DR be:

“Rowley: So, we got a whole bunch of attention, which made us irrational -
although Silicon Valley pushes an unhealthy view of business so it deserves
some blame too. And without really thinking about whether it would work, it
just sort of got away from us and so we did a Kickstarter, a bunch of promo
videos and took a whole lot of peoples money. We spent it, without making any
real progress. And then, out of nowhere, the money ran out and no-one would
give us more.

So yea, I’ve got scars. But at least my next company, Vue, a smart-glasses
startup, is benefiting from my scars. We’ve learned to control our messaging -
For example: Vue aren’t really smart-glasses. They’re headphones - built into
the frame of the glasses. So, see how we did that? Just like the way we rode
the 3d-printing wave selling electroloom, now we’re riding the smart-glasses
wave to sell headphones!

And we’re doing a Kickstarter...and a bunch of promo videos..”

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protomyth
_Rowley also believes that there is a problem with Silicon Valley 's culture,
which pushes an unhealthy view of business. He explained that investors and
inventors aren't bothering to pay attention to what came before, "to
understand what their technology should be doing." But the collective
blindness to this is a result of the "hype around getting funded" and "stories
glorifying founders like Mark Zuckerberg and other college drop-outs." He adds
that Silicon Valley deserves "all of the criticism that it gets." Because,
fundamentally, "it does a lot of great things, but it's also a culture where
people get away with some ridiculous things."_

Interesting last paragraph. I am often disappointed by the lack of
acknowledgement to history, but some ridiculous things really do need to be
tried once in a while so they become commonplace and boring.

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chaostheory
> The company had conversations with textile factories interested in building
> an industrial version of the device. The team was essentially offered carte
> blanche to build a device big enough to fill a warehouse, but had to pull
> out because some members couldn't countenance relocating.

Some people weren't all in. I'm guessing relocation was to somewhere in China.

~~~
bsder
I suspect inland China.

But, yeah, I translate that as "We _chose_ to fail" or, less kindly, "We chose
to fail because this won't make us rich in 12 months."

If someone offers you "carte blanche" to basically do R&D from prototype to
industrial scale, that's a pretty big deal. If you can't figure out how to
follow through, you probably shouldn't be running a business.

~~~
abakker
Or, you can say yes, and sell that business once the contract is won.

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epx
But the idea is great. I bet it will reappear with success in the future.

