Yarn production has long been automated, but when it comes to sewing ready-made garments—with all their fluid, floppy fabric—human hands are still superior to robotic ones. Domestic hands are also more expensive than overseas ones, which has long hurt prospects for sewing lower-priced garments on our shores.
But what if you could engineer the fabric so robots could assemble high-volume basics? Now we’re talking.
Apparel automation is still in its early stages, but it is gaining momentum and attracting increasing investment as a response to high domestic labor costs and as a pathway toward greater onshoring. The goal is to address challenges like long overseas production cycles that often result in overproduction, while also helping offset the higher costs of manufacturing closer to home. As the technology advances, automation is expected to make production more feasible in higher-wage regions, where it has traditionally been difficult to operate competitively.
Atlanta-based SoftWear Automation, which pioneered autonomous sewing technology—aka Sewbots—closed a $20 million Series B1 funding round in 2025. Danish company Bestseller led the investment, an example of how industry partnerships are key to scaling technology innovation. Additional funding came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Walmart Foundation.
Bestseller looks for innovations that can support progress and change in the fashion industry, said the company’s CFO, Thomas Børglum Jensen. “We believe that SoftWear Automation can help address some of the key challenges we face across the industry—from speed and flexibility to reducing the environmental impact of garment production.”
SoftWear Automation is focusing on the U.S. and EU for now. “It’s local-for-local production,” said Palaniswamy “Raj” Rajan, the company’s chairman and CEO. Right now, the company has a price advantage over domestic manufacturing, but in its Phase 3 rollout, it expects to compete with overseas manufacturers.
“It is disruptive,” he said. “We will be able to match the landed cost of importing a shirt from low-wage countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and China. We can help brands compete with those players.”
Newark, California-based CreateMe Technologies, founded in 2019, replaces sewing altogether with its patented micro-adhesive technology for threadless seam bonding. Using vacuum technology to hold fabric taut and move it as needed, the company has developed an alternative to traditional assembly. It recently announced a partnership with apparel brand Untuckit to produce the first commercially available digitally bonded men’s T-shirt in the U.S., using its Pixel™ bonding and MeRA™ automated assembly system.
Untuckit had used bonding in the past, but typically for add-ons like an outside pocket. This marks its first foray into an entirely seam-bonded garment.
Bjorn Bengtsson, chief product officer at Untuckit, was impressed with the CreateMe technology, which offers “the same strength as a stitch but with no needle marks,” and was pleased that the company “had an answer to every question I threw at them.”
Another early automation adopter is Seattle-based Sewbo, which uses a polymer to temporarily stiffen fabric, which is later washed out. Robots can then manipulate the stiffened material with suction cups, molding or folding it into shape and even temporarily welding seams together.
“The impacts will vary product by product, with the benefits leaning toward more complex items with higher labor costs, like blue jeans,” said founder and CEO Jonathan Zornow. “We can currently automate over half of the labor that goes into a pair of jeans.”
The company is currently fundraising to build its first full-scale assembly line for blue jeans, which will feed partially finished products to factory sewing teams for final construction.
Less Overproduction, More Accuracy
Automating garment production can also help address one of the industry’s most persistent problems.
Overproduction remains fashion’s biggest thorn, with 30% to 40% of apparel produced annually—roughly 60 billion garments—never sold. This waste stems largely from long lead times, erroneous trend forecasting and misaligned volume commitments.
Onshoring and nearshoring can improve speed to market and help reduce overproduction, but higher labor costs remain a challenge. Traditionally, this has pushed domestic production toward more specialized manufacturing and skilled labor that can support higher price points. Automation could help level the playing field, making even domestic basics—long a race to the bottom overseas—more economically viable at home.
Untuckit is taking a more elevated approach with its onshored automated capsule, set to launch later this year. “We didn’t want to do cheap T-shirts. We’ll be producing our tees with Supima cotton, and that’s the best cotton available.”
With increased scrutiny on traceability, particularly for cotton under UFLPA regulations, domestic production using U.S.-grown cotton offers an added advantage. “I have good relationships with Supima, so eventually it will be just from one farm,” Bengtsson said. “It will be this ‘farm-to-shirt’ story with full traceability and transparency.”
Domestic production isn’t only more sustainable—it’s more responsive. “With everything made in California, reorders can be done quickly if we need, say, another 200 shirts fast,” Bengtsson added.
“The U.S. imports 3 billion T-shirts annually. If everything goes well, we could be making 100 million T-shirts in the U.S. It’s still a small fraction of imports, but we see this as a multi-decade shift.”
—Palaniswamy “Raj” Rajan, SoftWear Automation
Cam Myers, founder and CEO of CreateMe Technologies, said supply chain leaders are beginning to take a more holistic view. “They are finally realizing they may need to move away from a purely myopic focus on the lowest cost toward derisking their supply chain,” he said. “You can still maintain what’s needed in Asia, but build a more balanced matrix. Even shifting 15% of production to nearshore or onshore can significantly improve the coupling between supply and demand and increase sell-through.”
The CreateMe model aims for very low MOQs and minimum color quantities, with a 7- to 21-day turnaround using staged fabric. This allows for significantly higher inventory turns—potentially up to 40—and more frequent selling cycles.
Brands may be starting with small automated capsule collections, but the technology is built to scale.
“The U.S. imports 3 billion T-shirts annually,” said SoftWear’s Rajan. “If everything goes well, we could be making 100 million T-shirts in the U.S. It’s still a small fraction of imports, but we see this as a multi-decade shift.”
And the Humans?
Current automation doesn’t eliminate human labor entirely. Workers are still needed for engineering, cutting, quality control, material handling and machine maintenance—such as replacing threads and changing needles in sewing systems. But once machines are running, they require minimal intervention.
The goal is not to replace humans, but to shift their role. “We want human labor worldwide to focus on higher-value garments and more creative work,” said Rajan. “That leads to more better products, better compensation and a more advanced supply chain. Robots are designed for the drudgery.”
As with any technological shift, automation will reshape the nature of work. The aim is not simply to recreate overseas factories domestically with robots, but to rethink the production model entirely.
Natasha Chand, an advisor to CreateMe and former global CEO of Amazon’s softlines private label business, said her experience taught her to think in scalable solutions and challenge convention.
“When you see inefficiency, you start to imagine what could be invented to solve it,” she said. She expects new roles to emerge around designing garments and processes specifically for automated systems, rethinking construction methods to achieve the necessary precision and flexibility.
She sees apparel automation as a win across the board. “Consumers benefit from better product availability. Companies benefit from lower inventory and fewer markdowns. And the planet benefits from reduced waste,” she said. “That convergence is what makes this so compelling.”
