Nimble new players building a smart future for fashion 

Speaking at the International Apparel Federation (IAF) World Fashion Convention, Gribbin also notes there are also new start-ups whose models represent "new ways of doing things we probably did 100 years ago."

The concept here is to produce the garment once a customer has purchased it – eliminating inventory, long seasonal calendars, endless supply chains, markdowns, discounts and obsolescence.

Examples include Unmade, a digital custom-knitting company based in London; Ministry of Supply, a Boston-based high performance brand founded by former Massachusetts Institute of Technology students; and Share Cloth, a NYC startup "that's not only doing custom women's clothing, custom made to fit, on demand, delivered in five days, but they've created a platform to allow other designers and entrepreneurs to do the same thing."

And there's also Amazon again, which has been awarded a patent for on-demand apparel production. "In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania there's an Amazon facility that purchased $25m worth of Kornit digital printing equipment, sewing machines, automated cutting, and they are producing T-shirts on-demand: they're selling with virtual samples online and they're making it and shipping in about an hour from the time they pick up the order," Gribbin says, adding: "If they decide to scale that, that's going to be a model that threatens a lot of people."

 Pioneered by the likes of Under Armour's Lighthouse and Adidas's Speedfactory, the goal here is to make apparel and footwear in numerous, relatively small, highly automated production facilities close to consumers all over the world. As well as a combination of short lead times and world-class service, the model offers the ability to customise products for individual customers and markets.

So far, Adidas has two Speedfactories in Germany and the US "making about 1m pairs of shoes a year with around 100 people, using robotics, advanced manufacturing techniques, 3D printing. In Baltimore, Under Armour's Lighthouse facility is doing a lot of innovative development work and manufacturing product that they're selling across the harbour at their flagship store."

Custom has been around for a long time, especially in men's wear: think Brooks Brothers and J Hilburn. Stantt is a new men's shirts startup "that's figured out you don't have to make everything custom. It has 99 sizes, each one named after a street in New York City. They take the order, it goes into a cut queue in a factory in Honduras, and it gets produced the same day or the next day from when you place your order, and two days later you have your shirt. It's a great business model, with no inventory."

Another startup, Untuckit, offers shirts that "look good untucked" no matter how big or small or short or tall you are. They just raised $30m in additional venture money to expand." Other names to watch: Fame & Partners (customised special occasion dresses and sportswear); and Zozo, launched by Japan's largest online fashion retailer Start Today, which makes affordable custom-fit T-shirts and jeans and this summer rolled out in 72 countries.

So where does all this leave manufacturers? One company supplying some of the new online retailers is Hong Kong-headquartered Lever Style.

"We're trying to be more versatile," says Stanley Szeto, executive chairman at Lever Style, and chairman of the Hong Kong Textile Council.

"We pride ourselves on a wide product category range, we have a lot of manufacturing options for our clients to consider – including a network of factories across China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. We also put a lot of work into product development: we have designers and material development to come up with the right product. We aim to have the technical expertise to provide a consistent quality.

"Today, offering versatility doesn't just mean talking about speed, but also country of origin, and how can we work around trade wars and tariffs."

Customers include high-end brands such as Boss, Paul Smith, Pepe, All Saints and J Brand, who Lever Style supplies with products including woven shirts, blouses and dresses, suits, outerwear, trousers, denim and cut-and-sewn knitwear. But the business is increasingly working with e-commerce companies like Bonobos, Stitch Fix and Everlane.

So far in the evolution of automation, Szeto laments the fact that for the past two centuries the clothing industry has focused on chasing lower and lower labour costs. "Why is that the case? It's because our industry is still very labour intensive. There has been a lot of evolution of automation – but not a revolution – and by and large the key component of the labour cost, which is sewing, is still very manual."

Breakthroughs in the actual production process, however, have been "incremental."

That said, one area offering "a lot of promise" relates to the pre-production sampling process. "The sampling process for both brands and manufacturers is extremely expensive...six to eight times the unit cost. 3D [design and prototyping] solutions give more opportunity to visualise, and come up with samples that really look like the real thing, and people can make decisions based on these virtual samples. This is one of the key technologies that is emerging."

The future, Szeto believes, lies with robotics. Current technological breakthroughs – like SoftWear Automation's Sewbots – are still pretty young and focused on simple products like towels and bath mats. The next target is to do a simple T-shirt.

"Eventually – and it's a case of when, not if – robotics will replace what sewing operators have been doing for the past 200 years, and when that happens it's going to be a paradigm shift.

"When we don't have to rely on cheap labour because the labour component of making garments has dropped, it won't make sense to ship things around the world; it won't make sense to pay tariffs, to waste time on a boat. And we're going to see a lot more assembly, manufacturing done in the home markets where apparel is sold."

And this, of course, means the factories of the future will be very different to those currently in operation. "There will be very few people, and instead mostly machines, a lot of raw materials, almost like a warehouse, with people just handling things rather than making things. We don't know when that's going to be, but it is coming."