Hi everyone, we’re writing this post with heavy hearts to let you know that we are making the tough decision to shut down Electroloom.

The bottom line is that we simply do not have the financial ability to continue supporting the company. We were previously funded through a mixture of venture capital and government grants. Despite our best efforts (for over one year), we have been unable to raise a new round. We have made big changes throughout 2016 in hopes of reducing our burn rate, but without additional capital, we are unable to keep the company afloat. We suffered a lot of problems and mistakes that led us here, perhaps too many to outline in detail. The reality is that a lot of events factored into our inability to raise: slow technical progress, significant scientific risk, a lack of an MVP, and a poorly defined market opportunity.

Although it is difficult to say goodbye, we recognize that we have learned a great deal. One thing that stands out as obvious from our experience running Electroloom is that people are hungry for and believe in dramatic changes for the apparel industry. Whether it is to help people express themselves creatively through new and powerful design tools, or to help implement more sustainable manufacturing methods, we have seen the emergence of a new segment of people who care about the future of textiles and clothing. We feel quite fortunate to have played a role in this global conversation.

The vision we have does not end here. There are other incredible ventures in this space that are actively working on changing the landscape of apparel and manufacturing. We wanted to provide a brief list of some of the projects we find to be pretty stellar, in hopes that you continue to stay tuned-in to the industry.

Our favorites:

1. Kniterate: A 3D Knitwear Printer. This crew got their start around the same time that we did several years ago, and we’ve been keeping in touch. Their demos are super impressive and they are going to have exciting announcements in 2016 and beyond.
2. Disney: Check out their video regarding building a compiler for industrial knitting machines. Their software might power future on-demand apparel manufacturing tools by translating digital designs into physical goods.
3. Unmade: Their quote says it best. “We hold no stock — nothing exists until you place your order and the production process begins.” They use industrial knitting machines to produce unique, customizable clothes that are made-to-order.
4. Ambercycle: We had an awesome conversation with the founder regarding their polyester recycling process. This has the potential to recycle waste polyester so that it is virtually indistinguishable from virgin polyester.
5. Bolt Threads: Working on scaling up a new method for manufacturing silk thread. This opens up an exciting world of material properties for apparel.
6. JUST: Accumulating detailed environmental and manufacturing information of brands in hopes of making the apparel industry more transparent and accountable. They list the pros and cons of some of the world’s largest brands.

We would like to thank each and every one of you for supporting us on this journey. To our advisors, investors, mentors, and employees: thank you for your guidance and for believing in us. To our backers, customers, and supporters along the way: we can’t put into words how appreciative we are of you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at founders@electroloom.com if you have any lingering questions.

With gratitude,

Aaron + Joe

Thanks and farewell was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey everyone—check out a quick video walkthrough of one of our smaller desktop machines. We call it the Electroloom Mini, and it can make small pieces of colored polyester fabric in 20 minutes or less.

We have been using it to test new materials and improved hardware subsystems. It also travels quite well, so we’ll be bringing it to various conferences, trade shows, and speaking engagements throughout the year.

*The Electroloom team will be in San Francisco on 3/11 and will be running demos of this Mini machine throughout the day. If you’re interested in swinging by to see a demo, please shoot us an email at: founders@electroloom.com.

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Demo: Electroloom Mini was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Summer came and went, and we have had a lot going on. Building a business and a technology has taken us around the world, and we want to share what we have been up to so you can better understand what our day-to-day is like.

Conferences

In 2015, we have had quite a few opportunities to finally share our technology with people at conferences. It has been awesome to engage with large audiences, and to build new relationships with people in the fashion space.

In September, we attended Brit + Co’s Re:Make festival, a two-day event to explore technology, creativity, and the future of making.

While there, we ran into several of our Kickstarter backers, and met other people (especially makers) with a keen interest in fashion-tech.

Next up was Chic 2015, one of Shanghai’s largest international fashion conferences. We were in the smart fashion section, sponsored by the 360 Fashion Network. In the course of 3 days, we met retailers, designers, makers, and brands from around the world.

One of the most valuable aspects of going to conferences and engaging with the public is having frank conversations. At Shanghai, our fabric was subjected to 3 days worth of touching, feeling, pulling, and observation. Having real-time engagement and feedback is something that is often hard to come by, but it's something that has already informed technical discussions and planning for the future.

Understanding the Scale of Factories

Toward the end of October, we had the amazing opportunity to go tour a textile factory in Southeast Asia. Their facilities were impressive—on their massive campus they handle everything from knitting, to dyeing, to printing, to final assembly of full garments.

While building our technology, it is important for us to understand the mechanics of the global textile supply chain and the manufacturing processes that are involved. In many ways, we are attempting to shrink the factory paradigm down to a single machine. It is no easy task, but one that certainly is put into perspective when walking around a full-scale textile factory.

When you understand the amount of energy that can be saved by shrinking the manufacturing process, you can begin to understand a core component that motivates us to build this product.

Technical Progress

We’ve set a lot of internal goals for the ways we would like to improve our technology. Some of them have quick turnaround times—a matter of days, perhaps weeks. Other goals are less quick, and require months of work in the lab or our workshop, toiling away at experiments and prototypes.

One of the larger areas of focus is improving our material quality. We have a lot going on under the hood, but we thought it would be cool to share a little bit about how our fabric will start to change. The reality is that thread, yarns, and textiles have been around for a while. Materials have had centuries (if not millennia) to be perfected for use in the world of fabrics. Because Electroloom is fundamentally reimagining how textiles can be created, there is a lot of chemistry that has to be perfected in order for these new fabrics to be developed.

Which is why we get so excited when we see progress, like increased elasticity. Check out the gif below!

Previously, stretching our fabrics would cause them to permanently deform, or worse—tear. The above GIF shows an experimental fabric that was able to stretch and recover, which is an important property for things like garments.

In addition to improved mechanical properties, we’ve also been exploring ways to make our fabric look and feel better. Below is an example of an improved texture pattern that we have successfully embedded in some of our fabrics.

Onward!

As always, we’ll be in touch. Winter is coming, and we’re hard at work building partnerships, improving our technology, and getting ready to ship out rewards.

Thanks for coming along this journey with us—more to come soon.

❤ the Electroloom team

Around the World was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1:31 AM.

The gas station sat along a slender strip of highway that cut through a rural Louisiana marsh. He brooded over the weight of the silence and continued to suffer through the humidity. It was the empty hour—a peculiar, silent thing. The commuters had long gone, the mischievous ones were only just waking, and the drunks had yet to swerve their way home.

His shift didn’t end until 4 AM, but he checked the clock every few minutes anyway. He kicked his feet up on the counter and leaned back in his chair. Despite the precarious balance, he breathed deeply and continued to watch a replay of the nightly news. It was the fourth time he’d seen it. He reached for the remote, accidentally kicking it off the counter.

“Shit,” he muttered.

For a few moments he stared at the TV monitor hanging above the frozen food aisle — such a long walk for someone who had been sitting for so long. And with the poor circulation in the store and the heat of the night pressing down, he loathed movement.

The anchors were insufferable. He left the stool and trudged around the corner. As he bent down for the remote, he noticed an odd but distinctly pleasant smell — like gasoline.

He loved the smell of gasoline. Every time his mother had fueled up their old , boxy station wagon, she had told him, “It will fry your brain, plug your nose!” Funny the way life worked out—the gas station gig was the longest job he’d ever had.

As he followed the scent, its nuance became more clear.

It reminded him of some sort of flower.

Or the smell of ocean in the morning.

Or a field after fresh rain.

Through the front door, he noticed a peculiar haze. Assuming it was the normal marshy mist that loomed in the evenings, he started to walk back toward his chair. But something caught his eye. He skidded to a stop, his shoes squeaking briefly on the old floor, and stared outside.

The mist was distinctly purple.

He edged closer to the front of the store, noticing that the smell grew stronger. Panicking, he opened the front door, thinking that perhaps there was some sort of fire or leak from one of the gas pumps. Upon following the mist he found that it stretched its way past the pumps toward the edge of the vacant lot, disappearing into the darkness beyond the street lamps.

He gazed around the parking lot. Not a car or human in sight. The air outside was humid and hot and laced with the mysterious scent of the purple haze. He walked toward the edge of the lot and peered into the darkness, watching the concrete and old fencing melt into the dark fields of grass.

He took a few steps into the field. The further he got from the crisp lights of the station the clearer the shadows of the marsh became. In the distance, he made out a faint orange buried in the grass.

For a moment he hesitated and looked back to the station. The buzzing of the insects cut through the stillness of the night. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the faint hum of the few cars that still dared the dark country roads with nothing but the faint glow of the stars to guide them. The gas station, miles from the nearest town, was its own little sphere of light.

He turned back toward the orange glow in the field. The scent seemed stronger. He walked toward it, noticing how his shoes squished in the damp grounds of the field.

As he approached the glow, the purple mist became thicker, like a low-lying fog hugging the surface of the marsh. Then he heard something—someone was humming. He ducked down, sneaking closer to the glow, parting the grass.

There, in a little clearing in the field, was a woman.

She was crouched down, surrounded by a circle of candles, her chin resting on the backs of her hands. She wore a long lavendar dress that fell to the wet ground beneath her.

She was holing a cigarette, its end glowing sharply in the night. She pulled a long and hard drag from its end, closed her eyes, and exhaled smoothly.

“I know you’re there,” she said unexpectedly.

He grew rigid.

How can she see me? he thought.

“It’s a quiet night,” she added, as though she knew what he was thinking, “I heard you as soon as you waded through the grass.

The boy continued to peer at her through the grass. She took another puff of her cigarette, blew it to the stars, and then stared straight at him.

“Are you just going to hide there? You must have come out here for a reason,” she said.

For a moment, he considered quietly making his way back to the store.

What is she doing out here in this field, surrounded by candles?

“Suit yourself,” the woman said, shrugging.

He stood up and parted the grass.

“Nice of you to join,” she said, smiling.

“You shouldn’t smoke here,” he said.

“Oh?” she asked.

“You’re too close to the station.”

“I think we’re far enough.”

She took another long, slow drag.

She was right. Last summer he and his coworkers sat on the bench just outside the lot during breaks and smoked. There was something oddly relieving about a lung full of smoke on those humid days.

The woman closed her eyes and continued to breathe deeply past the end of her drag. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth slowly, letting the smoke roll up her face and into the night. He waited for a moment, thinking she might respect his request, but noticed something peculiar.

The smoke from the cigarette changed from gray to pink to blue, cycling between the colors as it floated around her.

“What is that?” the boy asked, eyeing the cigarette.

“A prelude,” she said casually, taking a drag, “of sorts.” Her exhalation hung around her like a fog, floating in and out of pinks and blues.

“What’s that smell?”

“Death, kid,” she said, smirking as she looked at him through stray strands of hair.

The boy looked around.

“Lighten up,” she added.

“Now look, you can’t smoke here,” he stepped forward, pointing at the ground, feigning confidence.

“Seems like I can,” she said, blowing the smoke toward the sky once more.

“I could smell that all the way from the station,” he said.

She looked at him for a moment, as though she was wondering whether or not to take him seriously.

“Look,” she said gently, like a consolation, “it’s late—just relax. I’m just passing through anyway.”

“Do you always light candles when you’re just passing through?” he asked snidely.

“I do.”

She glanced down at one of the candles. One of the flames flickered.

“Did you walk here?” he asked, looking around for a vehicle.

“Don’t worry, I walk a lot. Part of the job,” she said.

“In this heat? Do you…do you need a lift outta here?”

“You’re sweet. But that’s alright. I’ll be leaving before your shift is over.”

She took another long drag. The smoke was more vibrant than before. In the flickering light he noticed her hair — streaked with brilliant blue, the rest black and silver.

“What is it that you do?” he asked.

“I escort people.”

He laughed, saying, “Alright, well I’m not one to pass — ”

“Judgment?” she turned to look at him, “Oh, but you did. I’m not that kind of escort. I just keep people company before the end.”

“End of what?”

She sucked down the last of her cigarette, sighed, and pushed it into the ground.

“Well. . . ” she said, looking at the stars, “Life I suppose. Although I’m sure you wouldn’t really consider this all that life’s cracked up to be. But that would be oddly specific, and you don’t strike me as a very particular person when it comes to things so, I think my statement suits this situation just fine.”

She stared at him, tilting her head to the side.

“End of life?” he asked.

“That’s right. I come escort people through the end. Rain or shine. In all its glory or tragedy. Whatever the case, I’m here.”

“You think that’s funny?” he asked. A weird knot tightened in his stomach.

“No. Well. . . I mean, it can be. And some people welcome that. If you can, why not enjoy it?” she stood up in the clearing.

She was much taller than he thought.

“You got a name?” he asked.

“Prin.”

“Weird name.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Short for something?”

She shrugged, “Could be.”

“Not one for personal talk, huh?”

“There’s not much to tell. This gig is all I’ve ever known. Hard to meet people in this line of work.”

From her dress she pulled another cigarette and placed it in her mouth. She knelt down briefly, using a candle to light its end.

The colored smoke continued to waft around her.

“So how’d you get a job like this, huh?” he asked.

“It’s just what I do.”

“So, what, then? You just show up next to people, surrounded by candles, ready to take them across the river Styx?” He surprised himself with how nervous he sounded.

A sly grin spread across her face.

“You know, that’s actually the first time I’ve heard that one.”

“What’s the actual name for your job then?”

“Call it whatever you like, kid. I’m just here to see you through.”

The boy shifted uncomfortably.

“You know on any other night I’d have half a mind to call the police and have them take you down to the station. You can’t smoke here. And you’re lucky I have a good sense of humor.”

She looked at the boy. For a moment the candles flickered in the wind, leaving the woman shrouded in darkness. Her frame morphed into a phantom silhouette in the field.

The boy took a step back.

“What do you dream about?” she asked, the light from the candles returning.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a swing-shift convenience store clerk on a road few travel — you must dream of something.”

The boy eyed her skeptically.

“Look, I gotta get back to work. If you need anything the store is still open.”

He turned and began to walk back.

The encounter was surreal — finding that woman in the field like that. He found her playful comments about death to be unsettling. He could see the lights of the station at the edge of the field, and found comfort in their brilliance.

“It was an honest question,” the woman said from behind him.

“Jesus!” the boy yelled, nearly toppling over from fright. He turned to find her following him through the field.

She stared blankly at him.

“The hell are you doing?” he yelled.

“Just trying to make conversation.”

“You don’t have to sneak up on me like that.”

“Now to be fair, you suggested I come to the store.”

They stood in the field for a moment, the familiar buzz of the insects filling the void, his chest heaving. In the absence of the candles she had become a wispy shadow in the night.

“Look I don’t dream about much, okay? Everything’s fine right now and I just want to get through this shift without dying of fright because some field-gypsy decides to start stalking me.”

The woman was still — her figure an ominous smear of ink.

“I just wanted to hear your dreams before everything was over,” she said softly.

“Fine” the boy said, still recovering from his fright, “But I just gotta get back to work. Sorry that I don’t want to make too much conversation.”

He turned and headed swiftly out of the field. He walked through the lot, scanned momentarily for any late night customers who might have parked their cars, and then darted back into the store. As he leaned against the front counter, he realized he had been holding the remote the entire time.

After flipping through a few stations, he settled on a music video — colors washed across the screen in odd geometric shapes as an unfamiliar beat played in the background.

The front door opened.

The woman walked a few steps into the store before leaning casually against one of the walls.

“My dreams aren’t too fascinating,” she said, picking up the conversation, “But I am always interested in what other people’s are like.”

She walked down the aisle, picking up candy bars and reading their contents.

“I’m sure everyone has dreamt of something interesting,” he said.

“That’s why I asked you,” she nodded at him.

She reached the end of the aisle and strolled down the next. As she rummaged through the toiletries, seemingly fascinated by the endless rack of micro-packaged items, she glanced at him. She had a way of tunneling with her eyes — he felt compelled to answer.

“I wanted to build bridges,” he said.

Her eyes lit up. She stepped she away from the aisles, toward him.

“Bridges?”

“Yeah. But like, big ones. Something that makes you feel small. Like standing next to pyramids, or something.”

“Have you ever been to them, the pyramids?”

“No, but I can imagine the feeling.”

She nodded and moved toward the counter next to him.

“Why bridges?”

He stared at the ceiling.

“No good reason I guess. I’ve just always liked them. Bridges stick around, it’s something people would remember…sorry, I’ll bore you.”

“No, that’s great.”

The boy began to sniff.

“That smell really lingers with you.”

“I know,” she said solemnly, “Tell me more about the bridges.”

“Well I. . . ” he trailed off, looking lightheaded, “There’s one I’ll always remember. When I was little I. . . ” he wobbled in place, catching himself on the counter.

She looked at him, tenderly, watching him bend under his own weight.

“Sorry. . . ” he said, “feeling really tired all of the sudden.”

“It’s a late shift,” she said, “Tell me more about the bridge.”

“Yeah,” he said, “It was the Brooklyn Bridge. I was eight years old,” he struggled a little as he leaned, “Why does it smell so strong now?” he asked.

She stared at him.

“You have lovely dreams, you know,” she said.

The boy pushed himself up from the counter and walked aimlessly toward the refrigerated goods section. He reached the end of the aisle and put his arms out for balance, shaking his head for clarity.

“The bridge,” he said, turning around.

Their eyes met. The boy noticed the return of the purple haze — now more dazzling in the fluorescent lights of the store. The mist was shifting from purple to blue in one fluid sweep, surrounding the woman in the lavender dress.

“You. . . you. . . ” he muttered.

She nodded.

With one final look of understanding, he gazed into her eyes, stood up straight, and relaxed.

She smiled gently at him, like a mother.

He fell to the floor.

Prin walked over to his body. He fell against a card stand wedged between the liquor and snack aisle. He was on his back, staring at the ceiling. She found it difficult to look away from their eyes. The gray came quick — brilliant marbles as they slip. He was surrounded by paper scenes of Hawaiian beaches and “Happy Birthday”s. His left foot was twitching — a card trapped beneath his heel scratched the dirty linoleum.

She used to dream about them — dancing and laughing. In those visions they were content with her presence, knowing what was to come. They would share meals and she would let them sit back, usually beneath a glowing twilight, talking about their deepest regrets, their passions, the things they knew would never come, the children they would never have, all the places they would never travel to, whether or not they had loved fully enough. There was a staggering honesty to what they would say, with a depth as eerie and endless as the night.

She reached for the card beneath his foot.

Welcome to Louisiana!

The card was an amalgam of fonts and colors. A few bedazzled stars were strewn across the cover. As his foot grew still, and she felt the last of the tension leave his body, she placed the card on his chest.

A single tear tumbled down her cheek, landed on the back of her hand, and rolled onto the card that she was pressing to his chest.

It flowed into the glitter.

She had so much love for this boy. This convenience store clerk lying dead on his back amid the tacky road-side cards and Louisiana key-chains that no one ever bought.

The same song from earlier was still playing on the television. She walked over to the counter, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume all the way up. For one full minute, she closed her eyes, listening to the song, swaying back and forth.

As she made her way out of the store, she paused in the doorway and stared at the boy.

“Beautiful dreams. . . ” she said softly, her voice a murmur beneath the song. The card on his chest glimmered beneath the lights. She looked away, pushing herself into the heat of the night.

She walked through the lot and edged past the last of the lights. She slipped into the color that surrounded her as everything melted into the darkness of the country road.

It was quiet there.

And warm.

And peaceful.

And full of stars.

And as she succumbed to the darkness, she lit one last cigarette and blew the pinks and purples back to the heavens.

The image above is pretty important to us, for a number of reasons. Most obviously, it serves as a good snapshot of the progress we’ve made. As we continue to work on our technology, this timeline will grow. But it also gives us an important piece of perspective:

New technologies are difficult to develop, but we’ve already come a long way.

Textile manufacturing has been around, in certain respects, for thousands of years. That’s a long time for incremental progress to be made, new advancements in science to be achieved, and for existing technologies to gain scale and efficiency. By comparison we’ve managed to take our technology from concept to reality in just a year and a half.

And in this year in particular, we made some crucial steps that bring us closer to commercializing this technology.

HAX

Back in February, we announced that we had joined HAX, the world’s premier hardware accelerator based in Shenzhen, China. We quickly set up shop in their office and tapped into the massive hardware ecosystem that Shenzhen has to offer.

It is difficult to describe what it is like to build hardware in Shenzhen. Our office was situated in Huaqiangbei, home to some of the world’s largest electronics markets. Sourcing components was as easy as walking a few blocks away, or placing an order on Taobao, which frequently resulted in same or next day deliveries (including CNC, laser cut, or 3D printed parts).

Because of this environment, it is often said that 1 week’s worth of work in Shenzhen is equivalent to 1 month’s work in the United States. While we can’t exactly verify how accurate that statement is, the speed of work was a huge advantage to our prototyping process.

As a result, we spent January-May of this year iterating prototype after prototype until we hit a major milestone: our first seamless, wearable garment manufactured with our technology.

HAX afforded us an amazing opportunity. We spent 3.5 months working alongside 14 other companies from around the world, all with the same goal: to use our time there to bring our products closer to launch.

Kickstarter

Upon returning to the United States from China, we launched our Kickstarter campaign to source alpha users. At first glance, it was an unconventional Kickstarter. We were not launching a full product or seeking to achieve massive scale. Instead, we wanted to leverage the passionate Kickstarter community to find our first small batch of users who wanted to become Electroloom Developers. These users will be crucial for us, as they will manufacture, design, and create with our Alpha Machines, providing us with critical feedback along the way to better inform a future commercial product.

Since the campaign closed, we’ve already begun taking phone calls and setting up meetings with our machine backers. We even ran into some of them at Decoded Fashion’s Tokyo Summit after Aaron gave a presentation on the technology.

#Electroloom #tokyo #fashion #summit

Since the close of the campaign, one thing has become extraordinarily clear — our backers are eager to begin using Electroloom so they can explore and create the world of printed fabrics. We are now transitioning into our next big build phase — in which we fine tune our machinery, and get our technology ready for our backers.

The Future

For now, the future is about building. And not just the hardware, but also our team. We’ve stayed small and lean for the past 1.5 years, but now that we are picking up steam, we are ready for a larger, more dynamic team. The end of 2015, and certainly onward into 2016, will bring us more trips to China, more hires to help pave the way for the future of printed fabrics, and more updates to the world on the progress we are making with Electroloom.

Thanks for sticking with us so far — we’re excited to keep you posted.

❤ the Electroloom team

A Year In Review was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

HAXLR8R on Twitter

HAX S6 starts today with 15 teams hailing from the US, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Korea, China and France... wish them good luck ;-)

When we started working on Electroloom last year, we had a vision, a prototype, and little else. As we’ve continued to build, we have begun to see the challenges that are common across most hardware startups. Namely navigating the transition from prototype to product. In many ways, prototyping is an art. But building a product is a discipline—one that often takes engineers, artists, and makers many years to master. For us, working with HAX is an amazing, and essential, step forward toward building a better product and piece of technology.

By mid-January of this year, we had packed our clothes, electronics, tools, and pieces of our prototypes into suitcases, hopped onto a 15 hour red-eye to Hong Kong, hustled through customs and across the China mainland border, found an apartment, and settled into the HAX office. Now that we have two weeks of living here under our belts, we wanted to bring our followers into the loop on the unique advantages that HAX (and Shenzhen) will provide us.

Prototyping

As a group hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, we are fortunate enough to have worked at the epicenter of entrepreneurship and technology ventures. But as an early stage hardware startup where designing, testing, and iterating takes up much of our time, there are limitations to our productivity in the Bay Area. We were blind to most of them, as they are more or less the status quo. But even just two weeks into the sixth class of the HAX program, we are beginning to see the ways in which the next few months abroad will look much different from the way they looked back in the states.

The most obvious difference is our ability to source components locally. Finding prototyping tools and components is as easy as walking the few steps from our office to Huaqiangbei, an area in Shenzhen with the largest electronics markets we have ever seen. The markets seem to have everything — buttons, stepper motors, drivers, microcontrollers, breadboards, wires, resistors, power supplies, soldering tools, and nearly every other component essential to building hardware.

What this means is that development cycles can shorten—dramatically. Building a new iteration can be done in matter of days, as our components can be found locally and machined parts can be shipped and delivered on the same or next day. For us—and certainly any hardware startup—this is crucial. It allows us to be more nimble with our design process, having the freedom to build, learn, and iterate over a more condensed period of time. Moreover, the cost of failure is greatly reduced. Broken parts or bad designs are much quicker to remedy when we work in such close proximity to markets and suppliers.

Manufacturing

One of the biggest hurdles we will inevitably face is manufacturing. Prototyping a machine can be messy at times, and the practice of building a machine under such circumstances means that the design may not scale to a production run.

We’ve already begun to tour manufacturing facilities in the area. The capabilities of the facilities vary — from prototyping or producing small runs of a few hundred units, to facilities that can manufacture and ship entire products by the thousands.

When the time comes for production, our proximity to such facilities will be invaluable. Having the ability to communicate face-to-face with operators and factory managers is crucial when building partnerships and trying to get things built correctly.

The Future

Of course, this is only the beginning. Much will change over the 3–4 months that we will be operating in Shenzhen, China. Immersing ourselves in a new country and culture will help us build Electroloom into a company that can scale and grow. We are also proud and humbled to be working next to 14 other teams with incredible drive and vision, who are taking advantage of such a focused collection of incredible skill sets.

We couldn’t be more excited to work with the HAX team on building the future. For now, it’s back to work for us. Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks for following us on this journey.

未完待续，下次再见！

Hello from Shenzhen was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the second piece in a two part series about Electroloom, and what the future holds for us.

If you haven’t already heard, 3D printing company Made In Space was the first company to create a zero-gravity 3D printer that has been launched into space. The printer hitched a ride on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which delivered goods for NASA to the International Space Station. During its time in orbit, the printer will demonstrate the viability of zero-gravity printing and the important implications of being able to manufacture goods in space.

The whole concept is surreal — it takes the notion of a future beyond our home planet and frames it in a tangible and familiar reality. If we are to survive elsewhere in the cosmos, we must prepare the building blocks. And solutions such as 3D printing may be particularly well-suited for the task.

This news struck a chord with us at Electroloom, as most of our conversations are centered around the future. In particular, we often discuss the possibilities that might be enabled through 3D printed fabrics. And we wanted to share a glimpse into some of the conversations we have in regards to the technology, and why we are motivated to bring it to a scale that is accessible to technologists, designers, and consumers.

When we first sent out our fabrics for Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging, we were surprised by the results. Not only were we successful at creating nanofibers (a common goal in scientific literature), but certain blends contained fascinating microscopic structures.

One such image depicted tiny pores in the thicker fibers. Such tiny features are arguably not achievable by most contemporary textile production techniques. And yet, they are suggestive of an interesting future.

While purely speculative, we find ourselves trying to interpret the implications. Might these pores allow for the fabric to wick sweat? Could these features be impregnated with drugs? Would these fibers be superior in their ability to absorb and hold insect-repellent chemicals? Can we make the scientific literature (and fiction) a reality?

The answer is simple — we don’t know.

But we want to. We want to know what types of fibrous creations can utilize our 3D printed fabrics. We want to know if there are clever applications for our process, like creating clothes, pillow cases, patches, or skin grafts.

Like Made In Space, we’re curious about the future. And we’re curious about how humanity’s technology will function in environments such as space — for it is certain that we as a species will only be spending more and more time there.

We know that fabrics play an important role in our lives — from clothing, to filters, to medicine. These are the things that we’ll certainly bring with us as we journey up and outward into the universe. Who knows — perhaps the next thing NASA and SpaceX are willing to send into orbit is one of our machines — we have reason to believe that our process works well in a zero-gravity environment.

For now, we’re forging ahead on Earth, building the future one Electroloom at a time.

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The Precedent of @MadeInSpace, @NASA, and @elonmusk was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the first piece in a two part series about Electroloom, and what the future holds for us.

Just over a year ago, my friends and I found ourselves enamored with the idea of 3D printed clothing. The idea was wild, daunting, and romantic. We wondered — would we one day download our clothes as we do our files? Would we begin sharing clothes as we already do our favorite pictures, songs, and articles?

Ray Kurzweil certainly thinks so. And we also believed it could be done. But while we dreamt of digitizing clothing, and sharing garments as files across the Internet, the actual technological solution seemed elusive.

Until we made a strange connection between metal chopsticks and blood vessels.

In college my co-founders and I studied tissue engineered blood vessels. These artificial cardiovascular constructs were made by passing dissolved polymers through an electric field, where they were pulled out of suspension and into fibers (as GLaDOS would say, “liquid thing goes in, solid thing comes out”). The results were tiny, non-woven fabrics on which we would grow cardiovascular tissue.

Inspired by our familiarity with producing these tiny fabrics, we used some metal chopsticks from our kitchen and a cheap power supply to generate an electric field. With basic materials we were able to create (an admittedly crude) proof-of-concept.

Surprisingly — it worked. Our (profoundly) unrefined demonstration yielded a haphazard collection of fibers between our pair of metal chopsticks. Motivated by this small success, we decided to enter a technology and design competition in San Francisco sponsored by the progressive clothing company Alternative Apparel. At the time, we had little more than a conceptual rendering, our kitchen-floor prototype, and a big vision. We were fortunate enough to win the competition, and were awarded $1000 and a year-long membership to TechShop.

Thanks to the Alternative Apparel grant and the relationships we built, we have spent the past year bringing our idea closer to reality.

Throughout 2014, we have seen incremental progress. After the chopsticks, we automated some of our hardware, enabling us to create fabrics that were cohesive but still fragile.

And by June of 2014, we had finished our alpha machine. It automated nearly all the processes used to create our fabrics. As we compared our progress with our earlier prototypes, we were able to see how far we had come.

It was around this time that we more fully understood what we were building — a 3D printer for fabrics. One capable of producing complex non-woven textiles that could provide solutions for a variety of applications—3D printed clothing among them.

In July we joined Boost VC, a startup accelerator program in the Bay Area. With their expertise and advice, we’ve made important strides as both a business and technology venture. We aim to continue refining our 3D printed textiles and machine in order to bring our future fabrics closer to businesses and consumers.

We believe 3D printing empowers and enables people to create—and we think our technology can help get us to a world that is better equipped to design and build.

Liked this piece? Click Recommend or Share below.

Reach out to the team at hello@electroloom.com

Follow us on Twitter, AngelList, Facebook, Medium, or the web.

Stay tuned for part two of this update series.

From Metal Chopsticks to Future Fabrics was originally published in Electroloom Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I’ve got tattoos you know,” he said. “Gave ‘em to myself in high school.”

She eyed the fabric covering his body. It was black. She supposed there was a reason that they all got into the boats wearing the same thing.

Back on the shore, she had trembled before her mirror. The room was a large, rectangular cell. The concrete walls extended upward into nothingness, like a great foundation for the void. At the opposite end of the chamber, tucked against the wall, was an old nightstand. It was made of wood wrought with dimples and cracks. She reached out and found the cold touch of the wrought-iron knobs. A silver mirror stood atop the surface, leaning into the wall of the chamber. The surface was marred by scratches and pitting. A candle had melted down to its last moments of wick, and in the waning glow she thought she looked like a heartbeat.

On the top of the nightstand was the mask. The black jumpsuit was folded neatly beside it. She looked at herself in the mirror. The rumors said that this mirror was the last time she would see her own face — or anyone else’s. She was just about to reach for the mask when she heard the faint sound of dripping. She crouched down to find a pipe protruding from the wall. It was leaking steadily, its puddle like blood in the shadows.

In the lingering flicker of candle, she painted her name out of the river of rust. After a few minutes, she had exhausted the small stream. She spat on her finger, rubbed it along the pipe, and with one last swoop finished the last letter.

The candle went out.

For whatever reason, she felt less nervous as she rose on shaking knees. Perhaps it was her inability to observe her own anxiety in the reflection of the mirror. One less thing to dwell on.

When she stood, she could barely make out the mask gleaming in the darkness. She pulled the jumpsuit over herself, took a wavering breath, and placed the mask on her head. It clicked into a groove that was sewn into the neck of the jumpsuit. Moments later, the mask turned itself to the left. A small mechanism locked audibly into place like the clanging of a closing gate.

“You’ll drown, if you try to swim,” the boy said. He sounded nervous. She turned her head toward him, imagining the way it must have looked — a silent white orb bobbing among the black mist. She had been leaning over the boat, staring at the water.

“So?” she asked.

“So you do talk, huh?”

“Not much, really.”

“I was starting to think they had sewn your mouth shut back there,” he motioned somewhere behind her, toward the docks they had departed.

“They don’t actually do that you know.”

“The rumors say so. Sometimes people wind up in a boat with one of ‘em, and they don’t talk. They say you can hear ‘em crying beneath the mask though.”

“The stories are a lie.”

“Says who?”

“No one could know those stories because no one ever comes back from the boats.”

She has a point. He knows it. They are silent again.

“So, you got a name?” he asked. They aren't supposed to speak their names.

“Z,” she said, reciting the label she’d been assigned.

“X,” he responded. She leaned to the side, just enough to peer around X’s body. There was a faint smear of orange seeping into the mist — lights from an approaching shore. She felt her heart pounding.

“So,” she said, trying to ignore her fear, “you think they always bring 26 of us over?”

“You mean because they assign us letters?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll wait to find out. Maybe we’ll find an X-2.”

She forced herself to laugh.

“Do you mind if I ask why you’re here?” the boy asked.

She hesitated for a moment. They had been instructed to not speak to each other. She wondered, briefly, if breaking such a rule would even matter at this point.

“I told a lie,” she answered softly.

Neither of them said a word for the remainder of the trip.

As they approached the shore the boat began to rock more violently. She felt a bit of the water splash onto her legs. They spent a few minutes digging their hands into the wooden benches of the boat, locking their knees against the walls, trying not to topple over the edges. The boat was rammed by a wave, sending water flooding around their ankles. The force sent her flying forward. X caught her, wrapping his arms around her waist. The boat dragged along the sand until at last, they come to rest on the shore. They let go of each other, and in that moment Z realized how tightly he had been holding on to her.

They stood up in the boat and assessed the shoreline. The mist was receding, and in the clearing view they could see the beach spreading out into the distance. A few torches lit the way up away from the water’s edge. Giant stone walls lined both sides of the beach, extending into the water like jetties. Further up the beach, the walls come together, leaving just a small gap, a corridor, which carved its way up the side of a towering mountain.

“I don’t understand the reason for all this ceremony,” she said, stepping defiantly out of the boat and onto the sand.

“Z, wait up,” X called. He stumbled out the boat and caught up to her. He got close to her, but was careful not to touch — now on the shore, it was possible they were being monitored. Z set the pace, marching toward the corridor.

“Do you think anyone ever puts up a fight?” she asked.

“No. What’s the point?”

“Wanting to determine your own fate.”

“This is where kids like us go, though.”

“We aren’t kids anymore.”

“I figure it just depends on who you’re asking.”

They stopped halfway up the beach, gazing up at the stone corridor and winding its way up the mountain. Near the top, the walls dwindled down until all that was left was a small trail that ended somewhere near the peak. In the distant light of the torches, they could see more bodies making their way up the hill. They weren’t alone.

Z set off into the corridor. It narrowed quickly. They fell into a single file and continued onward. The corridor switched back and forth as they ascended the mountain. All they could see was the giant stone walls and the black strip of sky above them. Z began walking with her head to the sky, wondering what the corridor would look like during the day. She lost her balance, just briefly, and caught herself against the wall. Her mask scraped along the stone.

“Careful,” X said, “You wouldn't want them to think you’re trying to take that off.”

Before she had gotten on the boat, a man greeted her outside of her cell. He tugged at her mask, making sure it was snug.

“If you attempt to remove this, it will end,” was all he had said. She had nodded her head, fearfully complacent.

As they continued up the corridor, she stared at the place on her mask where it touched the stone. There was a chip missing from the glass.

“Hey, Z?” X asked from behind her.

“Yeah?” she answered.

“The rumors never said anything about what is inside the peak…about what is behind The Door.”

The story was always the same. After the boat ride you ascend the mountain and meet The Doorman. After speaking with him, he opens The Door, and you follow the hallway into the center of the peak. There were no stories of what was beyond The Door.

“Yeah, I suppose I’ve never heard anything,” she said.

“What do you think is in there?”

“Who knows. Don’t really care,” she lied.

They reached the end of the corridor and began winding their way up the skinny pathway. It wrapped around the mountain several times before rising ceremoniously toward The Doorman and The Door.

The rumors had said that The Doorman towered three stories above any normal human, that his mask was black, a void that sucked in all light. But The Doorman was only slightly taller than her. He wore the same black jumpsuit. The same abalone mask. There was a sharp ringing emanating from behind the steel of The Door. They walked cautiously toward The Doorman. X approached him first.

“Deposit your heart here please,” The Doorman said holding out a steady hand. X reached into a pocket on his jumpsuit and removed his hand. He placed something small in the palm of The Doorman’s hand.

“What will you do with it?” X asked. The Doorman looked down at what X has handed him, walked to a small panel beside The Door, opened it, and dropped whatever he had held into the space beyond it. The Doorman’s steps were slow and heavy — his heels dragged lines into the sand. Z noticed that the grooves dug by his steps were deep, as though he rarely wavered between his post and the panel.

“You will go together,” The Doorman said, pointing at The Door. X backed up and stood beside Z.

“Deposit your heart here please,” The Doorman said, reaching toward her. She hesitated for a moment and looked down at her hands. She wiggled her fingers beneath the jumpsuit.

“Z,” X whispered, nudging her. She had begun breathing heavily. She looked back down the trail toward the small flicker of torches on the beach. The waves were rolling single lines toward the island. The world below them seemed so far away, muffled by the ringing of The Door.

She was panting.

“I can’t do this…” she whispered, “I have to take it off.”

“Z, don’t be stupid,” X hissed.

“You will comply,” The Doorman said. Z noticed that the shadow behind him seemed to have grown against the mountainside.

“I’m going to do it,” she said, feeling her knees wobble. The Doorman extended his reach.

“Your heart.”

“Z,” X hissed again. She looked to The Doorman, the panel, The Door, and then leaned her head back. She felt the warmth of a tear slide its way down her cheek. No one would know she was crying. No one would see the pain etched onto her face. No one would see her mother’s dimples. No one would see the scar above her eyebrow from her youth slung among the tree branches. No one would see her crooked teeth, her freckled nose, the haphazard strands of hair always arching across her brow. No one would see the color of her eyes.

She reached out to The Doorman and clasped her hand in his. She gripped tight. She could hear the vacant breath from The Doorman’s mouth as it hung open, and just before he had the opportunity to inform her once again to deposit her heart, she ran past him toward The Door.

Head first, she slammed her mask into the cold steel.

“Stop!” The Doorman shouted, “Do not remove the mask!”

She braced herself against The Door, craned her neck back, and slammed her head against it once more. She heaved her entire body weight against The Door, and within moments, cracks began to spread along the surface of her mask. The Doorman reached for her but X lunged forward, wrestling with him momentarily before he was thrown backward against the mountain side. She heard his mask shatter.

The Doorman raced a few paces away and pulled on a hidden lever in the darkness. An alarm sounded. One final crane of her neck. Her mask shattered. The pieces fell around her.

She tasted the waves on her lips. Her tear dried.

She turned around, finding X in the shadows, staring at her in bewilderment. Without missing another moment they were up, flying down the corridor, X behind her, struggling to hold onto her hand as she held onto it the same way he held her on the boat — they were racing. The stone walls became a single gray blur beneath the stripe of night advancing their stake — she held onto him. There were more bodies racing up the corridor, a solid line of abalone sheen dotting black-suited bodies crammed beneath the walls “Hold on!” she shouted to X, and just before they collided with the bodies she felt her grip reciprocated as the fabric between their palms became a whisper beneath their strength.

She heard other masks shatter. Hands reached for her jumpsuit, clawed at her arms, grabbed for her torso, but they were too fast for them. They were too momentous in their stride, too much weight barreling down the hallway of stone linked by heartless hands, X&Z, pedaling downward toward the sea.

They hit the beach, sinking into the sand, barely able to run. They stumbled down the embankment toward the water, slamming into the boat. It was tied with a thick rope.

“What…how do we…” X stammered. She grabbed a piece of her mask still sticking upward from her neck. It was stubborn. She leaned into a hard pull, the glass cutting her skin. She could feel blood seeping through her jumpsuit.

More bodies were running out of the corridor and down the beach. The glass snapped off. She dove to the rope and rocked the piece of glass back and forth vigorously until the rope snapped.

Without hesitation, X helped her push the boat out into the surf. They were soaked and blinded by salt. The sound of feet splashing into the water drew nearer. Her breaths became half ocean, half panic. Her eyes were stinging. An enormous wave raced toward them. X screamed and shoved the front of the boat through its face.

A stillness followed. They pulled themselves into the boat and paddled deeply from the sides. After a few minutes they looked back. The shore was lined with white orbs gazing as they drifted into the night.

“We are so fucked…so fucked…” X said. He rested his head against the side of the boat.

“Are we?” she was panting, her back flat against the bottom of the boat, “Are we actually?” She was laughing.

She was nervous.

She was free.

“Can I ask you something?” X asked. She sits up. It was the first time she has looked at him since his mask shattered. It was the first face she was told she’d never see.

“Sure,” she responded, catching a glimmer of color from his eyes as the torches on the beach faded into the mist.

“What’s your name?”