California Apparel News

In the heart of the downtown Los Angeles Fashion District, at the New Mart building, Fashion Tech Works affords a new space for cultivating creativity blended with innovation. The fashion-focused space serves as a digital design center, content studio, event space and coworking site for designers and brands large and small.

“There are different elements that we can offer. In the first instance, it’s a community,” The New Mart’s general manager, Tom Keefer, explained. “Most importantly, it’s the services that we’ve been able to align ourselves with as a one-stop turnkey destination for designers and brand builders where they have all the tools they need to go from concept to finished sample.”

Fashion Tech Works’ tools for content creation include a studio for videography and photography, a podcast space, social-media cultivation, digital-marketing opportunities, and augmented-reality and virtual-reality technologies. Through its partnerships with manufacturers who utilize tools from Gerber Technology, Kornit Digital and Tukatech, Fashion Tech Works also offers CAD, sample prototyping, 3D printing, sustainable apparel manufacturing and small-batch runs for apparel making. The space and its services are available for on-site and remote work models.

“People are coming out of schools already learning about sustainable manufacturing. They are ready to jump in, right out of being a graduate, to start their lines with sustainable manufacturing, and we want to support their vision and keep the whole model moving forward,” said Fashion Tech Works founder and Chief Executive Officer Cindy Keefer. “This model is completely step-by-step for a new designer to enable them to manufacture sustainably, ethically and with a smaller carbon footprint. This is something we’ve been really proud of. It’s what is going to help us stand apart from any other coworking situations.”

Services are available a la carte and through charter memberships. Silver remote, Gold open-desk and Platinum private-office memberships are available for monthly fees of $60, $400 and $600 respectively, each offering a certain number of hours to access the podcast studio, design station, conference room or content spaces. Event services, such as hosting fashion and trade shows or other apparel-industry events, are also available. Larger companies are able to utilize the space to test new ideas.

“A company like Boardriders has offices all over the world including one in Huntington Beach, [Calif.],” said Mark Robinson, chief operations officer of Fashion Tech Works and CEO of Susarel, Inc. “Fashion Tech Works gives them a place where they can test that new Roxy top before they go overseas.”

With an advisory board comprising fashion-industry veterans including Sherri Barry, co-founder of Fabric Demand Manufacturing Services; Barbara Bundy, vice president of education at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising; Laurie Champagne, CEO at Social Theory; Frances Harder, author of “Fashion for Profit”; Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association; and TJ Walker, co-founder of Cross Colours, Fashion Tech Works aims to afford cutting-edge resources with a human approach that blends technology with people-focused connections. Additional information regarding Fashion Tech Works may be found via fashiontechworks.com.