Small brands in the Americas now have greater access to Jeanologia’s technology and expertise in sustainable finishing. The Spanish company chose Miami’s colorful Wynwood neighborhood for its first U.S. hub.
“With Miami, we feel at home,” said Roberto Muñoz, Americas division director for Jeanologia, adding that many of the Valencia-based company’s customers from Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil maintain offices in the Florida city. “Miami is very close to our mentality in Spain.”
Though Jeanologia has hubs in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Brazil and Mexico, securing a stateside footprint allows the company to become a bigger player in American fashion’s nearshoring efforts. Muñoz said the company estimates that 10 percent of apparel production will return to the U.S. in the next five years while another 30 percent will be close to the market, for instance in Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Peru.
The Miami hub unites all of the technology, hardware and software—laser, e-Flow, G2 Ozone and more—that designers need to sustainably develop their next collection or refresh excess inventory on domestic turf.
“Now designers can create their own product in a digital and sustainable way from lab to bulk,” Muñoz said. The product recipes they develop in Miami can be transferred to Jeanologia-powered global production centers through Orion software facilitating machine-to-machine communication and automatically converting a recipe’s parameters from one machine to another with consistent results.
The hubs are a win-win for brands, manufacturers and Jeanologia. About 90 percent of the company’s business comes from selling technology to manufacturing companies, with more than 4,000 of its machines now in 70 countries and counting. The hubs help Jeanologia feed business into this network, Muñoz said. Despite countries reopening their borders, covid curtailed overseas travel and, for various reasons, many brands have not returned to their pre-pandemic routines of developing products on site with their manufacturers.
“People don’t want to travel anymore. We are trying to make a bridge between the brands and the manufacturers,” he said.
The hubs also support Jeanologia’s ambition to democratize sustainable technologies. While companies like Levi Strauss & Co., Kontoor Brands and Fast Retailing have their own Jeanologia-powered innovation centers, smaller brands are at a disadvantage. Muñoz said the company aims to serve as both a consultant (powered by Jeanologia’s “brainbox” team of experts) to develop products for businesses without their own engineering centers, and as a workshop to train designers on using the technologies.
“It’s our way to help the planet—to give access to our technologies and to develop products in a sustainable way,” he said.
This story appears in Rivet’s Spring 2023 issue. Click here to read the full issue.