Months after it released a streetwear-inspired hoodie with Adidas and Stella McCartney based on its NuCycl technology, textile innovator Evrnu closed a $9.1 million Series A funding round that brings its total funding to $11.7 million and will further the startup’s ambitions to make regenerative fiber technologies the new normal in apparel production.
Evrnu has developed a patent-pending process that converts clothing and textile waste into new fabric, reducing fashion’s reliance on virgin materials like cotton and polyester while also preventing discarded garments from reaching a dead end in the traditional waste stream. The Seattle-based company believes it can save billions of dollars of clothing and fabrics from piling up in landfills.
“Christo, my business partner, and I built Evrnu to solve a major problem in the textile and apparel industry—waste,” Stacy Flynn, Evrnu co-founder and CEO, said. “Evrnu technologies are designed to extract maximum value from post-consumer textile waste, allowing supply chain partners to create premium textiles made from recycled materials with no loss in performance and quality.”
Radicle Impact, an investment fund that also has plant-based egg substitute Just and healthy juice brand Forager in its portfolio, led Evrnu’s Series A, which was joined by Twynam Investments Pty Ltd, Plum Alley Investments, The Mills Fabrica Fund and Giant Leap Fund, in addition to existing investors Closed Loop Partners, CycleEffect Regenerative Ventures, Future Tech Lab, and Magic Hour.
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“Evrnu allows the world to extend the life of precious resources of cotton and polyester, as well as the amount of textile waste sent to landfills every year,” Kat Taylor, Radicle Impact co-founder said of the startup’s “work to radically transform the apparel and textile industry.” Like other companies in Radicle’s portfolio, Evrnu makes a product that advances environmental benefits even as it retools fashion for a sustainable future.
Rather than forcing change into the industry, the startup licenses its technologies to stakeholders in the apparel and textile supply chain, and will use some of its new funding to scale this licensing model by 2020, the company said. Evrnu estimates that its work could ameliorate the $500 billion worth of garments and textiles burned or cast off each year by disassembling fabrics at the molecular level and regenerating them for multiple re-uses.
Beyond its NuCycl launch with Adidas and Stella McCartney, Evrnu has used the NuCycl technology to develop custom fibers, yarns and fabrics for denim giant Levi’s, with Target to follow, it said. Evrnu plans to makes its technologies commercially available to brand and retail partners in the next two years, it added.