Voxel8, a Boston-area multimaterial digital manufacturing company, and Eddy Ricami, an Italian manufacturer to the fashion industry, have struck an exclusive arrangement for Eddy Ricami to produce and sell fashion accessories using Voxel8 technology.
Voxel8’s ActiveLab system offers a complete turnkey solution, including hardware, software and materials, for printing functional features on textiles. ActiveLab lets manufacturers offer novel design embellishments to customers with shorter design cycle and manufacturing lead times.
“Our technology fundamentally transforms how fashion footwear, apparel and accessories are developed and produced,” Percy Chinoy, director of business development at Voxel8, said. “It enables manufacturers to offer unique design embellishments to their customers with shorter design cycle times, reduced manufacturing lead times and inventory costs, and lowers costs associated with tooling, freight and tariffs.”
By establishing the ActiveLab capabilities at its manufacturing facility in Montecosaro, Italy, Eddy Ricami can cater to the demands of its fashion customers, creating high-quality, custom-designed products while eliminating supply-chain risks associated with overseas production, the companies said. In the future, Eddy Ricami customers will be able to personalize designs at little incremental cost.
“Through our purchase of the ActiveLab system, we look to bring new, customized design elements to our customers, leveraging the latest in additive manufacturing technology,” Gianluca Bordoni, CEO and owner of Eddy Ricami, said. “In our evaluation of 3D printing offerings, we found Voxel8’s technology was uniquely positioned for printing on textiles. This is an example of our continued commitment to implement innovative technical solutions to provide our customers with distinctive products.”
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Friedrich von Gottberg, CEO of Voxel8, said the company’s technology has gained global commercial traction in athletic and leisure footwear, and can now expand its reach into the European fashion market.
Voxel8’s additive, multimaterial digital manufacturing technology leverages more than a decade of research and 25 patents to advance how footwear, apparel and related products are designed and manufactured. Voxel8’s ActiveLab solution digitally prints flexible elastomeric materials with on-the-fly tuning of mechanical properties onto textiles, providing embedded functionality and high-resolution graphics in a no-tooling, more sustainable manufacturing process.
Voxel8 enables rapid product development to production, allowing brands to react quickly to market trends and consumer demands in real time, enabling customization and local production.
Eddy Ricami has been serving the fashion industry for over 20 years by offering exclusive solutions based on its embroidery, digital printing and other manufacturing capabilities. The company’s headquarters in Montecosaro, Italy, along with two other production sites, offer significant production capacity in close proximity to fashion customers.