LOOPED IN with Carl Warkentin

Revolutionizing Textile Production: on-shore, on-demand mass-customization with the Rodinia Generation's O-factory (Trine Young)

• Carl Warkentin • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Fashion has a dirty secret: brands routinely produce 30% more clothing than they'll ever sell. This deliberate overproduction is baked into a global supply chain that hasn't fundamentally changed in 75 years—one that pollutes watersheds, wastes resources, and disconnects production from actual consumer demand.

Trine, founder and CEO of Rodinia Generation, is rewriting these rules with a revolutionary concept called the O-Factory. Housed in just 200 square meters, this "Omni Factory" transforms digital designs into finished garments in as little as 48 hours, all without using a single drop of water in the production process. The secret? A proprietary software "brain" that coordinates every step of manufacturing with unprecedented precision.

When fashion brands work with traditional offshore manufacturers, they must forecast trends a year in advance, wait months for production and shipping, then warehouse excess inventory that frequently ends up discounted or destroyed. The O-Factory eliminates these inefficiencies by producing exactly what's needed, when and where it's needed. The technology uses biodegradable nano-pigment inks that require no washing or steaming, cutting CO2 emissions by up to 40% while producing zero wastewater.

Most remarkably, this isn't just an environmental win—it's economically viable. While per-unit costs may be 20% higher than Asian manufacturing, Rodinia eliminates the substantial "shadow costs" of global production: shipping, tariffs, warehousing, and waste. A single production line can generate €12M in annual revenue with healthy margins, making sustainability profitable.

Beyond economics, the O-Factory enables true mass customization, giving consumers garments tailored to their exact measurements rather than standardized sizes. Each piece can include a digital product passport via QR code, offering complete transparency about its production. 

Could this technology finally break fashion's addiction to overproduction and constant sales? Follow Rodinia's journey as they scale from proof-of-concept to a network of distributed factories, potentially transforming not just how our clothes are made, but our entire relationship with fashion.

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Carl:

Welcome to Lubdin, the number one podcast about circular economy and regenerative business models. We bring behind the scenes conversations with investors, founders and corporate leaders into the spotlight, exploring how to scale impact, build profitable business models and redesign our economy for a better future. So let's get started with today's guest our economy for a better future. So let's get started with today's guest. Welcome everybody from the beautiful city of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Carl:

I am sitting here with Trine, founder and CEO of Rodinia Generation, a startup pioneering a radically different approach to clothing production. I first met Trina in Munich through a mutual connection from a venture fund we're both affiliated with and I've been fascinated by her mission ever since. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with her in Copenhagen at her site and talk about yet another aspect of circularity in the textile industry. Trine, you started this journey to tackle one of the biggest problems in fashion Slow, wasteful and polluting global supply chains. With the O-Factory concept, your team is now making onshore, on-demand and end-to-end apparel manufacturing a reality, all with zero water use, up to 40% lower CO2 emissions and lead times as short as 48 hours. That sounds pretty impressive. So, trine, first of all, thank you so much for having me here today.

Trine:

Thank you. Thank you for coming.

Carl:

Trine. Let us go back to the beginning For those who don't know the story, like how did you come up with the idea of Rodinia Generation and how did you end up in the fashion industry in the first place?

Trine:

Yeah. So it actually started, I think, from childhood, drawing a lot of images and illustrations of clothing somehow, illustrations of clothing somehow and then I wanted to see what we could build from basically 2D drawings to something that was tangible in this world. That was sort of my fascination with clothing in general, but it was actually not really where my future plans were. I actually thought that I would become a biologist and in particular I applied for molecular biomedicine in Copenhagen at the Copenhagen University and was well on my way there. As you know, the conventional industry would say towards a great career, safe, you know, income and no risk at all. And then, you know, for some reason I decided to go in the complete opposite direction and some would say kill my future plans and start on the design education in Copenhagen as well, called the Danish design school back then, and I was there for three years.

Trine:

And I went to London for for two years for a master at the London College of Fashion and then I went back again to to Copenhagen and started my first job in a female fashion brand that did premium fashion, with a lot of colors, a lot of prints, amazing design and aesthetics, and I was basically hired because I wanted to.

Trine:

At my interview I said you should hire me if you want to change some of your internal processes, because I'm really good at supply chain management, print design and, you know, looking at the bigger picture of of basically process design instead of product design, which I can maybe come back to later why I see it like that. And then to answer your question, I found myself a little shocked when I started in that position. I thought that was a long way from actually doing something. How would you say, to actually do some kind of impact in the supply chain of fashion, because we had several issues basically related to producing garments across, you know, on the other side of the planet from where we consume it. So that's a very long story.

Carl:

Short, not so short, but yeah, okay, so you call Rodinia Setup an O-Factory? Yes, which means an onshore on-demandup an O-Factory? Yes, which means an onshore on-demand and end-to-end factory. Can you generally walk us through what that actually means and also what the O in the O-Factory stands for?

Trine:

Yes, so starting with the O, it's not like an O oh my God, I'm scared. No, it's actually short for Omni. And so, again, omni is short for Omni Presence, and that's because we have a software here that we built in-house from scratch the source code belongs to Redenia, because we have an amazing team who is super good at writing code and that software basically works a little bit like a human brain. It sort of has a lot of nerve ends towards machinery or, we could say, body parts that the brain tells now the hand to lift this, do that, pick this up or don't do that. That was not so good. We should just remember that we should not do this.

Trine:

This is how the brain works and it also does that in this old factory, basically starting with a customer, a fashion brand's design, that is, a digital design file that is then being materialized through this very short process that basically consists of five steps that are all intertwined. So you have one end-to-end process that starts with a digital file. Out in the other end comes a finalized garment that you can wear, and the reason that it's that fast and it's that effective and that we can actually measure the impact is because of this software, this brain that continuously monitors and collects the information and also sends out instructions to the different body parts, the different machinery and processes.

Carl:

How is it? I mean, you're trying to radically change part of the industry as it is today, with that kind of concept, right For those who are not so aware of the fashion industry? Is today, with that kind of concept, right for those who are not so aware of the fashion industry, like what is happening today? What? What problems did you face that you would like to change with your concept?

Trine:

yes. So, um, I think with this omni or o factory, you can. You can literally make exactly the amount of clothes when you need it and where you need it, and that's not how. Even how basic this might sound, it's not how it works today. So today you need to actually make a lot more than you can actually sell. If you're a fashion brand, you typically, an average, produce 30 percent more clothing than you sell. So you already know by the by the time you order something in asia, that you already have 30 percent that that this will just be waste. So you know this already. This is how the model works and that's because the unit economics are dictating, um, that you get the the cheapest price if you make a little more. This is the economy of scale principle and this is what we all suffer from.

Trine:

That's why we have Black Friday is a bigger event than Easter, right? So we have, like this issue with too much clothing all the time. So we need now to rethink this system. Why are we also making something so far away that we have no control, no idea what's happening, then having to ship it? It takes a long time, but we now have demands and you know transit shifts every week and then now we are waiting for months to get the products that we actually ordered. So there's a lot in the, I would say, on the consumer side that does not make sense. There's a lot behind the scenes on the production side that does not make sense. There's a lot on the behind the scenes on the production side that doesn't make sense either. So there's a, in my opinion, when it's more than 75 years ago that anything radically happened in the clothing production and side of things, we should really now, I think, do something.

Carl:

It's about time wow, so 30 more, and that even still makes sense, right? Because, like one should think, financially it makes no sense to produce 30 more, so rather produce 30 less or 25 less, so you just have five percent more than you actually need. Um, that's pretty crazy that the the unit economics work that way and that it's kind of allowed. I mean, there's a lot of regulatory coming up to try to avoid these things. But then you mentioned it you have productions at the other side of the world, so your concept basically brings production back to Europe or to any place in the world where you actually need the garment. Yes, and now probably most critics would say how does it work financially? Like, are you able to compete with those unit economics?

Trine:

yes, I mean, that's and that's the the big question. So so we, we kind of also started this company based on on the notion that you can dream of doing as much good in this world every day, but if the unit economics doesn't make sense, um, it will never. It will never work, to be honest, because the cost is the weakest link and that's just how it is. So, basically, the reason why this is actually competitive to Asian manufacturing prices or cost is because we have all of these so-called shadow costs, which means that when, for example, the easiest to understand is that when we ship something from far away, we'll need to pay shipping costs, and when it lands at a border, we need to pay tariffs, we need to pay taxes, everything, and we also need to pay all of that on top of the things that we actually don't sell.

Trine:

So now imagine that you bring in 30% to your warehouse. You also have warehouse cost. That's per square meter. You have pick cost, you have people who need to walk around and make sure that your inventory is safe and it gets to one place, to another, gets to a customer.

Trine:

All of these things are just really tangible for, I think, anyone to understand that this obviously is not for free. So when you take these things it actually can sum up to as lot as 36% on top of the actual unit economic of a garment made in Asia, and in our case we in average charge around 20 to 22% more. But then you take 36 percent on top and it actually becomes less. So there you have actually a profit in on some product categories not all. It's very different. I mean, it's different from if you make a, a long dress or you make a t-shirt, right, but on some product categories you can actually earn more with with the olfactory technology right, right, I mean I imagine the typical nos products like never out of stock, typical basic t-shirts or underwear, what, what have you not like?

Carl:

probably it's tough to compete with. But uh, when it comes to different garments, I totally see the point that it could make sense. But could it replace mass production as well, like, do you have the capacity? Does one of your lines have a? Capacity to replace mass production, or is it more like for premium segments and smaller amount of articles?

Trine:

of articles.

Trine:

Yes, I would say that that mass production in general, I mean depends on how you define the wording, but but that's basically what we, what we fight against, right, mass production of just making a large batch of something that like one size fits all.

Trine:

But just look at us as people. There's none of us are the same size. So, yeah, we are actually working towards mass customization instead so that, um, if you have very short legs, you can basically get your trousers in in the length that you need, without having to chop off um 50 centimeters, like like some of us do, um, so that would actually be a new paradigm in the fashion industry, where you can produce a lot, but you only produce exactly what it is that people can actually wear and use and it will fit them, so they won't return it. And that's also a big part of this. These costs that we can't see is because people buy something, but they don't want it anyway, so they return it. Cost that we can't see is because people buy something, but they don't want it anyway, so they return it, okay.

Carl:

Well, so you're tackling a lot of problems actually with your solution. Before we go deeper into that, let's go a bit more into detail with what exactly it is that your olfactory is doing. Like, where in the whole process do you start, um, and where do you end? Like you mentioned, you go up until the finished garment. Like, can you take us to a typical process of one of your customers? What do they do themselves and where do you come in?

Trine:

yes, and I think actually I want to start with what you first said about no water and a reduced CO2 footprint, because we're really careful how we actually say that, because our olfactory facility is waterless. There's no water here, but the garments that we make is not produced without any water, because we can actually use a lot of fabrics, like cotton, for example, and our solution don't revolutionize cotton farming so that we can eliminate water from the cotton fields. It's not like that. And that brings me to the supply chain, where we typically have these five tiers, and the last tier is the raw materials, and rodinia is in the, in the third tier. If you look at it traditionally, we kind of blend a little bit over the edges of tier four, three and two, but we are in in tier three mainly.

Trine:

That's called dyeing, printing and finishing actually just dyeing and finishing, which is basically where you have, um, rolls of fabric, um, they could be white rolls of fabric, for example, but you don't want it to be white, you want it to be navy blue or you want it to have dots or stripes or something like that. Then you have to finish the fabric, um, and then you actually can then sell it to someone who can make garments out of it. But we do that also. So that's where we take the whole end-to-end solution and say, from the moment we receive a roll of fabric that is, let's say, unfinished, untreated, we can customize it to a fashion brand's need. So let's say they want a dress that has red flowers on, and then basically they share with us their design files of dress or t-shirts or maybe even both, and then we basically put that design through our system and it will get printed and it will get cut and it will get picked up by a robot that also sorts it to where it needs to go in this new assembly stage.

Trine:

And then we still have humans in the assembly stage that will be at each station and then making sure that the sleeve is actually attached to the, to the sleeve hole. But the important part here is that semi-automation in the assembly stage is is also where we believe we can actually gain, you know, advantages seen from the cost perspective, because salaries are high, especially here in europe. So when we can save the money by automating the entire tier three, then we actually have leverage to pay the salaries in the other layer where we have suing. And even if we can streamline and automate the suing part in the future, which is what we believe we can do, then those, those that process would also be more effectivized and then we can have an even more competitive price on those garments made onshore or made in europe all right.

Carl:

I mean, I've just seen the factory and it looks pretty impressive and futuristic, super cool and only 200 square meters, maybe, just so that we, we really take on all, all the listeners. I'm a brand and I want from you that dress you mentioned with red flowers on. Now I have two opportunities or two options. I either order it with you, and why I? I go to a I don't know production company in asia and I say, like you know, please do this, and, as I understand, the production company organizing me the fabric right in a, in a colored way. So I order probably I don't know 200 kilometers of that fabric, which I'm not sure if I really will need all of it, but I'm going to order it.

Carl:

After that, I cannot do anything with it anymore unless I want to use it again next season, which is highly unlikely. So I, I either go this way and then somebody in asia produces this for me. What part of there is, like? How manual or how automized is that process already? Because that allows us then to compare it to the Rodinia process.

Trine:

Yes, exactly. So I believe it's around 60% of all printing. So when you do that red flower on a fabric, you make it through something an old technology that's called rotary screen printing it through something an old technology that's called rotary screen printing. It's basically where you manually need to load buckets of chemicals. So if you have a red color, you have a bucket of red chemicals reactive dyes typically and and it comes out of cylinders so you can only make one color per cylinder. So if you have a print that has more than five colors, you need five, or has five colors, you need five cylinders and you need five buckets of chemicals and you can never hit the amount of chemical that you need to make this print. So you always have excess chemical that you throw away out in the water systems and that's also where you see these pictures of water being yellow or purple or blue, because you throw away all these excess chemicals when you do traditional printing on fabric. So that's one thing.

Trine:

So just imagine now we have just thrown these chemicals on our fabric somewhere far away, then there would be excess color because if we just, you know, use this fabric for garments and wore it, and now we put it in our washing machine, then everything would be. We would have pink socks all over everywhere because there would be excess color. So you need to wash this printed fabric multiple times like sometimes it's really big industrial washing machines um, and then after that you will need to make sure that the colors are fixated to the actual fibers. So sometimes you you actually do need to steam it as well. A lot of energy again, a lot of water, so a really really intense process that will leave you with a roll of what you said, like three kilometers of of same colored fabric and by that time I mean all of that work, all of that effort, and by that time, like the production hasn't even started yet no, no, exactly, this is only the.

Trine:

Yeah, you're right, you're right. Yes, this is only what. To get to a point where you actually have red flowers on a, on a, on a roll of fabric. Yeah, no garments, no shapes of sleeves or anything yet. So this is a process that you need to go through first. Then you need, after that, to roll out again. Now you just rolled up your fabric because you finished printing it and drying it and so on. After washing many times, now you need to transport it to a sewing facility. Could also be in the same facility, but let's just, for argument's sake, say it's somewhere else. They will lay out the roll in layers on top of each other, so it's called spreading.

Trine:

So basically, take the fabric, spread it out on top so you get like a thick yeah, when you, when you bake, also you have yeah the dough, you kind of spread it, yeah, and then that's where you can start looking at what shapes should we then cut out from these layers of fabric? And that's where the mass production comes into the picture, because you might sometimes have I mean, what do I know like 50 layers of fabric? What do I know like 50 layers of fabric? So every time you cut a shape, you will get 50 of the same cut out pieces, and in this case, you typically don't want too many different pieces, because it's humans who will need to make sure that they know which piece belongs to to where. So you have two arms, or most of us have have two arms. So you need two sleeves, right and left.

Trine:

And imagine that if you do many different colors of sleeve, it will not be possible for humans to to figure out, um, you know which sleeves goes to which customer, and so on. So that's why you basically just make a lot of products, um, that are completely the same, and and that means that you need to cut everything out. Now you have um small, how do you say, like lego bricks, that when you put them together in the right way, you you get a final garment. But that's the next step. So first, after you have cut out all these layers of fabric and you now are left with Lego bricks to build the final garment, you need to transport it to sewing stations and there you have people sitting doing the same movement for I don't know how many hours a day, because you are streamlined the processes that way lean manufacturing, that you basically just do sleeves, so you do sleeves, sleeves, sleeves, sleeves so this is still even for the mass production that's the mass production.

Carl:

Yes, it's still a manual labor. Yeah, okay.

Trine:

Yeah, and now that they are done with that, let's say that now the garments are assembled and so on, they need to be packed and then afterwards they need to be loaded onto a container. That container needs to be full, because otherwise it's not. That doesn't make any sense to ship half full containers across the world, so it has to be full. And then, once it's full, you ship it across the planet and it lands. For example, it sails from Colombo to Amsterdam and then from there it has to be transported with trucks to each warehouse or each shop or whoever ordered these garments, and now they're ready to be sold. And then in that meantime, no one wants red flowers anymore. Now the flowers need to be green how long is that?

Carl:

I'm a brand and I come up with that idea, with that design? How much up front do I need to start my design process and my my production process before it can be then in the store?

Trine:

um, it's a little individual, but I think it wouldn't be too far away to say around six months, maybe even nine months for some brands, that they start the design process. So there you have to be able to forecast what people will buy in 12 months time.

Carl:

Yeah, now let us compare this to your process. You are basically able to do all of that in 48 hours within 200 square meters. So I am now having the same idea for the flower dress. So I I am now having the same idea for the flower dress. Do I just send you the design as a file and you just start producing like how, how now does that process work with you?

Trine:

yeah, you, you send it in a specific file. Yes, so unfortunately it does not. Yeah, it's, it's, it's uh, it has to be quite specific. So, yeah, we work with with the industry um standard format, which is a dxf format. It's a vectorized format where you basically have your pattern pieces like sleeves and backs and fronts, um, and then you can also add today with new um, it's like actually not new anymore, but but you have digital design software like Cloth3D, electra, browseware, marvelous Designer, so you can actually design garments without even having to use any kind of physical resources from a planet. So you basically have the digital design. You export that design from that software and then that format is actually digestible by our brain.

Trine:

So the O factory just loves to eat those file formats, can? It can eat a lot of them at the same time, meaning that it does not need to make 5 000 copies of that file to be cost effective, and that's the whole idea. So you could basically share with with an olfactory 50, let's just say, 50, 000 different designs, and that then would be able to. So the old factory would then plan and order when, how is the best way to actually produce these designs as waste reducing as possible. And that means that to keep up with the delivery time and keep up with the speed sorry, the waste limit, we have this algorithm that basically tries, like again lego bricks, to build the most optimal layout on the fabric with all of those bricks it has available and then, once it finds the best match, meaning the lowest waste percentage of the fabric, it starts the planning and the production. And obviously this doesn't happen like for humans. This is like weeks of work, right, and this only happens in a few seconds, so no manual work needed.

Carl:

This reminds me and I've seen it before inside it reminds me of baking Christmas cookies. You know, when you have these little forms and you want all different kind of forms and you figure out, you roll out the dough and then you put the form somewhere and you try to do it so that you don't have to too much waste of or overstock of of that dough that you can roll out again, obviously, but um, it's not that easy here in the production process. Um, so it it feels like the same and this is basically what your brain is doing, as you call it.

Trine:

Yes, one of the things.

Carl:

Yes, and then your brain processes all of these orders and it can be all the same, let's say, black t-shirts and dresses and whatever it is and it calculates from all the order incoming how to to put it on that fabric, um, and then you start printing and it literally looks like a normal printer for your documents that you have at home in your office. So, yeah, it's just like an hp printer and and you see the ink in the back. So you just print it, um with almost no waste of that fabric. So you mean you mentioned you can produce 80 percent of garments, which probably allows or requires you to not have only one type of fabric on stock right. How many types of fabrics do you need to have?

Carl:

yes on stock and how often do you have to exchange the fabric rolls like, let's say, silk and that type of cotton and a mixture like? How often does it happen and how many of these kind of roles do you need?

Trine:

yeah, that's a really good question and and it is actually, you know again, um based on on the most optimal um process planning that the software does based on the orders that we have in the pipeline.

Trine:

So normally so it's not programmed to say, well, we'll change the fabric 200 times during a day, even though it only takes six minutes to change to another fabric type. That wouldn't be cost efficient. So in in average, we have around two to three shifts in a day of a roll each six minutes, and that means that we can, in six minutes, change to make garments that works best on a very stretchy material and then six minutes after, we can make garments that only works well without stretch. So that could be men's shirts versus yoga leggings, and that only takes six minutes. And today you need this entire process that I explained before for each fabric type and you need huge minimums to basically just produce one meter of that fabric type. And here this is the reason why we can actually say, well, minimums is not something we work with. We can just make one unique garment because it doesn't really matter.

Carl:

That kind of ink? Is it a special ink that that you use? Because you mentioned before, a lot of chemicals go in there and you know it's really harmful um. Is there something you have control over as well?

Trine:

yeah, so the ink is actually manufactured by, um, the, the printer, the printer company that we have in our old factory.

Trine:

So, yeah, maybe just to wind back a little, so, um, the, what you can see in the o factory, there are, like various machines. As I said before, some of them are our ip, so some of them we invented and some of them are what we call best available technologies, and there are two of them, that's a digital cutter and a digital textile printer, and those two machines were originally engineered to do something else than garments. So basically, we have now brainwashed them to think that now they are a part of a body that only do garments, whereas before they could do a lot of other stuff, like curtains or pillows or something else. But now they only believe that they are, they are here to make garments and that the printer is made from a manufacturer that's called cornit. And they also have invented this ink, which is a guts or eco passport, certified ecotex 100, certified nano pigment, and it's biodegradable and it literally fixates onto almost all types of fabric do you then need to still wash the garment once it's done, like you mentioned before?

Carl:

no and the mass production is required.

Trine:

No, okay, yeah yes, so that is also one of the amazing things about that. So once it has been printed, there's obviously still like when you use your home printer the ink is a little wet on the paper afterwards, so we need to dry it. And once it has been dried which is in the second machine that you see here once it has went through that process, which takes two and a half minutes, then you can literally put it into a washing machine and there will be no excess colors. Everything is completely fixed to the, to any type of fabric that we want, right right and me as a brand.

Carl:

You either offer me one of the fabrics you have on stock like a hundred percent cotton, but I assume there are all different kind of qualities and specifications so I can also tell you.

Trine:

Please have my specific fabric on stock and please print, you know, my products on my fabric yeah, in theory you could, yes, but then there's obviously also the political side of the company saying that if you wanted to have all of that fabric in stock and you either way needed to ship that fabric from one side of the planet to the other, then you would compromise a little bit. You know the sustainability and the unsure aspect of it. So we actually try to work with local, as local as it can be, because, as we know, industries are in clusters around the world and we actually have a lot of fabric mills in Europe, in Portugal, in Spain, italy and so on. And so we try obviously to, when we map out where we strategically want to have these olfactories, that we are also close to these companies. Who makes the fabric, the raw material that we need?

Carl:

I totally agree with you, and that leads into the next question of now produce on site, as you mentioned, as locally as possible, and you mentioned that political side. So what is your business case? Are you then the production company, or is your business plan to sell that machine? How would you like to do that in the future?

Trine:

It's actually a three-step rocket Now. Rockets are not so popular to speak about these days. It's actually a three-step rocket. Now. Rockets are not so popular to speak about these days, but it is a three-step rocket.

Trine:

And the first step in the rocket is basically that we are the producer. So we want to, also because no one else than us right now knows how to handle this technology. It's so new, it's so innovative that we cannot just go out and say to someone here in Poland, let's say, now you get this and good luck. We need to be a demonstration in ourselves. So our first plan is to operate ourselves a handful of these factories to show how it's done and also to show the business case in it, because it's actually really profitable. You need two million euros to set up one factory line and that can generate 12 million euros in revenues each year wow yeah, on an ebita between 20 and 28, so it's a very lucrative opportunity as well from a financial perspective.

Trine:

And what we really care about here is also that you can earn money while you can still quantify that you're not completely destroying the planet in your efforts to do that right. So that's the first step. The next step, then, let's say that now everything is great and we have succeeded in demonstrating that this is, one, a really profitable business and two, it can actually, you know, generate the impact that we have to, you know, in this industry. Otherwise we have no future. So second step is to initiate now the how do you say? The so-called licensing model. You could say that actually, if you are interested in owning and operating an olfactory yourself, you can actually buy that license and then you can start up your own olfactory production.

Trine:

Let's say that you are currently an apparel manufacturer and you have no chance of getting impact data to your customers and you have no chance of reacting to fast to trends and actually consumer demands and not overproduce. Now you want this and then you can actually get this technology for a fee. We will still like to own a part of these factories, also to ensure that they are not used for something bad that we don't want to. So it is a joint venture model where we would like to co-own, together with the textile industry players, these units that produce onshore. The last second step are then turnkey solutions, and the turnkey solutions are only possible, in our point of view, when you have a really strong brand, a little bit the same way as McDonald's.

Trine:

It's a very bad comparison, I think, but you know what I mean. The branding is so strong that you know what you get. If you walk into a McDonald's, you know what you get, so it should basically be the same. If you buy garments made by old factories, you know what you get, so you always know that it's never going to be harmful to the planet. You always use these biodegradable colors that won't kill us slowly because of the toxic chemicals, and it will always be made as close to you as possible with local resources so that you don't you you are sure that it's not shipped twice around the planet or something thanks for for explaining.

Carl:

That sounds like a no-brainer business model. So, like you know, I give you now two million years and and we, we built another. Are you looking for financial investors in your startup so that you can build several of these production lines, or do you look for a partner, a joint venture partner, somebody who is willing to co-invest and co-run, who also brings the demand, maybe for that old factory?

Trine:

Yes, exactly, and a strategic yes in the first step of that rocket, maybe also even in the second right. It would be. It would definitely be what we aim to do to get a strategic partner board. It could be a fashion brand that has a large volume that they'd like to transit to. We can, we can call it sustainable I guess we have to a lack of better wording sustainable production closer to home. So that could be a brand that then co-invests in factory lines that they believe that they can occupy with production orders. It could also be a brand that doesn't necessarily a brand that doesn't necessarily own anything, but basically come and tells us well, we would like to commit this amount of pieces to occupy the ZO factory, which is very close to our core market, our core and consumer. Um and and and and that we will give to you and you are then also committed to deliver that to us within the given amount of time, the short lead time, the sustainability, the impact data sorry and so on that makes sense.

Carl:

Yeah, so that basically you have an offtake agreement that allows you to invest in a new factory?

Trine:

Yes, Scary word.

Carl:

I assume now there are a lot of opportunities on the brand side, I believe.

Carl:

I think most people might think of the big brands that are out there. Maybe a part of what they produce they cannot produce with you and maybe that makes sense. It could probably make sense economically as well. On the other hand, I see there's also a big part of brands and companies that produce for events or for certain occasions or teams any kind of you mentioned before mass customization that build their business model around that right. So even if I was now saying I want to create a brand and I have no big capital in order to, you know, pre-produce, put it on a website, put it in a warehouse and try to sell as much as I can, have huge, you know, working capital somewhere fixed in a warehouse, this would allow me to create some designs, maybe even outsource that to the customer, so the customer can create their designs and I order with you and within 48 hours I can ship the product to the customer yes, exactly so that might really change the entire system of this entire industry.

Trine:

Yes, yes, and also the power dynamic of the fashion value chain. I mean, it's quite interesting actually. I think this can be used in many ways. The brands can really benefit from it because they can make, in between seasons, smaller capsule collections that are closer to the customer and the demand, without that huge amount up front that they never know if they can sell. And, on the other hand, if you're a very small brand or even like an influencer, let's say that, and you have a lot of followers and you sense that there is a trend that they would like to have and that that trend would actually stick with them.

Trine:

If they get this in a limited amount of of yeah, if there's only a limited amount of that garment, they would also like to keep it for longer, hopefully, and then they wouldn't create this kind of buy and throw out mentality because it's it's special, it's something that's rare, it's something that might even be customized to your body, either in color either in fit right. So it's. There's a lot of ways to do that, but you can do it from a digital digitalization perspective let's stay with that.

Carl:

Data. Everybody's talking about data. The shirt that you're wearing today you showed me before you have an qr code inside. It's almost like a digital product passport, if you will, yeah, where you can even see how your specific garment was produced, you can share the story of the designer, and so on, which I think is very strong. Right like so, now, the way we produce a garment can be part of the marketing campaign of how I sell my product. You mentioned before the McDonald's concept. Right Like you know, I go to this brand because there you know, I know exactly what it's made of, where it's made, and so on.

Trine:

It's a.

Carl:

USP, for I guess also like a lot of smaller brands that want to produce with you.

Trine:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean you can definitely find people out there who are much better at branding than I am, for sure, but yes, I do feel that this is a very strong value proposition towards anyone who has a story to tell, wants to tell their story, wants to differentiate themselves from someone else who's actually not able of making their supply chain transparent, because it'll be a mess and then people would not like to buy it. I'm pretty sure that if mcdonald's did the same, maybe some of us wouldn't like to buy a burger there, and I don't know, that that's maybe a little far out, but you know what I mean. So this is also if people do this, if the brands do this, it will also mean that we have nothing to hide.

Trine:

You can basically see that this garment was made like this, um. So yeah, I mean you could use it for that. You could also use it for other stuff. Basically, the qr code is just a pointer. It just points to somewhere where you can position data, and that data can obviously be verified through our system, but you could also just literally link it to a website or a shop or whatever you basically can dream of.

Carl:

Wow, and that's how you can actually have a big impact on the value chain, which is, in my opinion, opinion in a circular economy super interesting because, you know, in a circular economy we build new ecosystems with new players and, uh, some all need to interact with each other, and data is a huge, huge point in that sense. But what are your production capacities? If I need, within a week, a certain amount of products, how much can you do?

Trine:

what's your yes, so the maximum capacity is 2500 in average garments a day, and that means that, yeah, so it's. It's actually quite a lot, um so 2500 garments a day, yeah, especially when you think about that it it's not mass-produced, so the fact that it's not 2500 white t-shirts but it could be 2500 dresses, shirts, yoga pants, bathing suits, whatever it's quite interesting and that means that it, on an average, we were looking into between 700 K to 1 million different garments per line per year okay, wow, that's significant.

Carl:

You've been working on this now for how many years seems like forever.

Trine:

No, I'm just I'm kidding. It's since 2017. It was a thought experiment back then, so I spent quite some time doing research. I come from, I would say, as I also mentioned before, maybe more of an academia kind of background, so it was a big part of my before I actually jumped out into the market to go to fairs, understand what's actually out there, so that we don't need to build something that already exists. Um so 2017, and then yeah, starting as a research project and becoming more tangible, talking to partners, trying to talking to brands, talking to machine manufacturers who had no idea about textile production or anything like that, and also talking to textile companies and fashion brands with no idea about any machinery or any technology that was out there that could maybe even transform this industry. So it was kind of bridging two completely isolated worlds, and it still is today. It's it's a hybrid, it's a it's a weird place it is.

Carl:

I understand what you mean. There has been a lot of development yeah we're now in 2025, which I think can be a big year in terms of how the industry shifts a lot of regulatory coming in, a lot of awareness in the market and and now a great time where you're basically up and running your first old factory here. Already like what's the capacity that you're running at the moment at your own factory here in Denmark, and what do you expect 2025 to be like for you?

Trine:

yes, we're almost quite good into 2025, yes, but so so right right now, in our factory here in Copenhagen, which we call our lab or our R&D plant, we run basically smaller sample production runs. Previously it was for what we call micro to small, medium-sized fashion brands, local fashion brands only. And suddenly there was a change of interest in the market and, without us actually having actively done anything to get that or even earn that attention, we suddenly had a very, very big brand knocking on our door and, to be honest, we didn't really know what to do with that. I mean, that was a little scary and because we thought that we would revolutionize this industry, starting with the smaller brands, and that it would not even be interesting for the big brands. But that's now three years ago and today we're mainly working with the big brands, and I'm actually quite satisfied with that because, if you are looking into the impact equation of the industry, they are the ones that need to change. They have the largest heavy footprint right now. So if we can help them and we can ignite the change by working together with them on their products that they want to convert into better products not to use the word sustainable, but that's what sort of makes me motivated?

Trine:

And it means also that we're still doing a lot of testing, a lot of how do you say, like a brand comes with a fabric? Like you said before and said, this fabric is our best, we make our best selling products from this fabric. Can you see if this fabric works with your technology? Because then this would be really interesting for us. And then, obviously, we spend a lot of time doing that and we make a lot of designs, samples, as you call them in our industry, and we share them, we give, we receive feedback and we give feedback to the brands as well.

Trine:

And now we are working towards the next step, which we are ready for, which is the full scale O-Factory solution, o-factory solution, where we will not have, um, you know, a gap between our process of doing the printing and the cutting and the sorting and and so on, and the final sewing assembly process. We will basically have everything under one roof. And then that's also where we will see the 48 hours actually being, you know, like fulfilled in the way that we want it to, because right now it is still an r&d lab, but it's still an r&d lab where we now have witnessed that we have the numbers where we can and the maturity of the technology that we can see scale into a full, full scale factory, and it is still an investment of 2 million euros somewhere. So we obviously also had to be sure that we are not just putting something somewhere and then cross our fingers that it will work. So we spend a lot of time perfecting this technology here.

Carl:

And you said the key word. It's all about scalability yes and especially, you know, with such a breakthrough technology that you're developing, one needs a lot of capital as well. Right, I hear a lot from venture funds that they shy away a bit from CapEx intense projects. Do you feel the same at the moment, or because of your slightly modified business model and how you want to scale these plants and produce more of them? Don't you see a problem here, or are there other challenges that you face?

Trine:

Yeah, it's a really good question and the reason I'm I have to think about it is because in the beginning, yes, and that's also because we were at a completely different place, just like one and a half years ago. Right, everything goes so fast. We have in-house development here. Everything, every software, every hardware development happens here, so we can run really fast and we have. So.

Trine:

When you have investors visiting and you cannot really demonstrate anything that works really, then obviously the capex intensive investment upfront becomes way more risky, even though it's it's not a very large amount compared to other CAPEX-heavy tech or climate tech investments. Which brings me to actually the point. So now, when we are here and we are able to, now we have spent time perfecting this we can see that the technology maturity level is there. Then we are also suddenly able to de-risk already a lot of things regarding capex, because two million euro, well, it's not actually a lot.

Trine:

When you look at this whole system 200 square meters, it can output 700 to 1 million different garments in a year without any water in the facility and so on. And people also say, okay, that's 12 million euros if we in average sells those garments at seven sorry, sorry, 17 euros per per piece. Is it something that you have fashion brands that would pay that price for for a garment? Yes, that is. It is realistic. So suddenly, two million is not a lot suddenly. So that means that the KBIS is a lot less scary to investors today and that actually, I think that's the best proof. I think, to me and my team, that we actually have come a long way in a very short amount of time.

Carl:

Do you face a lot of competition from similar breakthrough technologies or is your biggest competition the status quo of the fashion industry?

Trine:

Yes, I would say so If I have to be very short answer. Yes, yes, I would say so If I have to be very short. Answer yes, it's the apparel manufacturers of the Asian or what can you say offshore manufacturers concept. Actually, where the olfactory is built on the microfactory concept, and this concept has been known and and and wanted for many, many years, not only in the textile industry but also food industry, like smart factories, blah, blah.

Trine:

But again, as I said, like the, the level of of automation was was just not there. It didn't exist, and that meant that the unit economics didn't work, especially not in europe where we have the high salaries. So no one actually succeeded to this date to create onshore manufacturing that is actually price competitive due to automation. Automation is the key, the key, that's the driver. So, talking about the IEP of Virginia, the one word that identifies that is just automation in all aspects and that drives everything. It drives sustainability sorry, impact data and it also drives the unit economics to a competitive point. And that's basically what we have. The industry, in my opinion, we have been waiting for to scale this microfactory dream. It wasn't scalable before.

Carl:

Sounds definitely exciting and important what you're working on and can bring an entirely different perspective to the industry, also speaking from a geographical point of view.

Carl:

Right, it could be no matter if we are in europe or if we are in in the us, south america, australia, every, every, every part of the world.

Carl:

That is not a main part of production as it is today, and and one can only hope that the the classic I mean, I guess there will always be the classic big manufacturing as it is today, uh, maybe set up a bit differently, and one can only hope that these companies are also open to adapt a bit and maybe integrate this part of production and see that as an opportunity instead of fighting it and seeing themselves threatened. Um, so, yeah, I'm I'm really excited and curious how this will develop as you now go to the market as well. We could sit here forever and I, I, we it's not our first conversation and I'm sure it's not our last one um, but I think we have to wrap up and my question to you, my last question to you, is we're sitting here in 2030, which is only in five years, which is scary that it's already in five years, but we meet here in five years. Describe to me where you stand with rodinia, how the situation in the market like.

Trine:

Just describe me a little picture of the future oh yeah, I mean, do you want the realistic version or the um the the founder optimistic version? Maybe somewhere in between?

Trine:

okay, that's perfect, yeah okay, no, I mean, in five years, we, uh, we will have, um a geographical presence, meaning that all factories will be present in different countries. Um, that's now just. We are in europe now, so let's take that as a, as a, as an example. Um, we would have more factories producing garments, for example, in France, where there are many fashion brands, in Italy, where there are many fashion brands and many suppliers as well. We would also like to see that sales like just from a consumer perspective. We see sales signs everywhere.

Trine:

Right, if I had to look at my company from that perspective, as a normal consumer, I would really like to think where the hell did all that sales, you know like events, where did they go? Because there was a time, there was an era where we remember all of us that there was sales all the time. Always, we could find something cheaper. I would actually like to be at a place in 2030 where someone will notice on the consumer side that that's actually not happening that often anymore, and that might not only be because of Rodinia. It might hopefully also be because of all the other great innovation companies out there in the textile value chain, so that we together will actually be able to take this, um, this monster, and take it down. But that's where you know. My hopes for the entire industry is and and obviously we hope that olfactors will be a huge contribution to that in five years.

Carl:

That sounds at the same time ambitious and realistic, and I'm pretty confident that you will make your way there, and I can't wait to witness your next steps.

Trine:

Thank you so much.

Carl:

Thank you so much for your time and for hosting me in Denmark, and all the best for your startup.

Trine:

Thank you so much, thank you.