Learn to start the sustainable fashion with the support of H&M and Amazon

When Gilberto Lorro spent the summer working in a textile factory when he was a teenager who grew up in Portugal, he discovered that he felt “hate and love” how to produce clothes.

The work was difficult: Lorero’s job was to spend long days standing and watching defects in woven fabric because it passes through the machines at a rate of about 15 to 20 meters per minute.

“I really like the textile industry and problem solving, but I hate this … work inspection, inefficiency and waste. It’s really one of the most difficult jobs in the world,” Laurio told CNBC via the video call.

In the contract since his first seizure was concluded on the factory floor, Laurero’s mentality has turned. After obtaining a master’s degree in physics, he participated in the establishment of Smartex, a technical company that uses cameras, vision and artificial intelligence programs to discover defects in textiles during their production, thus reducing the percentage of fabric that is lost. Loureiro claims that technology 1 million kilograms banned From the fabric from going to waste in the past three years.

Fashion faces a big waste problem, with a truck load of clothes that were thrown, buried or burned every second, according to Ellen Mac Arthur FoundationNon -profit institution. Smartex claims that the technique of escalating defects means that 0.37 % of the clothes can be produced per kilogram of the final fabric-which adds, if you consider that the fashion giant (ZARA) uses 678,596 tons of raw materials in its products in 2024, according to The annual report.

Moreover, the fashion is an industry that has not been built completely, partly, because it is difficult to do. Making clothes is complicated because supply chains can be long and retailer, from growth and processing raw materials such as cotton, to weaving and dyeing textiles, style design and sewing fabric in clothes. At the same time, it’s a quick movement It cannot be predicted industry.

Laurero said: “If this is the largest industry that the Internet is still touching and is one of the largest pollutants in the world, and no one works on this in terms of technology (then) there is a huge gap here,” Lorero said. About 20 % of the world’s water pollution is caused by dyeing and finishing during the production of fabric, According to the European Union.

Laurero said that this deficiency in technology in producing clothing and the possibility of the industry to become more efficient has made Smartex attractive to investors. H&M group Invested in Smartex in 2022, while Tony Vadel IPod and Nest Thermostat – LED A $ 24.7 million investment tour With Virtpeed Venture partners in the same year. Smartex has raised more than $ 40 million so far, according to Loureiro, but given the complexity of the industry and its operations in multiple countries, investors are “brave” to support it. He added: “There is a great value to pick up it. That’s so a great danger, as it is a reward.” More than 1.8 trillion dollars In 2025.

Smartex and its prominent investors caught the attention of Smartex AmazonWhich has also put money in the company through the AWS Climate Fellowship account, an initiative that supports startups in areas such as food security, conservation and climate flexibility. Lisbth Kaufman, head of business development in climate technology, startups and investment capital in AWS, launched the fellowship in 2023, where four companies won a place in the program.

“Startups in the field of climate technology, they have a lot of research and development (research and development) that they need to do it … perhaps more than … standard technology companies, they have to invent new science or new technology, as well as new business models,” Kovman told CNBC. Companies in the fellowship are granted access to AWS experts in addition to advanced computing services, and 20 companies will be chosen this year with a total investment of $ 4 million. SMARTEX AWS technology uses to train automated learning models to determine the defects in the fabric, which can vary greatly.

“Within 30 seconds, he was not convinced to recover the return on investment (the return on investment), in less than a year, for example, you are out of the game … We need to prove that they will provide materials, in spinning or in electricity,” Lorero said. Most of the factory owners who share “a few hundred thousand dollars” on Smartex. “We need to make sure that savings are much larger than the cost,” said Laurero. The average recovery period for investment in SMARTEX is nine to 18 months, according to Institute for the effect of clothing.

The goal of Smartex is to become a “operating system” for factories in the full supply chain of fashion so that brands can track information such as where the clothes come from, as it is in the production process and the amount of water used to produce the elements. “These are very difficult or impossible questions to be answered by most fashion brands,” Lorero said.

Smartex capabilities appleLaurero said the ecosystem of programs. “It is not about a computer, Mac, iPhone, or AirPods, but rather what they can do all together, creates an environmental system, and a layer on the top becomes more valuable.”