Sewing robots are moving from lab experiments into real commercial production, marking a turning point for the fashion industry. In August 2025, Danish fashion giant BESTSELLER invested $20 million in US-based SoftWear Automation, the company behind the “Sewbot” platform, one of the clearest signals yet that fully automated sewing is no longer a distant idea but a reality already reshaping production lines.

What Is Sewbot, and Why Is the Industry Betting on It?

SoftWear Automation was founded in 2012 by a group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is led today by CEO Palanisamy “Raj” Rajan. The Sewbot platform combines robotics with machine vision and artificial intelligence: sensors detect any distortion or slippage in the fabric during sewing and correct it in real time without human intervention. This is the technical problem that held back full sewing automation for decades, because fabric, unlike metal or plastic, is a flexible material whose behaviour is hard to predict. According to the company, the platform now covers almost the entire process, from automated fabric cutting through sewing and stitching to labelling finished pieces, within a single integrated production line that reduces the need for manual handling between stages.

A $20 Million Investment from BESTSELLER: The Industry’s Big Bet on Automation

The investment came through BESTSELLER’s investment arm, Invest FWD, and brought SoftWear Automation’s total funding since its founding to more than $44 million, with participation from existing investors including CTW Venture Partners, SRI Capital and MacDonald Ventures. To secure its voice in the company’s decisions, Thomas Borglum Jensen, CFO of BESTSELLER (owner of JACK & JONES, VERO MODA and ONLY), joined SoftWear Automation’s board. The stated goal of the funding is to scale operations, accelerate product development, and reduce lead times and waste on production lines.

Numbers That Reveal the Ambition: Towards a Billion Shirts a Year

The Sewbot platform currently produces around 800,000 cotton shirts per day, roughly one shirt every 50 seconds, with a quality rate the company puts above 98%. The longer-term ambition is to produce one billion shirts a year using between 1,600 and 2,000 Sewbot units across multiple manufacturing sites, with the ability to make cotton shirts on demand within just 24 to 48 hours. That figure overturns the logic of traditional supply chains, which depend on months of advance planning and shipping across continents.

From Shirts to Denim: Multiple Applications and a Lesson from the Past

The platform’s uses are not limited to cotton shirts: SoftWear Automation has expanded into production lines for towels, home textiles and even denim. Still, the company’s journey has not been without lessons. An earlier announced partnership with Tian Yuan Garments, one of the largest manufacturers of sportswear for Adidas, did not last over the long term. It is a reminder that a mature technology is one thing, and succeeding with it industrially, at scale and economically, is another that takes time, trial and error.

What Does This Mean for Future Fashion Designers and Entrepreneurs?

For anyone planning to enter the industry today, this shift carries a clear, practical message: competitiveness will not rest on design flair alone. It will also mean understanding how to design a garment so it is “automation-ready” in its cuts and materials, and how to run faster supply chains built on local or nearshore manufacturing rather than relying entirely on distant factories. Cutting manufacturing time to 24-48 hours, as SoftWear Automation promises, means small and emerging brands may gradually gain access to low-volume production options that were once reserved for large manufacturers able to absorb minimum order costs. A designer who understands the limits and possibilities of these new technologies, and can speak a common language with production and technology teams, will be better placed to turn ideas into real products quickly and efficiently, instead of design and manufacturing remaining two separate worlds that only meet late in the process.

Ultimately, sewing robots will not replace the designer, but they will change the questions a designer asks from the very first moment: which material suits automated production? How can I simplify a cut without losing its character? Those who ask these questions early will be ready when these technologies become an ordinary part of every factory.

If you want to build a practical understanding of these technological shifts and how they affect the design and production process, explore the Anna Stella Academy courses, which bring together design fundamentals and the latest developments in the modern industry.