What is the name of your solution?
SXD
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
SXD uses patent-pending AI to eliminate material waste, generating zero waste products that enable ~80% reduction in CO2 and significant cost savings.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
New York, NY, USAIn what country is your solution team headquartered?
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Given the finite nature of our resources and the damaging effect of fossil fuels on our environment, we now have less than 10 years to address climate change before it's too late (Scientific American). The apparel industry contributes to up to 10% of the world's CO2 emissions as one of the top industries causing climate change (McKinsey & Company).
Fabric material, made from our planet’s finite natural resources, sits at the heart of the apparel industry's issue. Fabric material typically generates over 70% of apparel’s emissions and causes about 20% of the planet's wastewater (UNEP). Each year, 92 million tons of this fabric material ends up as waste (BBC), equaling ~23 pounds of waste per person on this planet.
Today, the inefficient apparel design and production cycle is akin to cooking with only new ingredients for each dish, tossing aside anything unused. The result is that one garbage truck’s worth of fabric waste is dumped or burned every second (Business Insider).
There is a pressing need to alter our approach to design and production and embrace efficiency from the start. However, existing solutions have failed to effectively tackle the issue of wasted fabric or raw materials, only offering fabric/material savings of ~4%. Additionally, sustainable fabrics and fabric material recycling programs are costly to implement, not economically feasible for mass production and oftentimes utilize disproportionately high amounts of CO2 emissions.
SXD eliminates fabric material waste through our bleeding-edge, patent-pending AI technology that has been recognized as novel in 11 out of our 13 patent claims. By completely eliminating waste, we have generated products that not only reduce CO2 emissions by ~80%, but also use about half the amount of fabric or raw materials typically used in apparel production. Compared to existing technology that achieves a material saving of ~4%, our solution can save up to 46%.
Moreover, our solution offers significant benefits to businesses. We enable 10x greater fabric/material savings compared to any other technology today and because fabric/material is often the number one cost in apparel production, we enable cost savings in addition to waste elimination that incentivize businesses to take meaningful steps towards lessening their negative environmental and societal impact. Helping businesses to create zero waste products at scale benefits not only our planet, but also the people who live on it as cost savings can be reinvested in ethical labor practices and other socially beneficial initiatives. For instance, we actively collaborate with marginalized groups, such as climate refugees, and use cost savings to support their recovery by paying them 2-4x the local wage as our seamstresses.
What is your solution?
SXD turns the 92 million tons of fabric material wasted each year into an opportunity: we transform fabric/material waste from the past into valuable new products and eliminate future fabric/material waste through automated zero waste product design scaled through AI. Our mission is to eliminate fabric/material waste and increase resource efficiency with great design and bleeding-edge AI. We generate material savings that enable businesses and communities to flourish, all while benefiting our planet.
Our patent-pending AI platform empowers brands, suppliers, and designers to transform their product concepts, whether they be simple sketches, 3D art, or text prompts interpreted through generative AI, into zero material waste products that can utilize leftover or wasted materials. This approach results in an ~80% reduction in CO2 emissions and up to 46% in fabric/material savings, surpassing the savings achieved by any other technology available today by 10x.
By integrating design with technology from the outset, SXD offers a solution to climate change by eliminating material waste. If industries fully embrace our solution—reducing CO2 emissions by ~80%, eliminating waste through the most efficient designs, and utilizing previously discarded materials—we have the potential to reverse the impacts of climate change in 5.4 years.
We recognize that climate change is a problem impacting our future and that vulnerable populations are suffering from the effects of rising sea levels today. As a result, we have developed initiatives that work to alleviate the burden of climate change on those impacted by climate disasters. We actively collaborate with marginalized groups, like climate refugees, and use cost savings enabled by zero waste design to support their recovery. We currently work with 60 talented seamstresses who have had to uproot their lives due to the effects of rising sea levels. We pay these workers, who are often women, 2-4x the local wage, providing them with the additional funds needed to rebuild their lives.
Zero waste design, scaled through our bleeding-edge AI technology, utilizes fabric/material waste from the past and eliminates fabric/material waste in the future. This benefits businesses by saving costs, our planet by significantly reducing CO2 emissions and water usage, and the people who reside on it by reinvesting cost savings into socially equitable initiatives.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
In major manufacturing regions, flooding, erosion, and pollution displace tens of millions of people annually and disproportionately affect women, children, and workers who are already barely earning a living wage. As a result of their demographic makeup, deep poverty, and forced emigration to foreign regions, climate refugees are increasingly vulnerable to sexual abuse and human trafficking (UN).
SXD empowers climate refugees and those most harmed by the apparel industry, often garment workers living in areas impacted by the staggering levels of waste, to regain agency and be a part of the solution. We work with climate refugees in areas of the world like Bangladesh, where flooding has become persistent and apparel production is highest.
Our work, which has been documented in the textbook: Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing and Textiles, directly empowers climate refugees who are often sidelined in the climate movement. We provide them with sustainable opportunities in the apparel industry, a sector vital to their home countries like Bangladesh. We offer them stable roles as seamstresses, paying wages 2-4x the local average to help provide the financial stability needed to rebuild their lives.
This significant increase in income has had transformative effects on families and communities. For example, Jhorna, a climate refugee we work with, has been able to secure education for her children, who otherwise faced the prospect of early employment. Similarly, another climate refugee Kulsum's earnings have supported her aging parents, offering them a deserved retirement. One of our biggest success stories is Juleka. She started working with us about two years ago after being displaced from her home. Since then, she has advanced to a management position, gained financial stability and purchased her own land and her own home for her and her family. Juleka has completely elevated her quality of life.
Beyond fair wages, our commitment extends to improving the quality of life through partnerships that provide benefits like feminine hygiene and childcare support, acknowledging and addressing the specific challenges faced by women in these vulnerable communities. Our approach not only offers immediate relief and stability to these individuals and their families but also empowers them to contribute to and benefit from sustainable practices.
These interventions have already changed the lives of 60 climate refugees. MIT Solve's support and our upcoming partnerships can help us increase that number to 500, a goal we hope to reach within the next three years.
We aim to prevent all future climate displacement by halting climate change. Through our patent-pending SXD AI technology, we can implement a scalable waste-elimination solution to revolutionize apparel production – one of the largest global contributors to climate change – and adjacent industries such as automotive and furniture. As we work towards our long-term aims, we will continue to address the existing climate crisis through direct reinvestment in climate refugees and creating a sustainable business model for other partners to adopt.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Growing up in China, SXD’s Founder Shelly Xu watched her childhood playground turn into a textile dump. In China, ~20 million tons of fabric material waste is produced every year. Globally, ~92 million tons of fabric material is wasted every year.
Shelly also remembers sitting on a refrigerator in her family’s 70 square feet home that only fit one table or one bed, and rearranging furniture throughout the day to make the living space functional. This concept of creativity under constraint inspired SXD's philosophy of creating zero waste designs that maximize creativity within resource constraints.
With a singular focus on cleaning our planet with creativity, in college, Shelly studied sustainable development instead of pursuing other options, such as the chance to design for Rihanna. Shelly has been creating zero waste designs for 15 years. These designs have become the training data for SXD’s patent-pending AI that scales zero waste designs in real-time, offering 10x the material savings compared to any other technology today.
Before founding SXD, Shelly was a Creative Director at Instagram, and also worked at Prada and MicKinsey. She is the inventor of two design-tech utility patents and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.
While design and technology are traditionally siloed in the apparel industry, driving waste, Shelly has been working at the intersection of design and technology for over a decade to promote zero waste. When forming SXD, she approached the Dean of Engineering at Harvard and asked for the best engineers in the world to scale zero waste designs. The technical team he recommended is working on SXD today.
Dr. Igarashi, our Technical Expert, is a world-renowned AI professor at the University of Tokyo. Our Founding Scientist, Tuanfeng Wang, comes from Adobe Research and pioneered award-winning work in sketch-to-garment construction using deep learning. James Cheong, our Lead Engineer, was part of the Disney+ launch team. Within 12 months, we pioneered V1 of SXD AI, which proved 10x the fabric/material saving impact and promoted zero waste as a scalable, immediate solution for partners. SXD AI won Top Innovative World Technology at SXSW.
On the design side, Shelly leads the team alongside our Sustainability and Innovation Expert James Carnes, the former VP of Global Brand Strategy at Adidas who founded Adidas’s sustainability division. Our Advisor Karen Reuther is a former Executive Creative Director from Nike, and Issa Bielefeldt, our Technical Design Expert, led technical design at Levi’s for over 20 years.
We come together with expertise and a passion for impact. Our team is completed by long-held relationships with our climate refugee seamstresses in Bangladesh to ensure that those most impacted by climate change are actively engaged in our solution. Our founding team member Ahmed Fardin is from Bangladesh. Through daily communications and frequent visits to Bangladesh, we are intimately connected to their experiences and feedback, such as the need for childcare and feminine hygiene benefits, which our local facility has implemented.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
OtherWhich of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
PilotWhy are you applying to Solve?
As SXD moves from pilot to growth, we anticipate new challenges to accompany this positive trajectory. We will have to adapt to a rapidly scaling client load in 2024, and access to the collective knowledge of the MIT Solve network will be invaluable as we strengthen our operations, technology, and impact. The MIT Solve resources and funding will accelerate our mission to create a waste-free future through 4 primary channels:
Community and storytelling: through MIT Solve’s program and its extensive network, we will find valuable supporters and better raise awareness about the urgency of addressing fabric waste and climate displacement. We look forward to building a sharper impact narrative by connecting with MIT Solve’s advisors such as Linda Henry from The Boston Globe. We also hope to connect with potential partners such as Marjorie Yang from Esquel Group to discuss weaving zero waste into Esquel’s shirts. Additionally, in an industry highly dependent on word-of-mouth and reputation, securing a win from MIT Solve would solidify our position.
Growth support: One of our primary challenges is to scale sustainably, ensuring positive impact during each stage of our growth. We look forward to learning from MIT Solve’s tailored capacity workshops, connecting with and supporting MIT Solve’s network of peers who share this challenge, and hearing from advisors as we foster impact and growth. Furthermore, MIT Solve’s leadership coaching will be immensely helpful as we grow our team across product and operations in the next months. As an impact-driven, resource-constrained startup, we know good leadership is critical in motivating our team.
Impact measurement: Given SXD’s multifaceted impact, we and our partners are keen to quantify our impact across emissions reduction, waste elimination, water preservation, and refugee support. However, we currently do not have all the tools and bandwidth to quantify our impact in the most comprehensive way. We are eager to better understand our full impact with MIT Solve’s support.
Funding to support our growth stage:
1/3 of the funds will support bringing to market V2 of our SXD Al technology. This will at least double the number of products that we can turn into zero waste in real time, multiplying our impact.
1/3 of the funds will directly support our climate refugee seamstresses. We seek to onboard new members to our Bangladeshi cohort and support 500 climate refugees within the next three years. The funds will also fuel on-site benefits such as child care and health support.
1/3 of the funds will be used for intellectual property protection, which represents a looming challenge as our technology is adapted in the growth stage. The apparel industry is notorious for IP infringements and the last thing we want is fake, distorted, zero waste designs in the market that counter our impact. We plan to utilize a portion of the grant and MIT Solve's network, particularly in-kind and pro bono services and expertise, to address potential infringements and safeguard our pioneering work.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Shelly Xu, CEO
What makes your solution innovative?
SXD is innovative in its unprecedented scalability and fabric/material savings that reduce emissions, eliminate waste, preserve water, and empower workers.
SXD turns waste into an opportunity: we transform waste from the past into valuable new products and eliminate future waste through automated zero waste design scaled through AI.
Historically, scaling zero waste designs across varying sizes, styles, and fabrics has been essentially impossible, as each modification necessitates its own unique design done manually, multiplying time and cost. This has stalled adoption of zero waste design and has led to mounting waste. Our AI technology overcomes this obstacle by adjusting zero waste designs in real-time, accommodating different sizes, styles, and fabric widths in seconds rather than weeks or months. This creates a new paradigm in which zero waste is truly a scalable solution.
SXD’s solution outperforms other solutions in the market. Fabric waste today is solved either manually using fabric scraps or automatically using post-design processes. The former is hard to scale; the latter is ineffective. Traditional manual methods are labor-intensive therefore difficult to scale, and come with inaccessibly high costs. Conventional post-design automatic nesting softwares and technologies like Browzwear or Lectra only offer ~4% fabric/material savings. And solutions like CLO3D only reduce waste during the sampling phase. In contrast, our proprietary, patent-pending technology achieves up to 46% material savings in both sampling and scaled production while generating zero waste designs worthy of award-winning museum exhibits.
What differentiates our technology is that instead of simply optimizing the packing of existing amorphous fabric/material shapes to minimize waste, our technology transforms the fabric/material shapes themselves into efficient puzzle pieces that fit together seamlessly, leaving no wasted space in between. This allows us to achieve unprecedented results and eliminate fabric/material waste. This is transformative for not only the apparel industry but also adjacent industries like upholstery and automotive that struggle with up to 50% material waste caused by inefficient design.
Moreover, our adaptable technology allows us to approach waste reduction from two angles. Firstly, it prevents future waste by ensuring new products are initially designed with zero waste principles. Secondly, it addresses past waste by enabling users to easily input existing liability fabrics (leftover or wasted materials) as starting points for zero waste design.
If industries can fully embrace our solution—reducing CO2 emissions by ~80%, eliminating material waste through our most efficient design, and utilizing previously discarded materials—we have the potential to reverse climate change in 5.4 years.
As a sustainability solution that saves significant material cost, we have the power to actively support marginalized communities like climate refugees displaced due to rising sea levels. We transfer our savings to pay climate refugees 2-4 times the local wage as seamstresses creating our zero waste designs. So far, we have supported 60 climate refugees through higher wages and on-site benefits. Our goal is to expand our cohort to 500 within three years.
Describe in simple terms how and why you expect your solution to have an impact on the problem.
SXD eliminates fabric/material waste, pioneers a scalable solution to curbing climate change, and supports climate refugees.
Our theory of change begins with three activities/ inputs:
Convert products to zero waste. SXD enables brand partners to convert their products to zero waste while saving cost. Businesses produce about 40x more fabric/material waste than consumers (FabScrap). By partnering with them, we address the biggest source of the waste issue.
Scale impact through SXD AI. Once we have proven impact at the pilot stage, SXD AI scales zero waste designs across sizes/dimensions, fabrics/materials and styles. While we currently focus on apparel, year three will mark our expansion into industries such as automotive and upholstery. In apparel, our brand partners see substantial fabric/material waste from inefficient design. In automotive, brands like Jaguar and BMW have cited up to 50% in sheet metal (which behaves similar to fabric) waste by design. In upholstery, North America's largest upholstery manufacturer has shared a similar story. When we scale SXD AI, we remove material waste by design while reducing material consumption across industries.
Hire climate refugee seamstresses. We transfer cost savings enabled by zero waste design to support climate refugees’ recovery by paying them 2-4x the local wage as our seamstresses and providing on-site benefits such as child care and feminine hygiene resources.
Immediate outputs:
Zero waste, higher margins. Our 12+ pilots have proven 0% waste with every product conversion and fabric/raw material consumption reduction by up to 46%, driving up to 55% cost savings with highly efficient design.
Reduced emissions and water preservation with SXD AI. Because fabric material typically generates over 70% of apparels’ emissions and almost all of apparel’s wastewater (UNEP), saving up to 46% on fabric material means significantly lower emissions and water preservation.
Increased well-being of climate refugees. From factory visits and climate refugee interviews, we know higher wages and benefits improve refugee lives. In the last year, we have sent climate refugees’ children to school, helped their ailing parents retire, and even supported a climate refugee rise to a management position, buy her own land and completely elevate her standard of life.
Long-term outcomes:
Fuel sustainability initiatives with zero waste. We aim to inspire a new standard for design. From our conversations with brands such as Gildan, we know our cost savings can be invested into other sustainability initiatives such as biodegradable materials.
Reverse climate change. If industries fully embrace our solution—reducing CO2 emissions by ~80%, eliminating waste through the most efficient designs, and utilizing previously discarded materials—we have the potential to reverse climate change in 5.4 years.
Facilitate fair labor compensation globally. ~75 million people work in apparel manufacturing (Greenpeace), of whom it is estimated less than 2% make a living wage (George Washington University). We aim to reform labor practices across the apparel industry by using the cost savings enabled by zero waste design to re-invest in workers and empower more than 10 million women workers globally.
What are your impact goals for your solution and how are you measuring your progress towards them?
Impact Goal 1: Prevent 1 gigaton (1bn metric tons) of CO2 emissions in 5 years.
Indicators: Our current confirmed partnerships and partnerships in the pipeline are estimated to prevent over 10,000 metric tons of CO2 from entering the earth's atmosphere in 2024, compared to ~8.4 metric tons avoided in 2023 through pilots. At 1/3 this rate, we can reach our goal of 1 gigaton avoided within 5 years.
Impact Goal 2: Preserve 10 billion gallons of water (15,151 Olympic-sized swimming pools) in 5 years.
Indicators: Our current partnerships will preserve ~1.25 billion gallons in 2024. Based on a conservative growth rate, we can achieve this impact goal in 5 years.
Impact Goal 3: Support 500 climate refugees in 3 years.
Indicators: We currently employ 60 climate refugees and are on track to double this figure in 2024 and reach 500 by 2027.
Our impact so far has earned us recognition globally, fueling our ability to reach our goals. This includes Top Innovative World Technologies at SXSW, the Global Change Award with the H&M Foundation considered the “Nobel Prize of Fashion”, the top startup prize at Harvard, and Digital Access Prize with AWS. This year, SXD was nominated for The 2024 Earthshot Prize. We are proud of this progress and are eager to multiply our impact through the support of MIT Solve, the continued adoption of our SXD AI technology and collaboration with underserved populations in regions most affected by climate change. We are confident that our reinvestment model will motivate other apparel companies–particularly brand partners–to embrace this new pathway for fair compensation.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
Our patent-pending technology, SXD AI, turns wasteful centuries-old design blueprints into zero waste versions that cut emissions, reduce fabric/material consumption, and enable up to 55% in cost savings in order to maximize resource efficiency without compromising design. Financial savings realized through using SXD AI are reinvested into supporting climate refugees.
How SXD AI works:
1. Training data: SXD AI is a full stack application featuring a powerful backend that has been trained on SXD’s proprietary data set of zero waste designs.
2. Partner requirement match: Each brand partner has their own specific product requirements across sizes/dimensions, fabrics/materials, and style. When we work with a brand partner, we not only input those requirements into our web application, but also code in thresholds, dependencies, and other design rules to ensure quality zero waste design outputs. We implement multi-variable optimization to ensure zero waste, on-brand design, and maximum efficiency to drive impact.
3. AI-generated blueprint: SXD AI then outputs the zero waste design blueprint that is linked to a visualization of the product. This way, the user can see how the product will look digitally. Design blueprints can be exported in either (1) DXF format for manufacturers to directly use in production, or (2) PDF formats that design teams can easily refer to.
4. Sampling and iteration: We take zero waste design blueprints and bring them to life with our seamstresses. To ensure quality products, we test for fit, shrinkage, and construction. We incorporate feedback from the brand partners and our seamstresses to further refine each zero waste design blueprint and train the AI algorithm for future iterations or styles.
5. Scale: Once we have an initial zero waste design blueprint approved for production, the blueprint can be automatically scaled across more sizes/dimensions, fabrics/materials, and similar styles via SXD AI’s web application. A testament to this model's success is our recent partnership with a European multi-brand apparel conglomerate. Leveraging SXD AI, they can now scale their initial zero waste design across their portfolio of apparel brands, adapting to each brand's unique requirements.
6. Custom user environment: To empower brand partners to scale zero waste products themselves, we provide partners with a customized web application user log-in. This way, their team can input requirements themselves and output more zero waste designs across sizes/dimensions, fabrics/materials, and similar styles.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new technology
How do you know that this technology works?
We know the technology works because of proven results and expert vetting.
We have seen proven results across over a dozen pilots with major brands and through real products in the market. With pilots alone, we have consistently shown 10x more fabric/material saving compared to any other technology, preserved ~185,712 gallons of water, saved ~8.4 metric tons of CO2 emissions, and employed 60 climate refugees through work with Allbirds, Desigual, Pentland (which includes brands such as Lacoste and Speedo), Harvard University, Snap Inc., R/GA, LimeLife by Alcone (part of the French beauty powerhouse L'Occitane en Provence), and other mission-aligned organizations under NDA. These proven results are also why we are now moving beyond pilots to scaled production with our brand partners.
Our technology has been vetted by AI scientists from the US, Japan, and the UK. On our team, we have three PhD researchers developing the novel technology (with our pending patent published in 2023 under Publication No. US-2023-0367292), and three experienced engineers, ensuring that the results are commercializable.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:
https://www.sxd-ai.com/
In which countries do you currently operate?
Which, if any, additional countries will you be operating in within the next year?
How many people work on your solution team?
- Full-time staff: 2
- Part-time staff/contractors: 12
- Advisors/mentors: 5
- Climate refugee seamstresses: 60
How long have you been working on your solution?
SXD incorporated in 2022, but its zero waste solution has been in development for 15 years. Inspired by the waste-free kimonos she wore as a child, Founder Shelly started creating zero waste designs in her Columbia University dorm room. Later, she hand-stitched the first 200 zero waste designs and tested them in-market. These original, sold-out zero waste designs now form the training data for SXD AI.
SXD’s founding team has been working on SXD AI since 2022. This includes Founding Scientist Tuanfeng Wang, Engineering Lead James Cheong, Manufacturing Expert Ahmed Fardin, and Sustainability and Innovation Expert James Carnes.
Tell us about how you ensure that your team is diverse, minimizes barriers to opportunity for staff, and provides a welcoming and inclusive environment for all team members.
Team
SXD is a women-founded and women-operated company. Our Founder and CEO, Shelly, immigrated to the U.S. from China as a child. She studied Economics-Political Science and Sustainable Development at Columbia University and earned her MBA from Harvard Business School. Madi Cash, our General Manager, is Canadian and has lived and worked in various manufacturing centers including Changchun, China and Semerang, Indonesia. Our team is diverse and global, with an Adobe Researcher from London, an AI professor from Tokyo, a frontend engineer based in Moldova, a Designer from Myanmar, and a community of climate refugees in Bangladesh. Furthermore, we intentionally recruit advisors with diverse backgrounds, including successful female founders, sustainability and apparel leaders from Europe, and technical leaders from Asia.
We are a diverse global team unified by our hope to create a better future for our planet and its people. As we hire new teammates across product development, engineering, and design, we emphasize inclusivity in writing across all job descriptions and seek qualified individuals from underrepresented communities.
We are grateful to have assembled a team with not only uniquely diverse backgrounds but also unique perspectives to share. We believe this has been integral to our success. Just like the global nature of the climate change problem, we are committed to an active pursuit of diversity to ensure that a global voice continues to inform our solution.
Culture
At SXD, honesty and curiosity are synonymous with efficiency. Using our diverse team's collective experiences, we prioritize transparent, straightforward communication at every level, from intern to CEO. This is baked into our company values. From day one, new team members are encouraged to speak their minds and be prepared for healthy debates out of respect for each other and our mission. We also ruthlessly pursue curiosity by asking questions freely, learning from innovators in many fields, and challenging conventional wisdom if it stands in the way of our values or mission to eliminate apparel’s carbon footprint. Our quarterly company meetings dedicate time for perspective sharing, and we regularly discuss how to include more perspectives in our work. By fostering a culture driven by straightforward communication and infused with the freedom to chase curiosity, we cultivate trust and integrity, laying a solid foundation for collaborative innovation and sustainable growth.
What is your business model?
At a high level, SXD partners with mission aligned organizations to convert their products to zero waste. More specifically, SXD operates on two primary business models: (1) SXD AI subscription (SaaS) and (2) sales of SXD AI-generated zero waste products.
SXD AI subscription (SaaS): We transform iconic apparel products into zero waste alternatives for brand partners. Our partnerships typically commence with zero waste design services, where we refine and create training data to ensure zero waste outputs that satisfy the brand partner's specific requirements. Following the establishment of this training data, we progress to the subscription phase (SaaS), providing brands with a customized web application environment to generate zero waste design blueprints across various sizes/dimensions, fabrics/materials, and styles. A testament to this model's success is our recent partnership with a European multi-brand apparel conglomerate. Utilizing SXD AI, they can now scale zero waste designs across their portfolio of apparel brands, adapting to each brand's unique requirements.
Sales of SXD AI-generated zero waste products: Utilizing our SXD AI technology in-house, we produce zero waste products that replace less sustainable options. Our merchandise, often incorporating leftover or previously wasted fabrics, is in demand by forward-thinking companies globally. Partners such as Harvard University, Snap Inc., WMX (Warner Music Experiences), and more have collaborated with us to replace their merchandise with zero waste alternatives. In addition to promoting sustainability, we prioritize social responsibility; Whenever possible, we reinvest savings realized through our efficient zero waste products to support climate refugee seamstresses who bring our products to life. Consistent with industry standards, our revenue is derived from order volumes, thus aligning profitability with scale of impact.
Our client base is expanding rapidly. We have recently welcomed one of the world’s largest manufacturers and retailers into our fold and endorsements from industry leaders and consistently positive customer feedback underscores our growing prominence in sustainable technology.
Our dedication to human impact is built into our business model. By establishing robust partnerships and producing efficient zero waste products that save on cost, we are able to reinvest in ethical labor. We support climate refugees to rebuild their lives by providing 2-4x the local wage and benefits, and we push our partners to do the same. This approach not only establishes a new benchmark for zero material waste but also leads to holistic benefits for people and our planet.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Organizations (B2B)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable, and what evidence can you provide that this plan has been successful so far?
We hope to become a sustainably profitable company through MIT Solve’s support and SXD’s own revenue generation by 2025. We are on track, as we currently have multiple deals completed with brands across the globe including one billion-dollar internationally recognized brand and two multi-billion dollar multi-brand conglomerates with substantial global reach, as well as a $1.2 million pipeline of deals. 48% of our pipeline comes from billion-dollar global apparel brands interested in our SaaS model and another 44% is global brands interested in switching their merchandise to zero waste. The remaining companies are smaller, mission-aligned apparel brands looking for innovative solutions to sustainability through SXD AI SaaS.
We closed our oversubscribed pre-seed fundraising round of $1.2M in 2022, after which we saw a 10x growth in our business. Since winning Top Innovative World Technology at SXSW and the Global Change Award considered the “Nobel Prize of Fashion '' in 2023, we have received over a dozen investors interested in investing in SXD’s next fundraising round. However, our priority is to seek mission-aligned sources of funding, as we must ensure positive impact at every stage of our growth. This is why we are particularly excited about MIT Solve.
Solution Team
-
Shelly Xu Founder, CEO, SXD
to Top
Our Organization
SXD, Inc.