Senior Garment Development Engineer Naeem Riaz gave insight into the what makes a successful relationship with global partners and how the current climate can affect these.
How did you find trying to manufacture a garment in the middle of a pandemic and how did you overcome the issues?
The value of building up a good, healthy, working rapport with your development partners means everything. Treat them as ‘just another supplier’ and you become ‘just another client’. Treat them properly by understanding and accommodating THEIR needs, and you’ll earn their respect accordingly.
In late March, everyone in the UK and Europe was placed under strict lockdown. Everyone east of the Bosporus was also on lockdown, but luckily, pragmatism is a much more openly traded commodity in that part of the world.
In short, we found a partner based in Asia and the resulting partnership has given rise to fully functioning garments that will change the common perception of how ‘Wearable’ wearable technology can be.
I’m still amazed at how we’ve managed to pull this one off without even so much as a site visit.
You were heavily involved in the electrode design and implementation, was this new for you?
Turning thoughts into things is the reason people like are me are hired. That’s the easy part. Understanding the brief is always the hard part.
Once I learned to treat it just like any other material innovation project, the whole task became a lot easier. Sure, there were new fibres and materials in play; yarns I’d not used before, but it was still a fabric that was going to be made in the same way other fabrics are made.
This rationalisation process is key to making anything work – the ability to break challenges down into manageable modules, then bolting everything together at the end.
I guess the ‘new’ part of the process was the ability to patent my work. The feeling of being recognised for doing something nobody else has done before is testament to the faith the team at Prevayl have placed in me.
How has it been working with smart clothing, compared with your previous roles?
It felt easier as there was little room for ambiguity, it either works or it doesn’t.
My previous roles have involved design or fashion, industries where it’s difficult to interpret someone’s taste, colour preference, fit or hand-feel requirements. With Smart Clothing, the brief is simpler, and therefore easier to manage. It’s Black and White.
Why do Prevayl work with global partners rather than UK? What are the benefits of having partners around the world?
Prevayl would love to work with UK partners. Our Electrode development has all taken place in the UK (c/o Shima Seiki Europe). We’ve earmarked a significant investment in our materials development capabilities which will also be based in the UK – again in partnership with Shima Seiki. We’re very good at inventing things in good old Blighty.
Sadly, the infrastructure and resources needed to produce garments on a commercial level doesn’t really exist anymore. This was further exacerbated at 6:00pm on March 23rd when we were forced into making a call of either waiting for the UK to reopen or pursue a relationship with a foreign partner.
Remarkably, in the time it’s taken for us to develop, test and prototype our garment range with this foreign partner, the UK has still largely remained in a state of stagnation.
In hindsight, I think we made the right choice.
What was the process of building the garments?
Working with a development partner from the other side of the world presents its fair share of challenges. But a good working partner makes life easy when that partner is amazing at what they do.
Turning thoughts into things was their role in this instance; the briefing role was mine. After a few early morning Zoom calls, the excitement of creating something potentially game-changing proved too much for them to resist. We were in business.
A combination of curiosity, educated guesses, decades of experience and a genuine desire to break boundaries has led to this moment.
How does it feel seeing the finished, working product you’ve been developing for so long?
One of my favourite poems is ‘If’ by Kipling, his views on Triumph and Disaster reinforce my opinions on short-term success.
I’m obviously elated at the fact that we’ve come so far in such a short space of time, but it’d be naïve to assume we’ve finished. Yes, it works. Yes, we’ve done created something incredible, but there’s always a lot more we can do. We can’t afford to rest on our laurels. Of the dozens of ideas and concepts I have swirling around in my head, I’ll be extremely lucky if I even get to implement a fraction of them for our 2nd generation version.
If anything, seeing a working product spurs you on to do even more.