How The Mills Fabrica Provide Startups a Support System

What once operated as a cotton spinning mill now stands as a beacon of innovation in an industry in desperate search of sustainable solutions.

The Mills Fabrica, which has headquarters in both Hong Kong and London, works with budding businesses interested in bringing more environmentally friendly options and outcomes to the fashion and apparel industry. It supports startups to elevate their business models and, consequently, the building blocks of a more sustainable future.

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Cintia Nunes, general manager at The Mills Fabrica , said the venture capital fund and incubator has a multitiered strategy toward working with startups.

“We’re not just an incubator; in fact, we’re a one-stop shop. We have everything to support this ecosystem to become a better and more sustainable place,” she said.

The Nan Fung Group-owned VC and incubator serves as the innovation arm of The Mills , a techstyle hub situated inside old fabric mills. It offers investment to startups and supports young companies through its incubation program. Per Nunes, it also works to advance and educate the industry at large through thought leadership and advocacy.

Because one of its main goals in the fashion and denim spaces remains education—for brands, manufacturers and consumers alike—it uses its retail storefront, called Fabrica X, to show off the innovations and prototypes that come out of companies it partners with.

At Fabrica X, the attention is on denim for the first half of 2024. Nunes said The Mills Fabrica’s campaign “Denim Futures,” debuted in 2023 and will remain on exhibit through July.

The storefront features information about a slew of companies working to improve the denim industry’s supply chain—from startups like Unspun and Huue, to big-time players like Levi’s and Jeanologia . Consumers can purchase items created with sustainability in mind from Fabrica X, and they can also participate in a hands-on experience, which allows them to see some of the innovations in action.

Nunes said the culmination of Denim Futures represents a meeting of the minds, as well as a chance to share a trove of knowledge with consumers and other players, like manufacturers and brands.

“We strongly believe that sustainable denim requires the participation of the entire ecosystem,” Nunes told Rivet. “At the Denim Futures campaign, we strive to bring different players together to foster innovation and collaboration by sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas around sustainable solutions across the entire denim supply chain.”

Nunes said that though Fabrica X installations only last six to nine months, many have another run in one of Nan Fung Group’s other properties at a later date. The Mills Fabrica currently has a biomaterials exhibit, once in Fabrica X, on display in different locations throughout Hong Kong. Nunes said she expects Denim Futures will be displayed even after its time in Fabrica X has passed.

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Unspun, which works to decarbonize the supply chain through the production of made-to-measure garments, is currently participating in the Denim Futures campaign. It has worked with The Mills Fabrica since 2018 and has had the opportunity to be involved in several education-based activations, said Walden Lam, its co-founder and CEO.

Nunes said Unspun is an example of a company that has had a successful partnership coordinated in part by The Mills Fabrica. Unspun partnered with Belgian startup Resortecs to use the latter’s dissolvable stitching threads to sew jeans created for each customer, using Unspun’s made-to-order scanning technology.

“The collaboration between these two startups combines two cutting-edge technologies and introduces an option for buying jeans that is one step closer to closing the loop,” Nunes said, noting that The Mills Fabrica aspires to make further connections for its incubatees—both with other startups and with major manufacturers and brands—in the denim space going forward.

Lam said The Mills Fabrica has also facilitated relationships with larger companies, though he could not share the details of those collaborations. Over several years, the company has received an investment from The Mills Fabrica, collaborated on several activations and strategized its expansion.

“It’s been a very rewarding journey, just even from a global footprint perspective,” Lam said. “We started the relationship in Hong Kong, and through them, we’ve been able to expand into Europe. We will have our very first employee in Europe working out of their [London] space [this year].”

Unspun isn’t the only entity with aspirations for further expansion. Nunes said The Mills Fabrica has plans to extend its reach into Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other areas in China where the Nan Fung Group already has properties.

She said upping the scale at which The Mills Fabrica operates could help push its key goals forward.

“We would love to be the catalyst for the fashion [and] denim industry…and provide more sustainable products to the world,” Nunes said.

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