Detox Your Wardrobe

Steve Meltio: Hey everybody, welcome to New York State Manufacturing Now, the podcast that’s powered by FuzeHub. I’m your host, Steve Melito. Today, we’re talking to Valentina Gomez, the co-founder and COO of Werewool, a New York City-based company that’s developing biodegradable textile fibers with tailored properties for aesthetics and performance. In 2023, Werewool was awarded a $50,000 manufacturing grant from FUSA in conjunction with Downstate Technology Center, and that’s just some of what we’ll be talking about today. Valentina, welcome to New York State Manufacturing Now.

Valentina Gomez: Hey, Steve, awesome, it’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for having me here.

Steve Meltio: It’s so great to have you here. So let’s start from the top. Please tell us about yourself. You’re a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, but how did you become interested in sustainable textiles specifically?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, so I guess I became passionate in textiles since I was a child baby, actually. I grew up in Columbia and my family owned and operated a denim mill in Columbia, and so it was manufacturing a cut, cut and sew of denim jeans, and so my family spent a lot of time in there, and just during the summers that’s usually where I was just wandering around the manufacturing house, and textiles is something that I had been wanting to do since I was a child, and so when it came to deciding what I wanted to do for college and where did I want to go, I saw that FIT had this amazing textile development and marketing program and, funny enough, their capstone project at the time was to create a denim collection, and I was like all right, this has to be for me, this is the school that I’m going to, and so I only applied to FIT, but my high school made me apply to two other schools as well, but I really just wanted to go to FIT, so I got accepted, and when I was in school was when I really became knowledgeable and got to understand the impact of textiles and the impact that the manufacturing process has all of the plastics that are used, all of the dyes and the toxic chemicals that are used in the industry, and I became extremely frustrated because it was something that I had always wanted to do and it’s something that my family was participating in, but I did not want to continue doing that and so I was kind of at a loss. It’s like what do I want to do with my life? What do I want to do when I graduate college? And I saw that there was this program at FIT called the Bio Design Challenge, and that program gets like non-traditional science students, mostly designers to think about what their industry could look like. If you look to biology and biotech, and that was my co-founder, Chewie and I we had originally met like a couple months before in India and we were both extremely aligned on how we were frustrated with the industry and weren’t sure what we exactly wanted to do. And so we saw that there was this program and so we joined it together, and that was when we got introduced to the world of proteins. We had an amazing mentor who’s a plant biologist and he introduces how, in nature, proteins provide more than building blocks. They can provide function. So things like color elasticity, the moisture management, and for us it really clicked as all the things that we really want from our clothing and textiles. But traditionally the industry gets it from plastics and chemicals and we’re like, okay, how can we map these proteins into textile fibers? And that was when the original path began.

Steve Meltio: That is great and obviously most people, myself included, hear the word proteins and think of food. Yeah, so there’s this whole other application right.

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, I think that’s how I thought about it as well prior.

Steve Meltio: Yeah, yeah. So I read on your website that your technology quote mimics nature and doesn’t use plastic or dyes. So, to the extent that you can without giving away any trade secrets, how does it all work?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, so our team is really inspired by the way that nature can create function and color, and a lot of that is through protein structures, and so the way that our process works is that we first identify a function that we are looking to map into textile fibers. So, let’s say, some of the pink color proteins and fibers that you see on our website. That original protein was found in a discosoma coral, and so there’s a DNA sequence that will code for that beautiful pink color, and so what our team does is we’ll grab that DNA sequence, we’ll engineer it so the protein can withstand different temperatures, different pHs all the things that our textiles have to go through and then we’ll insert that protein into a bacteria and then we grow it in a fermentation process similar to the way that beer is made, and then we’ll purify the protein and then we’re left with this beautiful pink color, and then we’ll use an enzyme to cross-link it to our base, biopolymer, which is a mixture of plant-based proteins and polysaccharides, and then you get, like this goo, which is called the dope, that has our plant-based proteins in it and these beautiful pink colors, and so it’s already all mixed together and the enzyme acts like a glue that has put it all and then we will make the fibers in a wet spinning process. So the same way that like a lye cell is made, like a bamboo fiber is made traditionally, that process uses like very harsh solvents, really harsh chemicals. So there’s a lot of like water treatment that has to happen. But what we do is that we use the same infrastructure that that process needs, but we don’t use any of those harsh solvents that the industry traditionally is using. So our process can plug directly into that infrastructure but without having to use those solvents. So then when the fiber is made it already has that beautiful pink color, so we can cut out the dyeing process completely from the supply chain.

Steve Meltio: Excellent and again playing word association. You mentioned the word polymer and I always think about plastics and lately I’ve been reading about microplastics.
I’ve become concerned about their pervasiveness and what we eat and drink and this seems like something you might be concerned about too but I’m wondering if you could tell us more about plastics in the fashion industry.

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, I mean, microplastics are everywhere. They’ve been found in Antarctica, now They’ve been found in human placenta, so they’re really found everywhere. Now it’s very scary, and so I think that right now, for microplastics in the fashion industry, it contributes to 35% of ocean’s microplastics, and so they’re really found everywhere. And I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the fibers and the raw materials themselves is what makes up 60 to 80% of a product’s impact. So just by choosing a different fiber, that’s where a lot of your impact is coming from.

Steve Meltio: Sure, let’s switch gears and talk about Werewool a bit. By the way, I love the name I always think of the old. Warren Zevon song Werewool of London. But where did the name come from? If you don’t mind my asking, yeah, of course.

Valentina Gomez: So from the Bio Design Challenge. One of the challenges that we joined was an animal free wool challenge, and that year it was sponsored by Stella McCartney. She’s a very popular fashion house and so we delved into this animal free wool challenge and when we were originally looking at proteins, we were looking at proteins that self assemble and there’s this protein called tubulin that’s found abundantly in our bodies. So our first prototype we tried to make out of our proteins that are found in ourselves. So we like, did cheek swabs and stuff and that’s where the name Werewool comes from, because it’s like we are wool. All right, we were trying to make wool from our own proteins that are found in our bodies, but definitely not doing that anymore. It was just an initial wild thought that we had.

Steve Meltio: That’s a great name, and you’ve got four co-founders, which to me seems like a lot. So what are the roles that everybody plays?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, so we’re actually five co-founders in total, I think today there’s just Chewy and myself who are active in the company. The other three co-founders are on our scientific advisory board. So we have Helen Liu, who’s the chair of biomedical engineering at Columbia. She helped us out tremendously when we were starting off. She let us work in her lab, let us work with some of her PhD students, and then, as well as Allie Obermeyer from chemical engineering at Columbia. Allie still meets with our team every single week. She’s very active. And then Dan Shiros, who was our professor at FIT and she was the one who actually brought us over to Columbia after we had proven out more data and she was our chief science officer for the last few years. And then now she’s stepped into more of a scientific advisory role. And then for Chewy she’s our CEO and she’s my partner in crime and I’m more on the operations side of everything.

Steve Meltio: Sure, it’s a strong team. Yeah, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, Werewool in the Downstate Technology Center were awarded a $50,000 FUSA manufacturing grant in 2023. How did that grant help you to advance your technology?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, I mean that grant was tremendous for us. I think we used it to purchase some equipment that we very much needed in our lab, and so one of them was an autoclave, which really helps us keep everything sterile in our process. Prior to that, we were having some contamination issues, and so having an autoclave in-house has really allowed us to keep everything sterile and keep all our experiments running more seamlessly. The other piece I bought which is super helpful for us was the spectrophotometer, which is like a standard piece of equipment that’s used in the industry for measuring color, and so that allows us to see, for the proteins that we’re putting in our fibers, if we’re achieving consistent color, because that’s something that’s extremely important in fashion. They like ask for this one specific color, and if it’s like a little bit off, they’re like no, that’s not going to work for us, and so that’s allowed us to really show the data that we can achieve the consistent color, and a lot of this has allowed us to also now start with bringing in our first customers as well.

Steve Meltio: Great, and it looks like you’ve won some other awards in addition to the FUSA manufacturing grant and you’ve raised $3.7 million in a seed round and that’s wonderful Congratulations.

Valentina Gomez: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Steve Meltio: Can you tell us more about raising money and I’m asking for all of the startups out there who are listening and any advice you have, I think, would be most welcome.

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, I definitely think that raising money is a journey, and I think there’s its ups and downs, and part of it, as a startup and as a young company, is that it never truly ends. I think the minute you close a round, you have to also start prepping for your next round, because the process takes time, and I think it also takes time because you want to find the right partners. I think you want to find the people that are aligned with your company’s mission, who are there for you to support the milestones that you have and are not looking for you to cut corners in certain places and also align with your own timelines, because I think, as a startup in the material space, the timelines are much longer than what it is for like an app or a like SaaS sort of company, and so there’s a lot of VCs that will have a very misaligned timeline for when they need their returns back, and so it’s really finding the right partners that understand your mission, your timelines and are there to support you.

Steve Meltio: That’s good advice. What’s the status of Werewool ‘s technology today, For example? Is it fully mature and available for sale? Are you still making some enhancements, looking for contract manufacturers? Where’s everything at?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, so really exciting. Right now we have kicked off our first pilot program, so we’ve delivered samples to our first brand, and so we have our first bit of revenue, which is a huge milestone for us.

Steve Meltio: Congrats.

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, thank you, and I think these pilots that we’re kicking off right now are extremely valuable to us. Yeah, thank you, and I think these pilots that we’re kicking off right now are extremely valuable to us. They are providing us with valuable data and feedback on our fibers. So they’re analyzing them, seeing how it goes through like a yarn spinning process, and I think that really informs our team on the direction that we need to take, the tweaks that we need to make, and so that’s on our colored fibers. And then now we’re also really excited in developing our second product. So we’re developing the world’s first biodegradable spandex. So we’re imparting stretch into our base biopolymers now, which there’s such a big issue with putting spandex in our clothing, with recycling, with degradation, so it allows for, like future, garments that are made with this type of fiber to be made without having to blend it with, like a cotton spandex blend. You can then just use the wearable fiber that already has the stretch built in. So I think it’ll be a huge breakthrough for the industry.

Steve Meltio: That’s great. So how can somebody contact you if they want to know more about Werewool and your technology? What’s the best way for them to do that?

Valentina Gomez: Yeah, so we have on our website Werewool.bio, bio as in biology, we have a reach out page, so it’s our email is [email protected]. We look through that every single day and I think people reach out for jobs, for interviews, and so you can use that for anything really. Also, I’m on LinkedIn, so I’m always happy to meet with people. So just reach out and connect.

Steve Meltio: Excellent, exciting times. Valentina Gomez, thank you so much for being part of New York State Manufacturing Now.

Valentina Gomez: Thank you so much, Steve. It was great talking with you.

Steve Meltio: You too. So we’ve been talking to Valentina Gomez, who’s the co-founder and COO of Werewool, a New York City-based company that’s developing biodegradable textile fibers with tailored properties for aesthetics and performance without the plastics and the dyes. It’s a truly innovative technology and, if you like innovations, I have a special invitation for you Join FuzeHub for the New York State Innovation Summit in Syracuse on October 28th and 29th. It’s an event you won’t want to miss, as either an exhibitor or an attendee. To learn more, go to NYSInnovationSummitcom, and if you didn’t get that URL, don’t worry, just email us at [email protected]. So, on behalf of FuzeHub and New York State Manufacturing, now this is Steve Melito signing off.