If operated continuously at this speed

[zakiyatasnim]

Garment factories produce more than 20 billion T-shirts a year, most of them outside the U.S. For T-shirts to be viable, they have to be cheaper to produce in the U.S. than to import them. But even that is not enough to cover the cost of paying American workers.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average sewing machine operator earns $28,000 per year.

That works out to about $13.50 an hour, much more than in the countries colombia number data from which most T-shirts are imported. According to Professor Lu, the pay for similar work in China is about one-third of that in the US, and in Guatemala it is less than one-fifth.

SoftWear wants to make only T-shirts. This eliminates another problem with automated sewing systems - switching from one garment to another. A skilled team of people can sew both men's short-sleeved T-shirts and women's jeans. This task is much more difficult for robots.

After seed funding, SoftWear has raised $30 million in venture capital and grants, including a $2 million grant from the Walmart Foundation. Rajan says the company needs tens of millions more to ramp up production to 1 billion T-shirts a year.

In addition, SoftWear needs to open several factories, each with its own Sewbot and employees capable of servicing it. One Sewbot can make a T-shirt every 50 seconds., one production line would make more than 620,000 T-shirts per year.

In that case, it would take 1,607 Sewbot systems to reach the 1 billion-a-year mark. However, Rajan says a more realistic figure is closer to 2,000. The company has produced fewer than 50 T-shirts so far.