# Additive Manufacturing in the Clothing Industry: Towards Sustainable New Business Models
## 4 Results
### New Business Models
#### 4.4.1 The Clothing as a Service  
Commercialization of additively manufactured clothing can take place in a contract-based quality- and maintenance-assurance setting. Currently, a number of clothing companies are emerging that offer clothing as a service, meaning that with every physical item a customer purchases, a long-term commitment by the seller guarantees the maintenance of the item for an extended period (e.g., 30 years) [112]. This concept shifts the focus of business from fast-fashion product circulation towards afterales service provision. This is an area in which AM can perform strongly [63]. In this NBM, the profitability of the company is assured through the use of durable material coupled with high-quality production systems. Moreover, this NBM can also provide updates and upgrades to customers as time passes and the product goes out of fashion. In such a setting, AM machines are located in a distributed configuration near the main consumer communities to facilitate in situ maintenance of the items. All the machines are connected to the company's design database and can produce various sections of the item to be replaced on customers' items as required. Inventory of the fabric and other necessary items (e.g., shoe hills, etc.) will be replaced by raw materials ready to be transformed into required service items. However, consumers have shown in different instances (Zady Company, Nudie Jeans Co., and Hiut Denim) that they are willing to invest more in higher-quality products with supply-chain transparency, however, the implementation of such an NBM in the clothing industry is contingent upon addressing the issues discussed in Section 4.2. This NBM brings the idea of perpetual clothing closer to a reality in which the use phase of the clothing is lengthened, and the product can be returned to the manufacturer at the end of the production for recycling. This NBM is most suitable for high-fashion products and not as suitable for mass-fashion items. Sustainability of AM-Enabled Clothing as a Service  
From a purely economic perspective, clothing as a service can provide higher profits to the producer, as the initial investment by the consumer in the product is multiple times of a regular item. The same concept has proved profitable in industrial settings [113]; it enabled the producer to shorten the product to market cycle, as the process of fabric production and making the clothes was combined in a single step. Intellectual property rights (IPR) will not be an issue, as the design and production procedure is not shared with the customer or third-party service providers. From an environmental perspective, although it depends on the exact AM process and various machines from different manufacturers shown to have distinct environmental footprints [68; 100], water and material consumption in AM processes are lower than conventional ones [64]. In the clothing industry, wastewater generation is a problem that AM can address. Moreover, some additive manufacturing processes create less waste and allow for the recycling of excess material [99], therefore supporting the adoption of circular economy (CE). Energy consumption by AM cannot be concluded, as the production of AM raw material by itself is energy-intensive, and each process has a different energy requirement. As this NBM lengthens the use phase of the clothing lifecycle, it saves energy for transforming new raw material into new clothing. Additionally, the central management of the items can enable the clothes to be repaired, reconfigured, and recycled. All this contributes to less waste generation in the use phase of the product. From a societal perspective, AM reduces worker employment for fabric and clothing production through the combination and automation of the production processes [101]. Moreover, lengthening the clothing lifecycle in this NBM shifts jobs from manufacturing towards higher-paying jobs of repair and manufacturing that, if localized, can improve conditions of the workers by \"reshoring\" jobs [103].