I first heard of Qcut, the city's latest in what's becoming a string of efforts to bolster the feasibility of re-homing apparel production, when it was thrown at me as an assignment for another publication (you can read that piece here). At the time, it was still gathering funding on Kickstarter, but it's now just over the mark, with 15 days to spare.

The initial premise of the venture is a method for selling and sizing women's denim direct to consumer using a sizing algorithm originally developed for Levi's back in the '90s (though the company didn't ultimately do much with it). Its creator, Gerald Ruderman, has reclaimed it and founded Qcut with Crystal Beasley, whose own background is in the tech world, not fashion—her connections in that sector, where start-up investment is rampant, have worked to their advantage; investment capital in the independent fashion world is notoriously difficult to come by.

But then, Qcut isn't really a fashion company at all. With a few questions and measurements, their system is supposedly able to match each customer with a range of 400 different jeans sizes, and there's potential for its application to work on myriad other types of garments. In fact, Beasley's plan is to open a factory, most likely in Portland (there's a chance it may wind up in LA but here's hoping Plan A comes through). And in addition to expanding her own company's offerings, Beasley's hope is that she'll be able to help out the community of emerging designers in the city, too. It may be a way's off, but between the efforts of PAL, the recently launched Studio 317, and this, it certainly feels like we are living in a promising era for inventive approaches to reinvigorating what was once a bustling local industry. We'll see how far Qcut gets, but it's telling that they've raised enough capital outside their $75k Kickstarter ask (it takes a lot more than that to raise a factory) that they can plan something so grand. I'd certainly keep my eye on it.