Your Enterprise Knitwear Solution

Meet our team

The team with a unique combination of skills and experience
Contents

Executives

Alexander C. Tschopp
Alexander C. TschoppCO-Founder & CEO
Alex read the biography of Andrew Carnegie when he was 12 years old and has been fascinated with business ever since. Nearly 10 years ago this interest led him to Cornell University's Dyson School, to pursue a degree in Applied Economics & Management. While still an undergrad student, he founded a business that sold college-branded products (including sweaters) to 250 retailers in its first year of operation. While an undergrad, Alex was part of the graduate business school's ELab accelerator program.Alex is combining the "grit" of running a manufacturing operation with the sophistication of applying software to complex supply chain issues. Alex is highly involved in all areas of the business and is affectionately known around the office as "Chief Everything Officer."
Kady Gray
Kady GrayCO-Founder & COO
After graduating from FIT with a bachelor’s in fine arts summa cum laude and winning the knitting technology award her graduating year, Kady began a search for a position with a knitwear company specializing in the emerging technology of 3D knitting. During her interview with Shima Seiki for a programmer position, they mentioned an available sales position and verified, "are you sure, you are going to get oily?" Without hesitation, she quickly replied, "Yes, that's the one! The one where I get in the machine and get oily."During her first year with Shima, Kady flew to the company headquarters in Japan for an intensive 1-month training. When she returned, she spent the next five years honing her skill set for the highly specialized craft of programming 3D knitting machines. During her time in New Jersey, she developed hundreds of programs for the industry’s top luxury fashion designers and assisted the production team with running small batch orders. It is from these experiences and her rapport with the technicians who trained her, that Kady was able to develop her skills and resulted in her formulating a roadmap for Tailored Industry’s on-demand software platform.
Eric Mendez
Eric MendezChief Financial Officer
Eric joined Tailored Full-time in 2022 having previously worked the majority of his career in Mergers & Acquisitions as an investment banker. In his spare time during his Wall Street career, Eric started investing in start-ups and over the years, made investments in 11 different companies across the U.S., Europe and Africa. Tailored Industry was his very first angel investment.Eric graduated with a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago and came back for his M.B.A. having graduated from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2011. He was born in Costa Rica and speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
Alexey Khrenov
Alexey KhrenovSoftware Engineer
Previously Alexey founded and ran a software development agency in Ukraine, which at its height employed 50+ engineers. Alexey joined Tailored Industry full-time in the fall of 2022, along with his core team of developers still located in Ukraine.B.S. National Technical University of Ukraine 'Kyiv Polytechnic Institute'
Emily Gauger
Emily GaugerSr. Director of Partnerships
Emily Gauger, our Senior Director of Partnerships, began with our team after building a formidable background in sweater design. She has served as a Senior Designer for major fashion brands including Calvin Klein Collection, Ralph Lauren, and Tory Burch. Additionally, she has extensive experience with high-end boutique brands including Edun, Rudi Gernreich and 10 Crosby Derek Lam. Her extensive background in knitwear manufacturing, development methods, and customer and market requirements makes her an invaluable asset for our team.B.S. Art History & Visual Studies, Princeton University B.S. Apparel Design, RISD
Emily Keller
Emily KellerDirector of Technical Operations
Emily graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, specializing in knitwear. She has over 14 years of knitwear design and manufacturing experience in NYC and Shanghai, working with factories throughout China.Fashion Institute of Technology B.F.A. Fine Arts
Waley Zhen
Waley ZhenDirector of Production
Previously a Sr. manager at Shima Seiki USA for 12 years. Prior to Shima, Waley was the GM for a factory with 120 machines. Waley brings over 30 years of WholeGarment programming and production management experience.

Dream Team

Founding Story

The founding story of Tailored Industry can be summarized quite simply, give your customers what they want. Or, alternatively, you can get the long version. In either format the result is an on-demand manufacturing operation and software platform that enables fashion brands to precisely produce what they need, when they need it. (which oddly enough is practically a miracle for the fashion industry) The entrepreneurial backstory that proceeded this vision was the convergence of first hand sourcing and manufacturing experience, a bit of "give it the good old college try" naiveté, and esoteric programming knowledge.
Alex, our Co-founder & CEO, previously founded a collegiate wholesale distribution company that produced wayfarer-style sunglasses and Made in USA sweaters for over 200 colleges and universities. Early on, Alex was forced to make a decision about the supply chain. The factories that produced the sunglasses had very high minimums and there were virtually no knitting mills left in the USA. The few knitting mills that had survived also had high minimum order quantities and poor quality. This dilemma proved prohibitively problematic for cashflow, inventory management, and growth. As a solution, Alex questioned these industry norm and proposed a simple solution, "what if we did it ourselves?" He decided to pad-print the logos for the sunglasses in-house (originally in his parent's garage) and eventually bought knitting machines to produce the sweaters internally as well.
After graduating from Cornell he moved the business to Brooklyn, where he expanded the company's operational footprint. This is where the naiveté comes in, but it is also when it got interesting and eventually paved the way for a pivot. Small contemporary fashion brands and even large apparel companies started contacting him about small batch production. As Alex describes, "both big and small companies were incredibly interested in the operation we had set up, particularly the knitting side. When we met with them, they all asked the same questions - what is your MOQ and how quickly can you ship the order?" Alex describes the light bulb moment simply, "what if we just give them what they're asking for, low MOQs and quick turnaround?" It was that initial customer discovery that eventually birthed the idea for Tailored Industry. But, it didn't happen until after Alex was forced to close his first business for lack of funding and until he met Kady a year later. Kady, at the time, was working for a 3D knitting machine manufacturer honing her skills in a Japanese programming language called APEX.
Kady, our Co-founder & COO, besides always having a taste for high quality clothes, knew that she wanted to do something that involved using her hands and geometry. After graduating from FIT, Kady quickly locked eyes on the emerging technology of 3D knitting. At school, she had heard of Stoll's knit-and-wear machines that made an entire sweater 3-dimensionally on the machine in one complete piece. However, Stoll wasn't hiring but Shima Seiki was. When interviewing for the position at Shima, the technicians asked her "do you really want to program and run equipment, you're going to get oily." A curious question for Kady, as she quickly replied "Yes, that's the one! The one were I get in the machine and get oily".
Kady flew to Japan for an intensive 1-month training and more importantly, came back to spend the next 5 years honing her skill set for the highly specialized craft of programming 3D knitting machines. During her time in NJ, she developed hundreds of programs for the industry's top luxury fashion designers and also assisted the production team run small-batch orders. It's from these experiences that she was able to develop a roadmap for the company's on-demand software platform, bringing to life the operational mechanics that make the business use-case Alex saw from his prior startup experience a reality.
Tailored Industry was founded to give our customers what they want, when they want it. Truly a supply chain that works for them, not against them. One that leverages technology to provide a supply chain to be proud of.
founding-storyAlexander C. Tschopp & Kady Gray

Tailored Industry was founded to give our customers what they want, when they want it

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All rights reserved 2024 © Tailored Industry
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