"From fabric cutting and sewing to finished product, it takes roughly four minutes," said Tang Xinhong, chairman of Tianyuan Garments. "We will install 21 production lines. When fully operational, the system will make one T-shirt every 22 seconds. We will produce 800,000 T-shirts a day for Adidas."

Tang said that with complete automation, the personnel cost for each T-shirt is roughly 33 cents. "Around the world, even the cheapest labor market can't compete with us. I am really excited about this," he said.

Tianyuan announced last October it would invest $20 million in the 100,000-square-foot defunct Little Rock plant it had acquired. In time, it will bring 400 new jobs to Arkansas.

The signing ceremony was witnessed by a Chinese textile delegation led by Xu Yingxin, vice-president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council.

Xu said that establishing a clothing factory in Arkansas enables Tianyuan to satisfy instant order demands from its clients. He praised Tianyuan's working with American partners in automation as a smart move at a crucial junction in the technology revolution.

"The idea of Industry 4.0 and Intelligent Manufacturing is gradually becoming the reality," Xu said. "It is revolutionizing labor-intensive clothing manufacturing."

Eoin Treacy's view

I first wrote about Softwear two years ago following a visit to a garment factory in Los Angeles. It was clear that the labour intensive nature of sewing garments was ripe for automation and Softwear was in the process of developing a robot to make people obsolete. 

Millions of women all over the world are employed in manufacturing clothing. Just about every piece of clothing every one of us owns has passed through the hands of seamstress somewhere. Within the next couple of decades, they will need to find alternative employment. 

Improving standards of governance are going to be essential to deliver the kind of economic growth necessary to redeploy those people and large population countries have a natural advantage. The size of a country’s domestic consumer market is going to be more important than ever because the garment business is likely to experience a major near-shoring initiative as automation goes mainstream. 

It will also mean that the potential for customization, shorter times between design and a product hitting the market are all in the near future.

Softwear is a privately held company. Meanwhile Japanese listed Shima Seiki produces a range of sewing machines that can knit seamless garments. The share completed a lengthy base formation in September last year. It reported worse than expected earnings last week and pulled back sharply to suggest at least a pause is underway. A sustained move below the trend mean would be required to question medium-term scope for additional upside.