The company, which was backed by a consortium composed of Stella McCartney, Kering, Adidas and Lululemon and aimed at producing leather alternatives, worked with German tannery Heller-Leder on its production but has undergone two rounds of layoffs in 2023 so far.
CEO Dan Widmaier told Vogue Business: “We are not immune to the same macroeconomic pressures everyone else is facing, so we have paused Mylo to reassess what works and what will work in the future.”
The company was co-founded by Widmaier and David Breslauer in 2009 and has reportedly secured more than US$300 million in funding, but was not able to significantly scale up its production to a necessary level.
Widmaier told Vogue that the company’s product Mylo was “devastatingly close” to commercial scale.
While Mylo has stopped production, Bolt Threads will continue to develop B-silk Protein and Widmaier remains optimistic, telling Vogue: “Innovation is hard and expensive, especially for physical goods, but I hope the industry comes to embrace that because these challenges absolutely need to be solved.”
Source: Vogue Business
