865 Fest spotlight: Fibarcode’s Brian Iezzi on building ‘the thread that is read’
Fibarcode is labeling reimagined. Iezzi's permanent textile labels offer trust, traceability and sustainable lifecycle management.
Sustainability has become a popular talking point in the fashion industry, and thrifting and secondhand sourcing have surged as more shoppers opt out of fast fashion. But the movement runs into a basic problem: Once a label is gone, so is the ability to trust, trace or responsibly manage a garment’s materials at the end of its life. Brian Iezzi, founder of Fibarcode, is building a permanent textile label, “the thread that is read,” to fix that.
The company was part of the 2024 Innovation Crossroads cohort, and Teknovation has followed its progress through several milestones, including pitching at the 2026 LEEP Demo Day, partnering with UTK marketing students to hone their brand and more. As Iezzi prepares to pitch at 865 Fest, here’s a refresh on the company:
Q: Where did the idea for Fibarcode come from?
I’m a textile engineer by training. I worked in yarn and fabric manufacturing in North Carolina and up in Delaware. I got into textiles because that’s where a lot of the infrastructure was in North Carolina when I was growing up. I saw that for the path forward, we needed to innovate to be competitive. I did my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, and that’s where I developed the initial concept back in 2021. My brother also works in the industry — he’s head of production at a company that takes in used textiles, breaks them down and makes high-quality new fibers out of them. Their challenge is that as people send them clothing to recycle, there’s often no information associated with it. It takes them a lot of time to figure out whether they can actually recycle it, or whether it has a weird chemical or dye on it. I asked him, ‘Why don’t you just read the label?’ He said, ‘They’re never there.’ I started digging into reports showing that of 10,000 items scanned, 40% didn’t have labels. There was clearly a labeling problem, and we haven’t really changed our labels in 70 years. We needed a hardware solution, so I took my background in yarn and fabric manufacturing and thought of something that goes around people cutting off the hang tag and the internal tag.
Q: How does the tag get read?
By actually embedding information via a fiber directly in the item during the manufacturing process. We have a handheld system as well as a semi-portable benchtop system. Depending on the use case, you log into our mobile application or desktop portal and scan the item, which has the fiber embedded in it, and it pops up with the information that was loaded. So if you’re a manufacturer, you put the information in going out, and then your reverse logistics partner — the person sorting things at the end — will have access to that same information. We’re working with global standards organizations to make sure that information transfers. It’s pretty well known at this point how to do that; it’s just making sure the hardware is there to get it to end of use.
Q: What brought you to Knoxville?
Fibarcode started in 2024 and came to Knoxville through the Innovation Crossroads program. That’s been transformative for us. Before this, I was working full time in an R&D position at a yarn manufacturer here in the U.S., and like many entrepreneurs, this was a side hustle. I was working on it nights and weekends. Without Innovation Crossroads, I wouldn’t have been able to leave and pursue this full time. It’s given us two years and the ability to grow our team, get facilities in place, get funding in place, and it’s been amazing. Now, we’re based at the UT Research Park, at the Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing. The Spark Incubator has been an awesome partner for us, and we also now have a facility in Raleigh, North Carolina. Knoxville is going to be R&D, and Raleigh is going to be more about production.
Q: What’s new since our last feature?
We’re working on our first pilot right now. That’s been amazing for us. We’ve actually gotten to put our fiber into a potential customer’s product, send a scanning system and get feedback on it. It’s a really compelling use case, because this customer is also in the circular economy. There’s a lot of good synergy there with what we’ve been developing at Fibarcode. That’s been hugely validating for us, because it went from ‘I think this could be cool and could help’ to being one part of the many things that need to happen to change how we’ve been manufacturing things for the last 200 years. On top of that, we’ve been able to build an awesome team. It was just me. Now, we have three full-time employees. We had six interns over the past year. We’ve also raised a pretty significant amount of non-dilutive funding from the federal government and state government here in Tennessee, plus other states where we have activities.
Q: Looking ahead, what does success look like?
There’s a piece of regulation going into effect in Europe in the next year that requires a digital product passport. They’ve recognized the same challenge: Consumers need to know what’s going into their products at a deeper level so they can make good decisions about what they’re buying, and that information needs to get to end of use. If within three years we could be one of the standard methods — one that’s verified, with a stamp of approval, that brands and manufacturers can integrate into their products to help make sure they’re compliant with that regulation — that would be huge for us. There are efforts here in the U.S. too. The American Apparel and Footwear Association has been pushing for digital labeling, and California just passed a pretty significant bill requiring responsible end-of-use practices for clothing. There’s a lot of momentum in this direction, and if we can be part of that standard selection, that’s the goal.
Q: What do you want people to know ahead of your 865 Fest pitch?
Knoxville has been our first home as a company. After two years here, the opportunity to present what we’ve been working on to a lot of the folks in the room who have been really supportive of us — and to people who might not know us yet — means a lot. I want to share how impactful and encouraging and supportive this community has been, but also show that we’ve already made an impact here: hiring people, being part of the local incubator system. We’re excited to stay engaged.
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