He hoped to see the technology applied to clothing and interior textiles and other similar areas.

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Some may remember Konarka, a Massachusetts-based company working on creating flexible thin-film solar that could be applied to everything from tent material to clothing to the roof of a bus.

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To achieve this, she applied her high standards to everything from clothing design to retailing.

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At Patagonia, which he founded in 1972, he's applied the same design philosophy to clothing products.

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Design teams work directly with clothing manufacturers to create private-label lines, avoiding the mark-up applied by apparel companies which normally serve as middlemen between retailers and manufacturers.

ECONOMIST: Retailing