Pretty soon, all apparel will come digitized in one form or another, and one new partnership will give smart clothing a sizable boost in the journey to the Internet of Things.
As part of a deal between packaging materials leader Avery Dennison and Internet of Things (IoT) Smart Products Platform pioneer Evrythng, 10 billion apparel and footwear products from leading performance brands will be “born” with digital identities and data profiles in the cloud over the next three years.
“With the smartphone becoming the remote control for the digital world, consumers expect to interact with brands through digital means,” the companies said in a co-statement.
Evrythng’s Janela Smart Products Platform provides digital identity and data management capabilities that allows Avery customers to have their goods digitized at the manufacturing stage.
“We can make apparel and footwear products smarter and enable them to participate in digital applications and services, helping to drive new consumer experiences, protect brands’ value, and provide supply chains with real-time analytics,” Avery Dennison’s president and chief operating officer, Mitch Butier, said.
This means, from the point of manufacture, garments and shoes can come outfitted with built-in product history like data about materials, manufacturing and distribution for total transparency for consumers to know the lifecycle of the goods they buy. The digital products could also allow for loyalty rewards, letting consumers interact with their product to unlock personalized content or offers, and could even allow consumers to use their smartphones for reorders or access to like goods.
With counterfeiting on the rise, built-in brand protection with item level digital authentication and real-time analytics could help brands tackle fakes.
Once connected to the web, products will be able to interact with smartphones to trigger applications and services that consumers can connect to. As such, brands will be more interactive and better able to provide personalized experiences for shoppers.
“The fact that at least 10 billion Avery Dennison RBIS products will be digitized at the point of manufacture is both a milestone in making the Internet of Things mainstream and a huge enabler for the apparel and footwear industry in particular,” Evrythng CEO and Co-Founder Niall Murphy said.