In this age of connected devices such as fitness trackers and smart watches, why not stay connected with clothing as well? Keeping that in mind, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger has produced a line of clothing that tracks and rewards users, and I’m no kidding, for wearing them.
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The Tommy Jeans Xplore range, which includes T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies, is embedded with a smart chip.
To get rewards, all you have to do is pair your T-shirt with an app and it’ll track you and reward you with points that can be converted into merchandise or concert tickets.
The clothing brand hopes it will create a “micro-community of brand ambassadors.”
But it will also provide the brand with loads of information on customers, information the customers may not want others to know.
Liron Slonimsk is the chief executive of technology partner Awear Solutions. She told fashion website WWD: “Never before has a brand been able to understand how the consumer truly uses the product after it leaves the store.”
Despite the usage of smart technology like the embedded Awear Solutions’ Bluetooth low energy smart tag, this can’t be called an innovation. It could, at best be described as a loyalty program that requires customers to overspend in order to join, according to technology website Techcrunch which described the idea as ‘ridiculous.’
The clothing line is available exclusively in the United States through the company’s website and its flagship store in New York
Prices for the range go from $29 (£22) to $99.
Tommy Hilfiger is no stranger to experiments with new ideas and technology. However, some of its prior developments were less absurd – like testing the use of Artificial Intelligence to forecast design trends, its smartwatches, or adaptive clothing for the disabled.
In 2017, Google partnered up with Levi’s to launch a high-tech smart jacket that connected to a wearer’s phone, enabling them to start or stop music, get directions or read text messages. The price tag was hefty at $360 and the item could only be washed only 10 times to preserve the embedded technology.
Wearable Technologies reported last month that a Brooklyn-based startup LOOMIA created a wearable device that can be stitched into the seams of clothing and connected to sensors. It gathers data as someone wears it. When the user wants to share their data, they can scan the TILE with their phone and submit the information to Storj. Brands will then pay users for their data in LOOMIA’s cryptocurrency tokens, created on the Ethereum blockchain.
