There’s no doubt that our lives are slowly but surely being taken over by technology, with smartphones being able to track everything from how many steps we do in a day to the humidity of our homes and smart TVs revolutionising our Saturday night entertainment. But the ‘smart’ brand doesn’t stop there and its newest brainchild is trackable clothing. Tommy Jeans are the brains behind the new Tommy Jeans Xplore range, which is the first ever line of trackable clothing as they combine tech and fashion in an attempt to transform fashion marketing, advertising and research. Here I will give you a complete guide to trackable clothing and discuss what we think about fashion’s latest bizarre trend.
Through their newest range Tommy Jeans Xplore’ Tommy Jeans have created trackable clothing by implementing a smart tag into each product from their 23 piece range, which includes men’s, women’s and unisex items all at similar prices to items from their regular line. This means that when tracking is switched on, Tommy Jeans can track where and how many times the items from the range are being worn.
Each product from the range has an Awear Solutions’ Bluetooth low-energy smart tag embedded in it, connecting the product to an iOS app, which acts as an incentivised point platform. But if you just want a new Tommy Jeans hoody from the range without feeling like you’re being stalked, you can simply turn off tracking through the app.
Tommy Jeans have created this new smart line of fashion to create a way for them to understand how the consumer uses the product after it leaves the shops, such as how often the product is used and in which situations the item is worn. This newest range of innovative fashion will allow the brand to gain real-time market research on what consumers are wearing in the real world and they will be able to use the personalised information to create tailored advertisements for their customers. Also, through the adoption of a rewards system (see next point), Tommy Jeans are encouraging their customers to wear their products more often while out and about for rewards, which essentially acts as a modern way to get free advertising and create a micro-community of brand ambassadors.
Now, this is where it gets interesting! It may seem like a strange and slightly invasive concept to wear trackable clothing, but Tommy Jeans are attempting to eradicate these worries by offering up an exciting rewards system for their customers who purchase an item from the range. The rewards include gift cards, concert tickets, discount codes, access to exclusive brand events and so much more, and the more you wear the clothing out, the more rewards you will gain. You will also receive more rewards by passing selected US Tommy Jeans stores, so if you are a Tommy Jeans fan, investing in this range could be a great way to get something out of your shopping hobby.
A massive debate surrounding Tommy Jeans’s new trackable clothing line is the concern around whether this bizarre new trend is an invasion of our privacy and where fashion should draw the line. The fact of the matter is that our clothes now have the ability to monitor our activity and our whereabouts, which is a pretty concerning thing. But Tommy Jeans have emphasised the fact that if you want to turn off the tracker, you can easily do so via the app, but the downside to this is that you won’t be able to reap the benefits and rewards that come with being tracked. The brand has also ensured that any information retrieved by and stored on the chip is encrypted, however they did not clarify how much data exactly is collected from the consumer and passed back to the company.
So, has fashion taken it a bit too far this time with the creation fashion’s very own Pokemon Go? At the end of the day, the nature of the ever-changing fashion industry means that brands need to be innovative and are on a constant quest for newness to maintain interest and flourish in the industry so that they don’t fall behind. But smart clothing hasn’t just appeared out of nowhere.
We have seen brands such as Levi’s adopt the smart clothing trend by creating a smart denim jacket with Google which controls your smartphone through a stroke of the sleeve and Topshop who has created a range of products, including key rings and phone cases, in the past which connect to the customer’s credit/debit cards to enable contactless payments.
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