Fashtech: modular products, the big new innovation

When you look at the technology enhanced fashion market today you can see that it is still in its infancy. Brands are designing products around technology that is already available, created by tech companies and adapted into a fashion product.

Some consumers will buy these products, because of the novelty factor, but most won’t. We can see this mindset reflected in sales of these products and retailers' lack of enthusiasm for the technology-enhanced fashion category.

Consumers are smart. They know that when a totally new technology product comes out it’s a matter of six months to a year before a better version is launched. The early adopters will buy the product regardless because they want always to have the newest technology, but the general public will wait.

This buying pattern was created by Apple who, since the launch of the first iPhone, has managed to get consumers to upgrade their device annually with genius marketing. It’s no coincidence that there is an Apple dedicated site called “Cult of Mac”. But even the Apple effect doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to technology-enhanced fashion.

Fashion is very similar to technology when it comes to consumer buying habits. Fast fashion retailers like Primark and Zara have come to completely dominate the high street, offering low-cost clothing that won’t last but will allow consumers to buy a new outfit every month. They have also adopted much smarter inventory strategies with individual stores ordering stock, daily replenishments and new styles dropping weekly.

Trend-led consumers follow celebrities who have the resources to buy quality clothing on a regular basis. The biggest celebrities don’t even pay for the clothing. Consumers want to emulate this, at a fraction of the cost, and that has given rise to the fast fashion phenomenon.

You can’t knock the retailers for catering to consumer demand, that’s what capitalism is all about, but where does this leave us from an ecological standpoint? Where does all the unused clothing and technology end up? This need to constantly upgrade has created production processes and landfills that are destroying the environment. Surely one of the benefits of technology is that we can find a clever way around this?

Consumers can influence brands with their buying power but their primary concern is price and the brands (more specifically the investors) just want revenue to grow year on year. How can brands continue to grow if they don’t launch new products on a regular basis? How can consumers stay on trend without buying new products and what can be done with the “old” products besides dumping them?

At first glance, it would seem that this is an unbreakable cycle but maybe there is another way. Perhaps the real revolution of technology-enhanced fashion is going to be modular, customisable, upgradable products. What if every technology related product you bought, including fashion, could be upgraded by just replacing the relevant parts. What if these products were fully customisable, allowing consumers to stay on trend without buying new pieces? What if you could choose on a daily what features you wanted?

There are other benefits to this. The consumer only pays to upgrade the product in stages so, unlike with luxury products, brands can create a long lasting quality product without high upfront costs to the consumer. The risk of product redundancy is eliminated which means consumers will be more likely to buy a new innovative product. Technology companies are already doing this with software but perhaps it can be done with hardware too. We have already seen progress in this area with projects like Ara and Phonebloks so it’s not impossible.