StitchWorld Editorial Issue May 2019

‘Smart Garment’ is now being talked about a lot in the industry, the market of which is expected to reach US $ 4 billion by 2024 with 45 per cent CAGR, according to ABI Research. This growth of smart garments is outpacing other categories in the domain of wearable technologies. Although the current developments of such clothing are based more on performance-wear and winter sports category around Western Europe, very soon it will encompass the whole gamut of the wearable segment.

As garments are becoming smarter, the differentiating line between a traditional garment and a garment with a gadget is getting blurred. CES 2019, the world’s premier show for not only consumer technologies but also innovators and breakthrough technologies, presented a number of smart garments that caught the visitors’ attention.

Mas Holdings, one of the most respected garment manufacturers of south-east Asia, has shown the path of transformation from the role of a contract manufacturer to becoming a technology company in the garment domain. The writing on the wall is clear; if the garment industry does not start dabbling with technology, the technology companies will start dabbling in garment making. With this strong message coming across, StitchWorld is introducing a new category ‘Smart Garment’ from this issue onwards, wherein we will showcase/feature the interesting developments from around the world, where technology is being used intelligently to make garments smart. In the current issue, we have discussed in detail about the award-winning smart garment, KJUS HYDRO_BOT Ski Jacket, which is claimed to be the first-ever ski jacket with wearable technology.

Digitalisation is another trend emerging faster than ever in the global apparel industry with more and more retail brands as well as apparel manufacturers embracing it. Recently, my team visited Lectra’s VIP Fashion Event held at its headquarters in Bordeaux, France. As per my brief, the attendees were made to realise the significance of digitalisation in the era of ‘hyper-connected consumers’. My team also conducted an exclusive interview of Lectra’s CMO Céline Choussy who emphasised on the significance of AI, ML, IoT, MTM and Robotics and how these concepts have turned into reality through Lectra’s cutting-edge solutions. You will find a detailed coverage of the same in the present edition.

Besides, this issue also highlights the challenges in 3D simulation where the industry’s top stalwarts in 3D share their views as to why the concept is not feasible for all product categories and how the users are miscalculating the areas of strength that 3D body scanning method actually holds.

StitchWorld Editorial Issue April 2019

StitchWorld magazine has just turned sixteen, a sweet journey that started in 2003 with technology and management for the sewn product industry. Its journey in the last five years has been very eventful due to various pressing changes in the industry and the technology ecosystem. The industry has grown beyond our thinking, and keeping pace with the industry we have also expanded our coverage to include woven, knitted as well as stitchless products and technologies alongside our core sewn product industry.

While Industry 4.0 is poised to revolutionise the technology offerings for the industry with smart factory in the horizon, garments are also getting smarter with each year passing-by. We have been covering Industry 4.0 technology very extensively during the last two years with encouraging response from the industry.

 Smart garments are part of the wearable technology system that are showing promise to disrupt the garment manufacturing industry. The way athleisure has disrupted the performance wear category, smart garment will do the same to commodity wear as well as luxury segment.

According to Wearable Technology Group, the three most dominant wearable technologies sold to consumers in 2018 have been smart watches/fitness trackers, earbuds/headsets and smart patches. Nevertheless, the growth of smart garments (from being negligible in 2018) will be faster going ahead than other categories and is likely to integrate with smart patches to form the single biggest category by 2023.

In our teaser article on smart wearables in February 2019 issue, we had reported how garments are merging with gadgets and stealing the limelight in world’s premier showcase CSE 2019. Keeping pace with the future and offering value to our esteemed readers, we have decided to cover smart garments also as a regular feature in our magazine from now onwards. The lead article by Prof. Prabir Jana (NIFT, Delhi) talks about an interesting concept about the use of wearable technology in workplace for augmenting planning accuracy.

Apart from wearable technology, our focus on sustainability is also highlighted in an article based on ‘waterless’ dyeing technology which talks about the eminent names supplying this technology. In a bid to continue with the retail technology write ups, this issue also entails how chatbots and artificial intelligence tools, designed to convincingly stimulate human conversation, are making a difference in the apparel retail industry.

We hope you will enjoy our new foray into wearable technology and smart garments; also please write back to us with your suggestions as well as report any interesting developments happening in the smart garment space.