January 15, 2020 • 29 mins
Clothes serve many purposes. They protect and keep us comfortable; they allow us to express ourselves, dress for all occasions, and be part of the fashion trends "of the moment." But new advancements, in the next generation of 5G wireless networks, enable greater connectivity that could expand the "internet of things" to our wardrobe. In this episode, we hear from Paul Dillinger, Head of Global Product Innovation for Levi Strauss who is developing connected clothing; Paul Winsper, VP of Athlete Performance at Under Armour who is creating clothing that uses data to boost athletic performance; and Natasha Franck, Founder and CEO of the startup EON, who is leveraging smart chip technology to connect consumers to manufacturers to drive better sustainability and new customer experiences. Make sure to check out other episodes in this series featuring: Charlie Han from Microsoft’s HoloLens team and Diana Hu, Head of the Augmented Reality Platform at Niantic.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
On last week's episode, we discussed sports and gaming in
a connected future. Krishna Baghavatula, chief Technology Officer of the NBA,
shared how new technologies will increasing engagement, viewership, and enhanced
the fan experience. Diana who, head of the augmented reality
platform at Niantic, spoke about how augmented reality in mobile
gaming stands to revolutionize the gaming business, and Charlie Hahn
(00:25):
from Microsoft's Hollow Lens team discusses how they're developing hardware
to tie these advancements together. The clothes we've always warned
to make us warm and comfortable and now on the
verge of making us smarter and always connected. The next
(00:46):
generation of wireless innovation with five G will create new
opportunities for connected consumers and the ever changing landscape of
smart wearable technology. Thanks to support from Teamobile for Business Today,
we'll explore how advancements in five connectivity would enable innovations
in connected smart clothing and in turn shape the future
of retail fashion and athletic wear. The only thing we
(01:19):
know about the future for sure is that it's something
going to be a lot different than the present, and
so how do we as a purveyor of this well loved,
well known object, how do we make sure that we
are maintaining relevance both with the consumer and then also
with our supply chain. That's Paul Dillinger, head of Global
Product Innovation at Levi Strauss. Yes that Levi's like a
(01:41):
pay you may have in your closet. For the last
six years, Paul has been tasked with the job of
bringing Levies into the space of wearable tech. A designer
by trade pools now making connected clothing. In a scenario,
for example, where potentially all objects in the future are
going to be connected, you don't want to disrupt the
apple cart too much, but all the other appercuts around
(02:01):
you are just tumbling, and so it's about practicing agility
and making sure that we never become comfortable with the
status quo. That's a broadly applicable sentiment, but in this case,
Paul is talking about genes thinking about design innovation for
a company whose value is really rooted in authenticity. The
(02:21):
object may be static, but it exists in an industrial
infrastructure and industrial ecology that's extremely dynamic. The way it's made,
how it's consumed, who buys it, and how they wear
These are all variables that are considerably different than when
the object was first invented. Retail has changed dramatically in
just the last few decades. You can shop on the go,
(02:42):
purchase items with one swipe or tap of your phone,
and in the fashion industry, retail is adapting to technology
by literally weaving it into the fabric. It seems like
the opportunity with the Internet of Things is really about
taking the things that are already proven, things that we
know that we want, things that have been validated by
preference and by affection. Let them get better, improve them,
(03:06):
enable them, connect them, and and that's sort of the
tactic we took with our most current expression of wearable
technology and Levis, which is our collaboration with Google Project
to Car the Levice trucker jacket enabled with the card technology.
That is a discrete expression of technology. It's quiet. With
a Levice smart jacket, you can accept a phone call
or drop a pin by swiping at your sleeve. Sensors
(03:28):
are woven into the fabric, enabling a new kind of interface.
Engineers and designers like Paul creating garments that serve entirely
new purposes and just keeping us warm. Or looking stylish.
The lower latency and greater connectivity that five G will
enable could radically expand the Internet of things, and your
clothing is no exception. Wearable tech is moving far beyond
(03:51):
your wrist and into your shoes, shirts, and jackets. So
how is this technology changing the way we use and
shop for clothes? In this episode, we'll look at the
future of retail and how connected clothing is changing the
way we think about apparel. I'm as veloshin Welcome to
This Time Tomorrow, Karrot. I actually didn't know about the
(04:15):
Levis smart jacket before we started on this episode, but
I really like what Paul said. Advanced and technology don't
always have to be in the service of creating new
gadgets or even types of interaction. They can sometimes be
about making things we already love better. You know, people
have been talking about the Internet of Things IoT for
a very long time, but we are at this moment
(04:36):
where it's on the verge of coming together in a
really powerful way, which is enabled by better AI and
more data from the objects that we even where, which
is where five G could really play a key role.
That's right. In our first episode, we coined a new
formula five G plus AI equals IoT. And when we
think about things and what things could be made better
(04:58):
by being connected, retail and in particular clothing offer huge opportunities. Yeah,
and the IoT can be much bigger than smart TVs.
You know, as we build more robust wireless networks, the
Internet of things could expand, like even two items that
we don't think have an affinity for technology, like a
denim jacket or even sportswear. Later in this episode, we're
(05:21):
going to hear from another pool, Paul Winsper, whose director
of athletic performance that under Armor over there, they're creating
connected clothing that captures data to help drive performance. And
I spoke with Natasha Frank, who is the founder of
a company called Ion, and she has a very different
vision of what the future of retail looks like and
it involves something called the circular economy. Wow. Well, before
(05:43):
we get there, let's circle back to Paul Dlinger at Levi's,
because it turns out the aspiration for the smart jacket
is about much more than a one off product. In fact,
the goal is to create a more sustainable fashion system.
It happened to me yesterday where I just grabbed what
I thought was my my favorite jean jacket, threw it on, realized,
(06:04):
oh shoot, I've actually put on my card jacket. It
was at a glance indistinguishable from a conventional, you know,
ten year old jacket that I had. We've created an
amazing digital opportunity that can disappear into the Levi's assortment
so seamlessly by design that it makes it difficult to find.
I was surprised to learn this wasn't the first foray
(06:26):
into connected clothing for Levis. There was, you know, in
the late nineties, very early form of a connected jacket.
Looking back with hindsight of twenty years, it's quaint. I'm
proud that we were so bold as to go into
that space. But yeah, I could hold five MP three's.
The Levi Smart Jacket launched in TwixT and Paul was
the lead designer. Just like some of the first denim items,
(06:48):
it was built with a clear purpose, in this instance,
to keep people safe. It wasn't about integrating tactical interface
and little teeny tiny washable computers for the hell of it,
but it was to make people's daily commute on their
bike safer. Eyes up, eyes on the road, eyes at
the beautiful environment around you, instead of eyes on this
little tiny phone when you're traveling about twenty miles an
(07:10):
hour on a pretty dangerous, bumpy, pop hole ridden street
in San Francisco. And so this idea that a lot
of what we do on our phones is purely about
touch and not necessarily about visual feedback. A little bit
of haptic, a little vibration, maybe a little glow of
a light on the cuff of a garment to acknowledge
that a task has been understood and executed. Maybe we
could use this opportunity to build the interface into something familiar,
(07:34):
not between our eyes, our finger and this phone, but
really just a gesture and the garment that we would
already be wearing. Otherwise, when Paul talks about all these
capabilities of a jacket, like allowing you that you've left
your phone in a restaurant at you've left, it doesn't
make you think about clothing in a new light. And
so we started to narrow down this opportunity for interface
(07:55):
to just those abilities that were necessary for people who
are on a bike. So the idea that we were
taking a device that could do everything by putting in
the pocket and bluetoothing it through a garment to a
space on the left cuff that has been enabled for
touch interface, so that you're only doing those things that
are enabled through this technology and thereby increasing your safety
(08:15):
on your pike ride. The more exciting thing for me
is that six months after the jacket was first released,
we've been looking at how it was being used and
we were realizing that we've designed something great for the
week day urban and commuting cyclist, but I want them
to love by product seven days a week. So we
ended up thinking of what are the functions that could
enable this jacket to become your favorite weekend jacket, and
(08:37):
it was interface with Uber and Lift. It was making
this jacket a mechanism to manage your your ridesharing service.
And that new ability was introduced six months after the
garment first came to market. Now, I'm not promising that
jacket does everything right now, there's you know, upwards of
twenty distinct abilities and that's growing constantly. The is the
(08:58):
retail industry has been built around selling new products, but
one of the things that Pool has worked to achieve
is making sure that connected products are adaptable and essentially upgradeable,
that's something entirely new for the retail space. And instead
we were saying, the design you have is good sound,
but let's give you another ability. Let's give you fashion
in the form of digital improvement. So that overnight everyone
(09:20):
just got a little push notification saying, hey, check out
your jacket. It does something new, but also showed that
fashion doesn't necessarily have to be a new object, but
can be something as simple as new capabilities added to
a garment that's already in the closet. The true opportunity
for this kind of wearable technology as a platform rather
than as a gadget. It's starting to become evident because
(09:41):
two years on, when we've released the card version two,
all of those new abilities and upgrades were still pushed
out to the two year old jacket that was already
in the closet of the people who were early adopters.
So clothes become a kind of platform that enabled connectivity
not only to our devices, but to the brands that
created them. We could imagine new economies and new systems
(10:02):
of commerce that don't necessarily rely on creation of new objects.
And so I'd like people to think about the opportunity
for connected clothing and digital platforms embedded into garments as
one of the ways that we can approach a more
sustainable fashion system. If this is happening now, it doesn't
make you want to what might happen when networks become faster.
(10:25):
For what we're doing, speed is always better, More speed
better great, Yes, I think that's understood. More power is
also better. The more we're asking the garment to do,
and the more we're asking garments to collaborate with devices,
the more power we're needing. If the jackets talking to
the phone and doing stuff, can the gene be harvesting
(10:46):
the energy of walking or skipping or dancing or any
of the things that you know that we could be
capturing some of that value. I think what we all
need to do is get better at communicating the opportunity
and encouraging people to understand new values from the familiar objects,
and then eventually they're going to come to expect those
new values from the object. Karat Leavi smart jackets connect
(11:13):
to your phone by Bluetooth, and of course your phone
is connected to the wireless network. So it's fascinating to
think how the adoption of five G could enable even
more functions in connected clothing. One of our guests from
early in the series, Andrea Goldsmith of the Stanford Wires Lab,
talked about exactly this. Five G networks are being built
with the bandwidth to support many more devices, and advances
(11:35):
in low powered sensors could one day allow clothing to
speak directly to the network without needing to root through
the phone. Perhaps before long, we'll be able to leave
home without our phones, without this fear of being completely disconnected.
Our clothes could be the thing giving us access to
essential communication. I also find the idea of buying one
jacket that can be upgraded with software to be really innovative.
(11:58):
Paul points out that as connected products provide more functions,
they may become more relevant than owning a new physical product,
and that could help us break the fast fashion paradigm
that's been quite detrimental to the environment. We'll think about
our grandparents or even our parents who took things to
the repairs. When was the last week to repair? You know?
(12:19):
Now we're more likely to just buy something new. So
talking to Paul, it's really cool to think about an
alternative that could be right around the corner. So one
function of connected clothing is that it can make your
life easier or safer. Another is that it can improve
your performance by gathering data. And that's what I discussed
with Paul Winsberg at under Armor. I decided to try
(12:42):
and see if we could take what we know from
working at the highest level of professional sport and could
we democratize this and give it to everybody. Could we
take this knowledge and scientific principles and whether you're a
sixteen year old all wanting to make a varsity volleyball
team or a young kid in Brazil wanting to make
(13:05):
some kind of soccer team, is can we give you
the tools? Can we give you the edge to get
there faster? This Pool is the head of the Innovation
Lab at under Armor and an expert in athletic performance.
Over the course of his career, he's worked at the
highest level of professional sport, the Seattle Seahawks, that Toronto
Maple Leaves and Newcastle Football Club or soccer as we
(13:27):
call it over here, as well as with athletes like
Tom Brady and Steph Curry. Now at under Arma, Paul
works to create connected clothing that can use data to
boost athletic performance. We want to make athletes better. We
want to give people these tools and and just basically
make them aware that you know, good footwear and good
apparel and having smarter fabrics can enhance that journey and
(13:53):
give them relevant, contextualized data at the right time. We
spend a lot of time understanding consumer of journeys and
understanding how people are currently engaging in digital environments. What
Paul Winsburg is saying echoes what Paul Dillinger of Levis said.
Successfully integrating new technologies like five G into existing products
(14:15):
and industries starts with understanding user needs and at under
round them those users around the gamut from people like
Kara and me two people like Steph Curry, who are
you know, traveling across hundreds of time zones across the season,
training really hard. Obviously he's pushing his body two different
limits and new limits and has to find different ways
(14:37):
to adapt. But at the end of the day, it's
the It's the same for the general guy in the street.
You know. They get up early, they tend to family,
they do a full day's work, they travel that gets
stuck in traffic, they're stressed, and they're still having't the
fine time to exercise eat well, sleep well, so that
the challenges are the same you no matter whether you're
trying to win a m v P of the League
(14:59):
in the nb A or whether you're trying to just
perform and keep yourself healthy and well and being a
good parent or a good friend or a good husband
or whatever. So I see it is very much the
same with a ton of overlap. We expect a great
deal of our athletic clothes, but we don't typically think
of them as items that can increase our performance or productivity.
(15:20):
In talking to Pool, I realized that may be coming
in the future if brands can execute. You think about
apparel that's going to have to be washed again and
again and again. You think about how you're connected, and
all of a sudden, there's like a ton of friction
building to the experience. And unless we can actually sell
the consumer a real benefit of investing significant money in
(15:44):
a smart piece of apparel, it becomes really difficult. I
wanted to know more about how under Armur was making
clothing that has the potential to keep us healthier, and
that has a lot to do with data. You think
about when people interact with day data is what if
that data could be surprisingly relevant when you picked your
(16:05):
phone up and you go ha, as opposed to like,
and it's something that delights every time they open it
with this surprise and relevancy here. So it's kind of
taken the consumer into a place that doesn't aggravate and
agitate the daily manutua of the data that has to
be surprisingly relevant to the culture at that point in time.
(16:25):
And then there's the end of season review with all
of the data, which looks at the big trends across
the full season, where people go like wow. And that
to me is that moment is when you culminate all
of that data and pull it together as one big
data set, and then you compare and contrasted against millions
of other users and you start to look that's when
(16:47):
big data becomes really fun, and I mean fun. One
product under Arm has developed that will collect an analyzing
new data is the smart Shoe. We have a pretty
incredible powerful chip in our running shoes and we're very,
very proud of this chip and it's as accurate as
a really expensive run watch, and the battery dies after
(17:07):
the life of the cushioning platform within the shoe, and
we're just getting started understanding all of this amazing data
from stride length and cadence and all of this amazing
data to drive context back to a runner, and that
data can be very valuable for the wear of the
shoe if the shoe fits and the data is right.
(17:28):
Most people come into a fitness world with some kind
of goal, whether it's weight loss, or run the first
five k, or try and make some kind of team
if it's a more youth based athlete all whether it's
just about living a healthier, longer life. Data can help
really inform that journey. It can help you make better decisions.
I think it can help you understand are you doing
(17:51):
too much? Are you're not doing enough? So people have
this primal urge and need to be connected, and I
think that the whole fitness and performance based industry has
a big role to play in that is like connecting
people with the same physical emotional drivers. You know, how
can you just connect people with similar goals to relevant
(18:14):
information at that point in time? And I think there's
so much power when you get a group of people
creating a movement that is not led by a big
brand or a big corporation. I am excited about the
future state, But I think there's still so much to
unravel to get consumers to understand the right data at
(18:36):
the right time to help them on their particular journey.
The future with five G is coming today. T Mobile
is leading the five G charge with thirty billion dollars
invested in their network to deliver new capabilities, improved connectivity
(18:57):
and true mobility provided by an advanced network. Work from
T Mobile for Business could change the way we all
live and work. The five G era will take the
best technologies available today in the wireless space so that
you can offer new capabilities to your business customers. T
Mobile for Business knows that the future of business will
be powered by advancements in wireless networks. With these new
(19:19):
technologies opening the doors for better ways to get the
job done. Business is changing. Learn more at t Mobile
for Business dot com. Carrot. One of the things I
found really interesting about the conversation with Pool is how
much attention he pays to using data to create better
(19:40):
outcomes for uses. Yeah, and we live in the age
of big data, but our capacity as people to process
data and make it work for us is actually really limited,
and that's why advances in AI are exciting because with
a layer of interpretation, that data can actually help us
make better decisions. But as Paul told you, it's still
important to think about how and where that data is
(20:01):
actually served. Well. That's why a future five G networks
could play such an important role. One of the exciting
promises is so called edge computing. Currently, data has to
go all the way to the cloud to be processed,
but in the next generation of wireless it could be
processed locally on small cells to give actionable recommendations in
(20:21):
real time. We've already talked in this episode about how
the next generation of wireless technology could allow clothing to
connect directly to the network, and I wanted to learn
more about what that could mean, so I spoke to
Natasha Frank, who is the CEO of a startup called
Eon and they work with companies to add digital tags
to products, which allows retailers to maintain a relationship with
(20:43):
a consumer and the product after a point of sale.
Here's Natasha. I'm founder and CEO of a startup called Eon,
and we work with global brands and retailers to create
connected products and bring transparency to the entire product life cycle. Today,
(21:05):
when brands and retailers make a product, there is no
data in that product, and when that product goes out
the door, there's no way for that product to tell
you its story. And so when we look at the
world of connected products, every product has an identity and
that means that it's possible to one communicate about products,
(21:27):
and it's also possible for brands to connect with customers
through physical products. Natasha works with brands like Target and
Calvin Klein to help them track the life cycle of
a product. Eon supports something called the circular economy, So
how do they make sure that their products are being utilized,
are being resold, are being repaired, are being recycled. How
(21:50):
do they make sure that those materials that went into
making those products can come back into what we call
the circular economy and be reused to make new produ ducts.
It all starts with tracking the products after they've been sold.
So our f I D is basically a chip that's
in the hand tag of a product, and brands remove
that the moment they sell a product, so all that
(22:11):
data that identified a product is gone the moment you
sell it. The next gen of that is actually embedding
that data or that r f I D chip into
the physical product, into the textile itself, so that intelligence
doesn't stop at point of sale, but continues beyond point
of sale. We store that data in the cloud. So
now when a reseller or recycler wants to find out
(22:34):
the material content in order to recycle it, they can
scan it. In order for a consumer to upload a
product or their digital wardrobe, they can scan it. The
world na Tasha describes allows for all kinds of optimizations
for brands and consumers. Now that that data is in
the physical item, that item becomes what we call a
(22:56):
smart product. That item is able to communicate and also
take in data. That customer can put information about whether
they like the product, whether they didn't like the product,
whether this broke, whether they want a recommendation of something
that matches with that product. There could be the issue
of connected clothing and privacy, So I asked Natasha what
(23:17):
she thought about this. We're storing product data and not
customer data, so that's a super delicate balance. Um, we
don't identify the customer unless the customer wants to be
associated with the product, But really we're just holding data
about the product. According to Natasha, this product data also
offers opportunities to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.
(23:38):
You take natural resources, you make products, and you produce waste.
So that's what we call the linear model. So in
a circular modeled resources and materials and products are kept
constantly in use. So for me, it seemed that the
biggest barriers to circular economy was that there is no
way to identify products and materials after point of sale.
And so when we create a connected product, we also
(24:01):
say that we're creating an intelligent asset. We're creating a
product that has embedded intelligence that is essential from managing
that product and also bringing accountability to circular economy. Natasha's
vision provides a very different view of the retail space,
one that fully embraces the Internet of Things or IoT,
(24:22):
and that's another area we imagine will be transformed by
five G. We're creating connected products, so it's how do
these products speak quickly and efficiently to partners, and how
do we reduce the lag time of the connectivity of
these products and make a more seamless customer experience. So
the quicker that information can flow through, the more benefit
(24:43):
to the stakeholders that are using the platform and are
managing those products. If Natasha's vision is implemented on a
massive scale, it will likely be accelerated by the implementation
of five G and it creates a fundamentally different retail ecosystem.
The brands that we were quipped today are really interested
in shifting to circular economy business models. They want to
(25:05):
build what we would say is a three sixty relationship
with their customer where the customer uses the product, that
product comes back to them for service. Then ultimately that
cotton comes back and they make a new shirt out
of that cotton. So in a kind of future state,
we see that ubiquitous connectivity will enable industry to move
beyond selling products to services. So basically, connectivity enables brands
(25:31):
from just saying here's your shirt and you walk away,
to having that ongoing relationship and transitioning to service models
for their products. So ultimately, the rise of connectivity also
creates the rise of the ability to steward products and
manage products and materials more intelligently, so that what we
call closed loop vision of products requires connections between the
(25:56):
brand the customer and requires extending digital infrastructure. And so
once the plumbing is set up of data exchange, more
and more information can flow through Available now from my Heart.
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(26:16):
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(26:37):
These restless ones are in pursuit of bigger, better, smarter, stronger.
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Restless Ones themselves and dive deep into how they think
(26:57):
of five year Revolution could propel the business forward. The
Restless Ones is now available on the I Heart Radio
app or wherever you listen to podcasts. As this idea
of the circular economy was new to me, and it's
aligned with what Paul Dillinger talked about earlier, which is
(27:20):
getting the most use out of a product. Right, You
and I once spoke with Astro Teller, head of Google X,
about the possibilities that start to arise when we make
dumb objects smart. When we think about having all kinds
of everyday objects connected to a network and learning in
real time from the day to they create and each other,
it opens up all kinds of exciting avenues. Yeah, and
(27:40):
thinking specifically about retail, there are huge opportunities for brands
to disrupt the way we shop. If we can tell
a product that we like it and what we like
about it, that can inform everything from the product development
to product marketing. Right, and remember what Andrea Goldsmith said
in our first episode, if every object was connected to
widest network today, they will run a battery instantly because
(28:03):
of the power usage, not to mention crashing networks bandwidth. Right,
The low power sensors that five G could enable is
something that will allow this kind of widespread connected clothing
market to fully take shape and then expand. On this episode,
we've talked about how five G could usher in a
new age of connected products. Some of the most exciting
(28:24):
and transformative could be our cause. On the next episode,
we'll look at how autonomous vehicles and driving could be
enabled by future five G networks. I'm as velachen see
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(28:45):
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(29:06):
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On last week's episode, we discussed sports and gaming in
a connected future. Krishna Baghavatula, chief Technology Officer of the NBA,
shared how new technologies will increasing engagement, viewership, and enhanced
the fan experience. Diana who, head of the augmented reality
platform at Niantic, spoke about how augmented reality in mobile
gaming stands to revolutionize the gaming business, and Charlie Hahn
(00:25):
from Microsoft's Hollow Lens team discusses how they're developing hardware
to tie these advancements together. The clothes we've always warned
to make us warm and comfortable and now on the
verge of making us smarter and always connected. The next
(00:46):
generation of wireless innovation with five G will create new
opportunities for connected consumers and the ever changing landscape of
smart wearable technology. Thanks to support from Teamobile for Business Today,
we'll explore how advancements in five connectivity would enable innovations
in connected smart clothing and in turn shape the future
of retail fashion and athletic wear. The only thing we
(01:19):
know about the future for sure is that it's something
going to be a lot different than the present, and
so how do we as a purveyor of this well loved,
well known object, how do we make sure that we
are maintaining relevance both with the consumer and then also
with our supply chain. That's Paul Dillinger, head of Global
Product Innovation at Levi Strauss. Yes that Levi's like a
(01:41):
pay you may have in your closet. For the last
six years, Paul has been tasked with the job of
bringing Levies into the space of wearable tech. A designer
by trade pools now making connected clothing. In a scenario,
for example, where potentially all objects in the future are
going to be connected, you don't want to disrupt the
apple cart too much, but all the other appercuts around
(02:01):
you are just tumbling, and so it's about practicing agility
and making sure that we never become comfortable with the
status quo. That's a broadly applicable sentiment, but in this case,
Paul is talking about genes thinking about design innovation for
a company whose value is really rooted in authenticity. The
(02:21):
object may be static, but it exists in an industrial
infrastructure and industrial ecology that's extremely dynamic. The way it's made,
how it's consumed, who buys it, and how they wear
These are all variables that are considerably different than when
the object was first invented. Retail has changed dramatically in
just the last few decades. You can shop on the go,
(02:42):
purchase items with one swipe or tap of your phone,
and in the fashion industry, retail is adapting to technology
by literally weaving it into the fabric. It seems like
the opportunity with the Internet of Things is really about
taking the things that are already proven, things that we
know that we want, things that have been validated by
preference and by affection. Let them get better, improve them,
(03:06):
enable them, connect them, and and that's sort of the
tactic we took with our most current expression of wearable
technology and Levis, which is our collaboration with Google Project
to Car the Levice trucker jacket enabled with the card technology.
That is a discrete expression of technology. It's quiet. With
a Levice smart jacket, you can accept a phone call
or drop a pin by swiping at your sleeve. Sensors
(03:28):
are woven into the fabric, enabling a new kind of interface.
Engineers and designers like Paul creating garments that serve entirely
new purposes and just keeping us warm. Or looking stylish.
The lower latency and greater connectivity that five G will
enable could radically expand the Internet of things, and your
clothing is no exception. Wearable tech is moving far beyond
(03:51):
your wrist and into your shoes, shirts, and jackets. So
how is this technology changing the way we use and
shop for clothes? In this episode, we'll look at the
future of retail and how connected clothing is changing the
way we think about apparel. I'm as veloshin Welcome to
This Time Tomorrow, Karrot. I actually didn't know about the
(04:15):
Levis smart jacket before we started on this episode, but
I really like what Paul said. Advanced and technology don't
always have to be in the service of creating new
gadgets or even types of interaction. They can sometimes be
about making things we already love better. You know, people
have been talking about the Internet of Things IoT for
a very long time, but we are at this moment
(04:36):
where it's on the verge of coming together in a
really powerful way, which is enabled by better AI and
more data from the objects that we even where, which
is where five G could really play a key role.
That's right. In our first episode, we coined a new
formula five G plus AI equals IoT. And when we
think about things and what things could be made better
(04:58):
by being connected, retail and in particular clothing offer huge opportunities. Yeah,
and the IoT can be much bigger than smart TVs.
You know, as we build more robust wireless networks, the
Internet of things could expand, like even two items that
we don't think have an affinity for technology, like a
denim jacket or even sportswear. Later in this episode, we're
(05:21):
going to hear from another pool, Paul Winsper, whose director
of athletic performance that under Armor over there, they're creating
connected clothing that captures data to help drive performance. And
I spoke with Natasha Frank, who is the founder of
a company called Ion, and she has a very different
vision of what the future of retail looks like and
it involves something called the circular economy. Wow. Well, before
(05:43):
we get there, let's circle back to Paul Dlinger at Levi's,
because it turns out the aspiration for the smart jacket
is about much more than a one off product. In fact,
the goal is to create a more sustainable fashion system.
It happened to me yesterday where I just grabbed what
I thought was my my favorite jean jacket, threw it on, realized,
(06:04):
oh shoot, I've actually put on my card jacket. It
was at a glance indistinguishable from a conventional, you know,
ten year old jacket that I had. We've created an
amazing digital opportunity that can disappear into the Levi's assortment
so seamlessly by design that it makes it difficult to find.
I was surprised to learn this wasn't the first foray
(06:26):
into connected clothing for Levis. There was, you know, in
the late nineties, very early form of a connected jacket.
Looking back with hindsight of twenty years, it's quaint. I'm
proud that we were so bold as to go into
that space. But yeah, I could hold five MP three's.
The Levi Smart Jacket launched in TwixT and Paul was
the lead designer. Just like some of the first denim items,
(06:48):
it was built with a clear purpose, in this instance,
to keep people safe. It wasn't about integrating tactical interface
and little teeny tiny washable computers for the hell of it,
but it was to make people's daily commute on their
bike safer. Eyes up, eyes on the road, eyes at
the beautiful environment around you, instead of eyes on this
little tiny phone when you're traveling about twenty miles an
(07:10):
hour on a pretty dangerous, bumpy, pop hole ridden street
in San Francisco. And so this idea that a lot
of what we do on our phones is purely about
touch and not necessarily about visual feedback. A little bit
of haptic, a little vibration, maybe a little glow of
a light on the cuff of a garment to acknowledge
that a task has been understood and executed. Maybe we
could use this opportunity to build the interface into something familiar,
(07:34):
not between our eyes, our finger and this phone, but
really just a gesture and the garment that we would
already be wearing. Otherwise, when Paul talks about all these
capabilities of a jacket, like allowing you that you've left
your phone in a restaurant at you've left, it doesn't
make you think about clothing in a new light. And
so we started to narrow down this opportunity for interface
(07:55):
to just those abilities that were necessary for people who
are on a bike. So the idea that we were
taking a device that could do everything by putting in
the pocket and bluetoothing it through a garment to a
space on the left cuff that has been enabled for
touch interface, so that you're only doing those things that
are enabled through this technology and thereby increasing your safety
(08:15):
on your pike ride. The more exciting thing for me
is that six months after the jacket was first released,
we've been looking at how it was being used and
we were realizing that we've designed something great for the
week day urban and commuting cyclist, but I want them
to love by product seven days a week. So we
ended up thinking of what are the functions that could
enable this jacket to become your favorite weekend jacket, and
(08:37):
it was interface with Uber and Lift. It was making
this jacket a mechanism to manage your your ridesharing service.
And that new ability was introduced six months after the
garment first came to market. Now, I'm not promising that
jacket does everything right now, there's you know, upwards of
twenty distinct abilities and that's growing constantly. The is the
(08:58):
retail industry has been built around selling new products, but
one of the things that Pool has worked to achieve
is making sure that connected products are adaptable and essentially upgradeable,
that's something entirely new for the retail space. And instead
we were saying, the design you have is good sound,
but let's give you another ability. Let's give you fashion
in the form of digital improvement. So that overnight everyone
(09:20):
just got a little push notification saying, hey, check out
your jacket. It does something new, but also showed that
fashion doesn't necessarily have to be a new object, but
can be something as simple as new capabilities added to
a garment that's already in the closet. The true opportunity
for this kind of wearable technology as a platform rather
than as a gadget. It's starting to become evident because
(09:41):
two years on, when we've released the card version two,
all of those new abilities and upgrades were still pushed
out to the two year old jacket that was already
in the closet of the people who were early adopters.
So clothes become a kind of platform that enabled connectivity
not only to our devices, but to the brands that
created them. We could imagine new economies and new systems
(10:02):
of commerce that don't necessarily rely on creation of new objects.
And so I'd like people to think about the opportunity
for connected clothing and digital platforms embedded into garments as
one of the ways that we can approach a more
sustainable fashion system. If this is happening now, it doesn't
make you want to what might happen when networks become faster.
(10:25):
For what we're doing, speed is always better, More speed
better great, Yes, I think that's understood. More power is
also better. The more we're asking the garment to do,
and the more we're asking garments to collaborate with devices,
the more power we're needing. If the jackets talking to
the phone and doing stuff, can the gene be harvesting
(10:46):
the energy of walking or skipping or dancing or any
of the things that you know that we could be
capturing some of that value. I think what we all
need to do is get better at communicating the opportunity
and encouraging people to understand new values from the familiar objects,
and then eventually they're going to come to expect those
new values from the object. Karat Leavi smart jackets connect
(11:13):
to your phone by Bluetooth, and of course your phone
is connected to the wireless network. So it's fascinating to
think how the adoption of five G could enable even
more functions in connected clothing. One of our guests from
early in the series, Andrea Goldsmith of the Stanford Wires Lab,
talked about exactly this. Five G networks are being built
with the bandwidth to support many more devices, and advances
(11:35):
in low powered sensors could one day allow clothing to
speak directly to the network without needing to root through
the phone. Perhaps before long, we'll be able to leave
home without our phones, without this fear of being completely disconnected.
Our clothes could be the thing giving us access to
essential communication. I also find the idea of buying one
jacket that can be upgraded with software to be really innovative.
(11:58):
Paul points out that as connected products provide more functions,
they may become more relevant than owning a new physical product,
and that could help us break the fast fashion paradigm
that's been quite detrimental to the environment. We'll think about
our grandparents or even our parents who took things to
the repairs. When was the last week to repair? You know?
(12:19):
Now we're more likely to just buy something new. So
talking to Paul, it's really cool to think about an
alternative that could be right around the corner. So one
function of connected clothing is that it can make your
life easier or safer. Another is that it can improve
your performance by gathering data. And that's what I discussed
with Paul Winsberg at under Armor. I decided to try
(12:42):
and see if we could take what we know from
working at the highest level of professional sport and could
we democratize this and give it to everybody. Could we
take this knowledge and scientific principles and whether you're a
sixteen year old all wanting to make a varsity volleyball
team or a young kid in Brazil wanting to make
(13:05):
some kind of soccer team, is can we give you
the tools? Can we give you the edge to get
there faster? This Pool is the head of the Innovation
Lab at under Armor and an expert in athletic performance.
Over the course of his career, he's worked at the
highest level of professional sport, the Seattle Seahawks, that Toronto
Maple Leaves and Newcastle Football Club or soccer as we
(13:27):
call it over here, as well as with athletes like
Tom Brady and Steph Curry. Now at under Arma, Paul
works to create connected clothing that can use data to
boost athletic performance. We want to make athletes better. We
want to give people these tools and and just basically
make them aware that you know, good footwear and good
apparel and having smarter fabrics can enhance that journey and
(13:53):
give them relevant, contextualized data at the right time. We
spend a lot of time understanding consumer of journeys and
understanding how people are currently engaging in digital environments. What
Paul Winsburg is saying echoes what Paul Dillinger of Levis said.
Successfully integrating new technologies like five G into existing products
(14:15):
and industries starts with understanding user needs and at under
round them those users around the gamut from people like
Kara and me two people like Steph Curry, who are
you know, traveling across hundreds of time zones across the season,
training really hard. Obviously he's pushing his body two different
limits and new limits and has to find different ways
(14:37):
to adapt. But at the end of the day, it's
the It's the same for the general guy in the street.
You know. They get up early, they tend to family,
they do a full day's work, they travel that gets
stuck in traffic, they're stressed, and they're still having't the
fine time to exercise eat well, sleep well, so that
the challenges are the same you no matter whether you're
trying to win a m v P of the League
(14:59):
in the nb A or whether you're trying to just
perform and keep yourself healthy and well and being a
good parent or a good friend or a good husband
or whatever. So I see it is very much the
same with a ton of overlap. We expect a great
deal of our athletic clothes, but we don't typically think
of them as items that can increase our performance or productivity.
(15:20):
In talking to Pool, I realized that may be coming
in the future if brands can execute. You think about
apparel that's going to have to be washed again and
again and again. You think about how you're connected, and
all of a sudden, there's like a ton of friction
building to the experience. And unless we can actually sell
the consumer a real benefit of investing significant money in
(15:44):
a smart piece of apparel, it becomes really difficult. I
wanted to know more about how under Armur was making
clothing that has the potential to keep us healthier, and
that has a lot to do with data. You think
about when people interact with day data is what if
that data could be surprisingly relevant when you picked your
(16:05):
phone up and you go ha, as opposed to like,
and it's something that delights every time they open it
with this surprise and relevancy here. So it's kind of
taken the consumer into a place that doesn't aggravate and
agitate the daily manutua of the data that has to
be surprisingly relevant to the culture at that point in time.
(16:25):
And then there's the end of season review with all
of the data, which looks at the big trends across
the full season, where people go like wow. And that
to me is that moment is when you culminate all
of that data and pull it together as one big
data set, and then you compare and contrasted against millions
of other users and you start to look that's when
(16:47):
big data becomes really fun, and I mean fun. One
product under Arm has developed that will collect an analyzing
new data is the smart Shoe. We have a pretty
incredible powerful chip in our running shoes and we're very,
very proud of this chip and it's as accurate as
a really expensive run watch, and the battery dies after
(17:07):
the life of the cushioning platform within the shoe, and
we're just getting started understanding all of this amazing data
from stride length and cadence and all of this amazing
data to drive context back to a runner, and that
data can be very valuable for the wear of the
shoe if the shoe fits and the data is right.
(17:28):
Most people come into a fitness world with some kind
of goal, whether it's weight loss, or run the first
five k, or try and make some kind of team
if it's a more youth based athlete all whether it's
just about living a healthier, longer life. Data can help
really inform that journey. It can help you make better decisions.
I think it can help you understand are you doing
(17:51):
too much? Are you're not doing enough? So people have
this primal urge and need to be connected, and I
think that the whole fitness and performance based industry has
a big role to play in that is like connecting
people with the same physical emotional drivers. You know, how
can you just connect people with similar goals to relevant
(18:14):
information at that point in time? And I think there's
so much power when you get a group of people
creating a movement that is not led by a big
brand or a big corporation. I am excited about the
future state, But I think there's still so much to
unravel to get consumers to understand the right data at
(18:36):
the right time to help them on their particular journey.
The future with five G is coming today. T Mobile
is leading the five G charge with thirty billion dollars
invested in their network to deliver new capabilities, improved connectivity
(18:57):
and true mobility provided by an advanced network. Work from
T Mobile for Business could change the way we all
live and work. The five G era will take the
best technologies available today in the wireless space so that
you can offer new capabilities to your business customers. T
Mobile for Business knows that the future of business will
be powered by advancements in wireless networks. With these new
(19:19):
technologies opening the doors for better ways to get the
job done. Business is changing. Learn more at t Mobile
for Business dot com. Carrot. One of the things I
found really interesting about the conversation with Pool is how
much attention he pays to using data to create better
(19:40):
outcomes for uses. Yeah, and we live in the age
of big data, but our capacity as people to process
data and make it work for us is actually really limited,
and that's why advances in AI are exciting because with
a layer of interpretation, that data can actually help us
make better decisions. But as Paul told you, it's still
important to think about how and where that data is
(20:01):
actually served. Well. That's why a future five G networks
could play such an important role. One of the exciting
promises is so called edge computing. Currently, data has to
go all the way to the cloud to be processed,
but in the next generation of wireless it could be
processed locally on small cells to give actionable recommendations in
(20:21):
real time. We've already talked in this episode about how
the next generation of wireless technology could allow clothing to
connect directly to the network, and I wanted to learn
more about what that could mean, so I spoke to
Natasha Frank, who is the CEO of a startup called
Eon and they work with companies to add digital tags
to products, which allows retailers to maintain a relationship with
(20:43):
a consumer and the product after a point of sale.
Here's Natasha. I'm founder and CEO of a startup called Eon,
and we work with global brands and retailers to create
connected products and bring transparency to the entire product life cycle. Today,
(21:05):
when brands and retailers make a product, there is no
data in that product, and when that product goes out
the door, there's no way for that product to tell
you its story. And so when we look at the
world of connected products, every product has an identity and
that means that it's possible to one communicate about products,
(21:27):
and it's also possible for brands to connect with customers
through physical products. Natasha works with brands like Target and
Calvin Klein to help them track the life cycle of
a product. Eon supports something called the circular economy, So
how do they make sure that their products are being utilized,
are being resold, are being repaired, are being recycled. How
(21:50):
do they make sure that those materials that went into
making those products can come back into what we call
the circular economy and be reused to make new produ ducts.
It all starts with tracking the products after they've been sold.
So our f I D is basically a chip that's
in the hand tag of a product, and brands remove
that the moment they sell a product, so all that
(22:11):
data that identified a product is gone the moment you
sell it. The next gen of that is actually embedding
that data or that r f I D chip into
the physical product, into the textile itself, so that intelligence
doesn't stop at point of sale, but continues beyond point
of sale. We store that data in the cloud. So
now when a reseller or recycler wants to find out
(22:34):
the material content in order to recycle it, they can
scan it. In order for a consumer to upload a
product or their digital wardrobe, they can scan it. The
world na Tasha describes allows for all kinds of optimizations
for brands and consumers. Now that that data is in
the physical item, that item becomes what we call a
(22:56):
smart product. That item is able to communicate and also
take in data. That customer can put information about whether
they like the product, whether they didn't like the product,
whether this broke, whether they want a recommendation of something
that matches with that product. There could be the issue
of connected clothing and privacy, So I asked Natasha what
(23:17):
she thought about this. We're storing product data and not
customer data, so that's a super delicate balance. Um, we
don't identify the customer unless the customer wants to be
associated with the product, But really we're just holding data
about the product. According to Natasha, this product data also
offers opportunities to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.
(23:38):
You take natural resources, you make products, and you produce waste.
So that's what we call the linear model. So in
a circular modeled resources and materials and products are kept
constantly in use. So for me, it seemed that the
biggest barriers to circular economy was that there is no
way to identify products and materials after point of sale.
And so when we create a connected product, we also
(24:01):
say that we're creating an intelligent asset. We're creating a
product that has embedded intelligence that is essential from managing
that product and also bringing accountability to circular economy. Natasha's
vision provides a very different view of the retail space,
one that fully embraces the Internet of Things or IoT,
(24:22):
and that's another area we imagine will be transformed by
five G. We're creating connected products, so it's how do
these products speak quickly and efficiently to partners, and how
do we reduce the lag time of the connectivity of
these products and make a more seamless customer experience. So
the quicker that information can flow through, the more benefit
(24:43):
to the stakeholders that are using the platform and are
managing those products. If Natasha's vision is implemented on a
massive scale, it will likely be accelerated by the implementation
of five G and it creates a fundamentally different retail ecosystem.
The brands that we were quipped today are really interested
in shifting to circular economy business models. They want to
(25:05):
build what we would say is a three sixty relationship
with their customer where the customer uses the product, that
product comes back to them for service. Then ultimately that
cotton comes back and they make a new shirt out
of that cotton. So in a kind of future state,
we see that ubiquitous connectivity will enable industry to move
beyond selling products to services. So basically, connectivity enables brands
(25:31):
from just saying here's your shirt and you walk away,
to having that ongoing relationship and transitioning to service models
for their products. So ultimately, the rise of connectivity also
creates the rise of the ability to steward products and
manage products and materials more intelligently, so that what we
call closed loop vision of products requires connections between the
(25:56):
brand the customer and requires extending digital infrastructure. And so
once the plumbing is set up of data exchange, more
and more information can flow through Available now from my Heart.
A new series presented by Temobile for business, The Restless
(26:16):
Ones join host Johnson Strickland as he explores the upcoming
five Year Revolution and the business leaders who stand right
on the cutting edge. There are certain decision makers who
are restless. They know there is a better way to
get things done, and they're ready, curious and excited for
the next technological innovation to unlock their vision of the future.
(26:37):
These restless ones are in pursuit of bigger, better, smarter, stronger.
They seek new partners, new strategies, new processes. They pursue
innovative platforms and solutions to propel their teams, businesses, and
industries forward. In each episode, we'll learn more from the
Restless Ones themselves and dive deep into how they think
(26:57):
of five year Revolution could propel the business forward. The
Restless Ones is now available on the I Heart Radio
app or wherever you listen to podcasts. As this idea
of the circular economy was new to me, and it's
aligned with what Paul Dillinger talked about earlier, which is
(27:20):
getting the most use out of a product. Right, You
and I once spoke with Astro Teller, head of Google X,
about the possibilities that start to arise when we make
dumb objects smart. When we think about having all kinds
of everyday objects connected to a network and learning in
real time from the day to they create and each other,
it opens up all kinds of exciting avenues. Yeah, and
(27:40):
thinking specifically about retail, there are huge opportunities for brands
to disrupt the way we shop. If we can tell
a product that we like it and what we like
about it, that can inform everything from the product development
to product marketing. Right, and remember what Andrea Goldsmith said
in our first episode, if every object was connected to
widest network today, they will run a battery instantly because
(28:03):
of the power usage, not to mention crashing networks bandwidth. Right,
The low power sensors that five G could enable is
something that will allow this kind of widespread connected clothing
market to fully take shape and then expand. On this episode,
we've talked about how five G could usher in a
new age of connected products. Some of the most exciting
(28:24):
and transformative could be our cause. On the next episode,
we'll look at how autonomous vehicles and driving could be
enabled by future five G networks. I'm as velachen see
you next time. No matter what you're after, T Mobile
(28:45):
for Business is here with a network born mobile and
built from the ground up for the next wave of innovation,
from mobile broadband to IoT to workforce mobility, and everything
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(29:06):
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