An average shopper, in all probability, may never have thought of a ‘new-age’ smart textile until a decade (or two) ago that is responsive – as it tracks and monitors essential biovitals of body, mind, activities, sleep, medical and many more – with an icing on the cake of being adaptive – as it enables itself adjusting to these parameters on its own by identifying the posture and movement of the person.

With textile-based smart wearables capable of bringing about a major shift in the textile industry, the second edition of the South Asia’s premium sourcing event Apparel Sourcing Week – scheduled to be held on 1st and 2nd July, 2022 in Sheraton Grand Hotel, Bengaluru (India) – will have an extensive discussion in a dedicated seminar on ‘Smart Textile’. Besides, you will get to see several emerging start-ups at the event who are successfully amalgamating technology and textiles to build revolutionary products.

Though such textiles have existed since the 1990s, they were focused on meeting specific requirements of the military forces, and later to meet the demand in medical applications. However, they are now widely catering to special requirements in various fields like Sports, Fitness activities, as entertainment sources, with new areas being added regularly – all because more and more consumers of all age groups are becoming more healthconscious.

Further, owing to the increasing penetration rates of urbanisation, the demand for aesthetically appealing advanced feature products with the ability to better serve the consumers’ daily requirements has been leading to increased innovation in recent years and has been instrumental in driving the demand for the wearable market, especially the textile-based projects.

The buzz of smart wearables is rightly justified as the shipment volume of smart wearables globally is projected to reach 776.23 million units by 2026, registering a CAGR of 19.48 per cent during the period of 2021-2026. Whereas, the smart textile market is expected to grow from US $ 2.30 billion in 2021 to US $ 6.60 billion by 2026 at an impressive CAGR of 23.20 per cent.

As smart wearable in textile segment is expanding its footprints, the trend of investing in tech advancement is coming majorly from start-ups; while big textile conglomerates aren’t investing in this concept despite the fact that the market has gained a competitive edge in recent years.

Even companies like Google and Microsoft among many others have tried their hands out in this segment but no notable commercial success could ever be seen!

However, innovators such as Myant, Soliyarn, Vitali Wear, Xenoma, and B10NX among many others are revolutionising the smart textile industry as technology developed by them to enhance properties in fabrics/clothing have the ability to do many things that traditional textiles cannot! Some of these prominent smart textile companies are extensively covered by Apparel Resources.

Why is it so that textile-based smart products majorly come from start-ups? Industry experts cite reason, “The textile industry is little hard to disrupt. It is a traditional industry that caters to a commodity product. Established textile firms may have this belief – why you need a smart garment when commodity business is already booming! Hence no innovations are pressed on people from these companies.”

Start-ups are well aware of the fact that an amalgamation of ‘Textiles’ and ‘Technologists’ is essential to boost commercial success rates of smart textile industry; and innovation in textile can’t come from electronics people.