Avery Dennison and EVRYTHNG have announced a deal to connect 10 billion pieces of apparel over the next three years. They say they believe this is the largest ever number of IoT connected products in a single deal.
The partnership, between Fortune 500 packaging materials leader, Avery Dennison, a global leader in apparel and footwear branding, labelling and RFID solutions, and IoT Smart Products Platform pioneer EVRYTHNG, means that a minimum of 10 billion apparel and footwear products from some of the world’s largest fashion and performance brands will be ‘born’ with unique digital identities and data profiles in the cloud.
With the smartphone becoming the remote control for the digital world, consumers expect to interact with brands through digital means. The introduction of the Janela Smart Products Platform, powered by EVRYTHNG, enables the apparel and footwear industry to take this to a whole new level, and Avery Dennison can enable its customers’ products to be digitised at the point of manufacturing.
Better interaction with customers
Once connected to the Web, products can interact with smartphones to trigger applications and services that connect more intelligently with consumers.
Brands will become more interactive, providing personalized, real-time mobile experiences and content for each individual consumer and each item of clothing. Products will also become smarter, using real-time data analytics to tackle problems like product authentication for better brand protection and increased efficiency in supply chains.
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Many doors will be opened through IoT
Avery Dennison and EVRYTHNG suggest a number of examples of digital product applications:
- Product History: Data about product materials, manufacturing and distribution can deliver total transparency to consumers about where the product came from and how it was made.
- Loyalty Rewards: Consumers can interact with their products to unlock personalized digital content, services, offers and extras, or link to third-party apps for other rewards and benefits.
- Product Reordering: Consumers can interact with products by using their digital identities and their smartphones to reorder products they like or access similar products that they may want to purchase.
- Brand Protection: Brands can put stronger protection programs in place with item level digital authentication and real-time analytics, tackling the challenge of goods sold being counterfeit.
- Loss Prevention: A product that carries data about where and when it was purchased cannot fraudulently be returned, helping retailers address fraud that costs the industry billions of dollars globally each year.
- Personalised Recommendations: Consumers can access unique personalized content on their smartphones like personal styling suggestions, new season tips, health and fitness content and event invitations, which are triggered by the product and based on past purchases.
- Sustainability: Recycling becomes a lot easier for consumers and brands alike when a product can trigger specific information on what to do when it reaches its end-of-life, including how to up-cycle for a second use or how to find the nearest recycling centre.
Niall Murphy, Co-founder & CEO of EVRYTHNG told Internet of Business, “Now every product is capable of being born digital with software identities in the cloud, it’s essential that brands enter a new phase of competitive advantage by creating digital applications, experiences and analytics that come with these digitized products.
“Futurist and author Bruce Sterling once said that the IoT would mean we won’t have to hunt anxiously for our missing shoes in the morning, we’ll just Google them. With billions of apparel and footwear items now Born Digital, it’s imperative that brand designers conceptualise and realise product experiences that are both physical and digital at the same time.”
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