TECH FASHION MARKET NEEDS MORE MATURE DESIGNS
BY YARINA YAO
While people are still shocked by the 3D Printing technique which you can use to make something according to your design, 4D Printing has been already born to replace it! Additive manufacturing or 3D Printing is technology’s Middle Ages now. Today, it’s found in regular households after the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1,000. Developed as a collaboration between the Self-Assembly Lab, Stratasys and Autodesk, 4D Printing is a new process for printing customizable smart materials, including responsive objects, from water pipes to sneakers. Besides the fantastic design, is the business part truly worth it? Is the market making money? Let’s start from e-commence. The buying behavior is definitely a big change since online shopping appeared. From 2009 to 2014, online sales of luxury goods grew four times faster than offline sales. In 2014, almost the whole luxury market growth came from e-commence by reaching €14 billion, up 50 percent from 2013, according to a report by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm which predicts a “tipping point” in luxury e-commerce. The firm experts also said the e-commerce world would be potentially the world’s third largest luxury market after China and the US. The new digital marketing strategy won the market without a doubt.
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Developers beyond the labs, including MIT and Autodesk, are actually creating pieces rather than just concept talking. Various ideas about 4D tech are already established within the fashion world. 4D printing for clothes is an emerging way of production which involves printing three-dimensional objects that automatically transform from one shape to another. Let’s see how amazing it is! Apple Watch is a good case study. “Apple’s watch could be as revolutionary as the first clocks”, said by Nicholas Carr from Time Magazine. It was the first well-known tech fashion creation, was supposed to be the next magical product from the gadget maker. But not so fast, according to Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest in a note to clients. Recently, Hargreaves cut his forecast for Apple Watch sales in the current fiscal year from 11 million to 10.5 million. The analyst also says the company will sell just 21 million watches in 2017, down from the earlier 24 million estimate. |
Technology is growing crazily fast. To learn how to appropriately use high tech to enhance your brand in the fashion industry is very important. The example from e-commerce and Apple Watch showed some potential for success and fail. The marketing of business in tech fashion seems more mature than the products of tech fashion. Why? The answer is very easy. The products simply need to be redesigned better. We don’t say it’s bad that the sales are not that good now, but we say give this market a big chance to grow and develop in the future.