When it comes to smart apparel, there are many fashion brands that have done it right. Nike launched its immersive NBA jerseys. Levi’s partnered with Google for its smart jacket. But we can’t help but scratch our heads at Tommy Hilfiger’s new smart apparel venture.
According to TechCrunch, the company launched a new line of men’s and women’s clothing called Tommy Jeans Xplore. It comes with smart-chip embedded technology, so customers can connected their new smart apparel to the Tommy Jeans Xplore iOS app via Bluetooth. Once connected, wearers get points for donning their Tommy Hilfiger threads, and they also get points for completing challenges, like walking around and finding the Tommy-branded icons on the app’s map. In other words, it’s like Pokemon Go, but without all the cool parts.
Once you have enough points, you can redeem them for gift cards, signed merchandise, and clothing items from the Tommy Hilfiger archives.
While a reward system is cool, a company certainly does not have to launch an entire line of smart apparel just to get prospective customers to buy a sweatshirt. Smart apparel needs to fit a need or solve a problem, and this apparel does neither. We think this is a marketing tactic gone too far, but we’ll see if it’s a successful campaign for the company.
