Sweden's Houdini to go digital with EON, YKK to drive circularity

The move is part of the company’s pledge to transition its entire ecosystem to 100 per cent circular by 2030, Houdini said in a joint press release.

Creating digital profiles for each of Houdini’s products so that they can be connected, managed and stewarded across lifecycles via the EON Product Cloud unlocks capacities through its ecosystem.

Connected garments lower the threshold to circular business models such as resale, rental, subscription, and recycling. It also enables the company to digitise and reinforce its relational business model, moving further from the transactional customer relationships defining retail. Turning the product into a communications channel, connected products open a direct and continuous connection between brand and customers. By simply touching their mobile phones to YKK’s NFC-enabled zipper pull on its One Parka, customers will instantly connect to the brand and can access curated use and care guides, service, support and opportunities to explore and co-create circular ways of life.

“Digitising our circular ecosystem, we are replacing silos with an interconnected system and transactions with relations— dismantling two of the biggest barriers for the circular transition. Just as our responsibility as a brand doesn’t end when we sell a product, the relationship with Houdini doesn’t end there—it continues through use, care, reuse and next life. Connecting our products, we aim to deliver a richer customer experience and foster long-term relationships with products, community and the planet,” said Jesper Danielsson, head of product, Houdini.

Houdini wants to demonstrate the important role of connected products in solving fashion’s biggest barriers to circular business model transformation—creating a measurable platform for increases in customer lifetime value and in revenue generated per item through digitisation. Houdini, EON and YKK have committed to sharing the processes and toolkit with the apparel industry, to encourage more brands to digitise products and create scalable systems for circular commerce.

EON is the first end-to-end platform ecosystem in fashion retail, and YKK introduces one of the first commercially viable solutions for durable and washable embedded physical solutions for digital enablement of connected apparel with its TouchLink zipper pull.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)