Smart Clothing Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Product Type (Outerwear, Innerwear), By Application (Sports & Fitness, Medical, Entertainment, Others), By Distribution Channel (Specialty Stores, Online Stores, Others) And Regional Forecast, 2024-2032

Smart clothing is becoming popular as these products provide an aesthetic and fashionable look to the user. Fitness enthusiasts largely prefer to use easily washable, sweat-resistant, and sensor-based fitness clothes such as t-shirts, head caps, and others as they can effectively track their fitness performance with such products. Clothes made up of color-changing fabrics such as photonic crystal fibers, and thermochromic composite fibers are popularly used by on-screen cinema artists to make a high-performing video shoot by wearing smart clothing.

However, smart clothes are equipped with delicate sensors, making it difficult for people to wash them. Therefore, companies provide smart clothing care solutions, including washing and dry cleaning of smart clothes to offer a customized clothing option. For instance, The Samsung Group launched a smart clothing care service named ‘AirDresser’ in the U.K. This service provides a smart cloth dry cleaning and washing service for people across the country.

Rising adoption of smart wearable devices such as smartwatches, clothes, glasses, body sensors, and others is expected to drive the market growth. Additionally, the emergence of IoT connected medical clothing is likely to drive the demand for such products. Growing sports and leisure activity trends among the global population have added impetus to the demand for such products.

Companies are developing highly innovative clothing products to provide smart & fashionable clothing solutions. This is likely to attract the users towards buying these products, which thereby drive the market growth. For instance, in February 2020, Decorte Future Industries, an intelligent clothing product company, invested USD 0.39 million to patent a futuristic exoskeleton clothing design, which allows the company to develop users’ body fit adaptive intelligent clothing products.

However, large necessities of the R&D investments to the companies in smart clothing development are anticipated to restrain the market growth. Additionally, the higher cost of such products is likely to hamper its demand among the lower-income group of the population.

Key Players Covered:

The prominent companies associated with the global smart clothing market are AiQ Smart Clothing Inc., Wearable Experiments Inc., Vulpes Electronics GmbH, Athos, Carre Technologies inc., SENSORIA, DuPont, Myontec, TORAY INDUSTRIES INC., KBS Fashion Group Limited, and others.

The global smart clothing market is segmented based on product type, application, distribution channel, and geography.

Based on the product type, the market is segmented into outerwear and innerwear. The outerwear segment is expected to hold a major share of the market due to the wide availability of various coloured, smart outerwear products such as jackets, pants, t-shirts, etc. This results in larger revenues from such a segment. Additionally, changing apparel fashion trends is likely to drive the revenues from such a segment.

The global market is segmented into sports & fitness, medical, entertainment, and others based on application. The Sports & fitness segment is anticipated to exhibit a significant share of the market due to the large demand for performance-based fitness tracking systems among the global population, resulting in larger revenues from such a segment. Additionally, growing indoor fitness trends among the global population is further driving the growth of such a segment.

Based on the distribution channel, the market is segmented into specialty stores, online stores, and others such as brand stores. The specialty stores’ segment is expected to hold a major share of the market as users can purchase various kinds of smart clothes from these stores. Additionally, users can make the trials of wearing the variety of smart clothes at these stores over to online stores, resulting in higher segmental revenues.

Regional Analysis:

The global smart clothing market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa by geography.

North American region is expected to hold a major share of the market due to the large consumption volume of the clothing and accessory items among the United States and Canada population. This results in the larger revenues of such products from this region. According to the data presented by the U.S. Department of Commerce, from November 2019 to November 2020, clothing and accessory products’ sales in the U.S. reached USD 166,084 million. Additionally, rising indoor fitness activity trends among the higher income group of the population is further driving the market growth in the region.

The fastest growth of the Asia Pacific region is attributed to the growing expansion of the prominent companies & retailers associated with smart clothing businesses in the country, such as India and China. This is likely to support the market growth in the region. For instance, in November 2020, Alibaba.com, a Chinese online retail giant, introduced its smart clothing manufacturing plant in Hangzhou, China, to enter into the smart clothes' offline business. Additionally, shifting consumer demand towards the usage of IoT-based connected devices is further driving the market growth in the region

Segmentation

Key Industry Developments:

• In February 2019, KBS Fashion Group Limited, a Chinese men’s casual wearables firm acquired Tribe, a smart clothing technology company to expand its AI-based smart clothing products’ portfolio in China. 


• In February 2018, Google LLC, a American technology giant partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. an American clothing company to enter into the business of producing the technology enabled jackets and jeans.