Annie Gullingsrud, Chief Strategy Officer at Eon Group, is a globally recognized thought leader for circular fashion. Respected and trusted across the industry, Gullingsrud contributes to shaping the future of sustainable fashion. One of our leading innovators in the field, she joins us this week as part of our Circularity Webinar Series. Here, she shares how technology can be used to empower brands on their journey to circularity.
What is the Connected Products Economy?
The Connected Products Economy is the future of fashion retail. Driven by the “Internet of Things” (technology that connects objects in the physical world to the cloud), the Connected Products Economy is powered by physical products that are linked with an online profile that ensures information and data associated with that product stays with the product and can be accessed. This enables brands to turn simple products into intelligent, connected, continuously monetizable assets — in the same way that Airbnb, for instance, creates a digital profile for a person’s house, enabling them to unlock the monetization and utility of available space.
Similarly, in the Connected Products Economy, brands with digitized products are powering an end-to-end model for fashion retail by exchanging product data with customers and circular economy partners via a single cloud platform. This is breaking open whole new revenue streams by enabling everything from product resale, rental and recycling, to a previously unimaginable universe of customer services – from simple garment care or interactive styling all the way to gaming and bespoke real-time experiences, all designed to drive greater brand loyalty and engagement. In this way, the Connected Products Economy is also a dematerialized economy – one that helps brands generate revenue without having to produce a single new garment.
Why is EON an important resource for brands who are earnest about their circularity journey?
EON positions brands to take full advantage of the Connected Products Economy by equipping them with the technology, the network and the language they need to prosper. Most brands earnest about their circularity journey (not to mention leading tomorrow’s market) are grappling with how to close the very real gap between circularity in concept and circularity in practice. Legacy technology and lack of infrastructure, not to mention a retail model predicated on the first-time sale of first-time product (versus a true circular model that includes resale, rental, repair, peer-to-peer exchange and other product cycles we have yet to dream of), mean right now even the most committed, well-resourced brands are struggling to catch up – let alone integrate and adapt to a true circular model.
EON positions brands to do just that. When a brand digitizes products by using our EON Platform, it enables the exchange of data across a network of physical and non-physical models. This catapults them over the start-line and into the universe of connected product opportunities— from the generation of new direct customer engagement channels to the activation of true closed-loop pathways for the continuous tracking, managing and channeling of garments across resale, rental, repair-and-reuse, and other cycles that not only make a brand’s circularity commitments real, they also render them economically viable.
How do brands integrate Digital Identities into their product? Are there any product category limitations?
EON works with brands and designers to integrate digital identities into their products to create connected products, and enable unique customer experiences. This is accomplished by creating a unique digital profile for a product, then marrying that digital profile with a label/chip (e.g. NFC, RFID or QR code) attached to the physical product. The product can be scanned by consumers, who can access garment information and an array of interactive and/or real-time services, plus resale or recycling opportunities for the garment when it is no longer useful (which brands can incentivize). The same tag also enables cross-industry data exchange with circularity partners, from resellers to recyclers.
What type of data and/or information can a brand capture through Connected Products on the EON Platform?
At a single-garment level, brands can capture all data and information necessary for activating circularity including its ingredient materials, place of manufacture, date of sale, first point of sale price (as well as second, third, fourth point of sale price for resold garments). This can also provide an important third-party verification mechanism for authenticating branded garments presented for resale.
Equally important, Connected Products on the EON Platform enable brands to unlock unprecedented business intelligence for competitive advantage by giving them a never-before-seen view on real-time and over-time consumer preferences and product lifecycles. In other words, not only on what sells once, but what sells twice (or three times) and where.
Is there a size or type of brand that CircularID is best suited for?
Brands of any size or type can connect products to the EON Platform. From luxury labels to main street brands, the beauty of this platform is its agility and scalability. An exclusive luxury label can digitize an exclusive collection as easily as a multi-billion dollar brand can digitize millions of products. EON currently has products on the EON Platform across companies like Yoox, Net-a-Porter, Nanushka, and Gabriela Hearst, and more will be launching soon.
What changes do you see unfolding in the circularity x digital innovation space in the next few years?
In the context of fashion retail, we are fast approaching a new wave of digital transformation. Technology has reshaped retail twice before—once with the emergence of automated activities like order processing and bill paying, and again in the 90s with e-commerce, mobile and social media. Resale is playing a big role in pushing us over the brink of this next transformation. The resale market is poised to grow at 185 percent in the coming decade (compared to fast fashion at 20 percent) and premium brands are currently losing out to third-party resellers on their share of the revenue. Connected products are the solution—and will soon be the price of entry into the market. Once that happens, the real opportunities for circularity and digital innovation are exponential—there is an entire realm of as-yet-unexplored customer services waiting to be developed. As a result, brands will no longer think about their garments as a means of one-time profit but will instead approach them as a tool for building continuous, co-creative customer relationships.
