Annual General Meeting | Wearables and market opportunities

Wearables and market opportunities

During the General Meeting held on October 19, 2016, Vestechpro was delighted to welcome Mr. Vincent Sabourin, Ph. D., Professor of Business Strategy and Innovation Management and Project Director of OSCI ESG UQAM. Mr. Sabourin teaches in the Executive MBA programme (MBA in technology and MBA in Science and Technology). His work has been published in numerous specialist journals.

Based on his expertise in strategic management and innovation management, Professor Sabourin talked to guests about market opportunities in smart clothing (wearables). This topical issue has led the Observatoire des stratégies de commercialisation de l’innovation (OSCI) and Vestechpro to collaborate in order to provide strategic intelligence with the objective of identifying promising sectors in the wearables market, validate commercial development of products and processes with consumers and support the search for distributors for exports, principally to the American market.

Smart clothing is found mainly in consumer products, sales of which will reach $34 billion on the world market by 2020, more particularly in the health, wellbeing and entertainment sectors. This growth is based essentially on the high level of interest in wrist-worn devices which integrate infotainment apps. In order to maintain consumer interest in connected devices, companies will have to concentrate on integrating sensors into clothing.

Increasing demand for wearables will create a progressive segmentation of the clothing market into categories of connected clothing products organized according to their features which are designed for specific sectors of activity. Vestechpro supports and encourages this development strategy when working with its clients and various collaborators.

Vestechpro extends its thanks to Mr. Sabourin for his instructive presentation and his inspiring ideas.