Fashion Reveals Women as Early Adopters
…So Don’t Discount Us in Technology
In the technology industry, when startups are looking to target the “low-hanging fruit” — those early adopters who are willing to put up with high prices and poor performance in order to have the product “first,” — women are often overlooked. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the first generation of wearables: huge ugly smart watches, rubber and plastic fitness detecting bracelets, and Fitbits that get lost in the wash. Designed by and for men, despite the fact that family health decisions are made by women.
And yet if you even take a quick glance at the fashion industry, you’ll see what an amazing role women have always played as trend-setters, early adopters and leaders.
In the past fifty years, as fashion has gone from an industry dominated by a few Parisian couturiers and Milanese fashion houses that dictated trends six months in advance to a global, real-time industry that affects everyone from the affluent to the people of the street, women have continued to be the early adopters, a signal for how they behave in every industry — even technology.
Every mother knows how early her daughter develops a sense of fashion — first by copying mommy (did you ever try on your mother’s lipstick or high heels as a toddler?) and later by imitating peers. By the time they are in middle school, girls won’t wear anything their friends don’t like, and the names of trendy brands are ingrained in their brains.
People in the fashion industry have always known this, that’s why they’ve gone from dictating the trends in the 1950s to borrowing their inspirations from the crowds today. The growth and spread of brands like Forever 21, H&M and ZARA shows how even women without big budgets want to buy the runway lookbook styles in their local stores immediately.
Because fashion is such a big industry, it constantly studies itself. Here are some stats I bet you didn’t know:
By 2015, the global market for bridal wear (dresses you wear once, and the stuff that goes with them), is expected to be $57 billion.
The children’s wear market (clothes your kid outgrows in six months) will reach $186 billion this year.
In New York City, people spend $362 a month on clothes, the most in the country. The least, $131 a month, is spent by people in Tucson, Arizona (where people don’t need coats and boots).
In all, Americans spend $250,000,000,000 on fashion, including footwear, on which we spend $48 billion.
No wonder there are 19,300 people who have the job description “fashion designer.”
And there are 29,360 shoe stores in the US.
Globally, the fashion industry is a $1.2 trillion industry, the top brands of which are LVMH (a conglomerate luxury brand including Louis Vuitton, Moet, and Hennessy); H&M (the fastest of the fast fashion brands);Kering (a conglomerate of Pinault, Printemps and Redoute); the Gap, and Christian Dior.
In the fashion industry, women are the early adopters, the trend setters, and the big spenders, so don’t sell them short when you design wearables and other “high tech” products. After all, look what we did for Tumblr. I bet David Karp loves women these days.
