How will blockchain affect the clothing industry?

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• March 09, 2023

Business has now become very competitive, and the growing demand for customer and need to establish a transparent system has given excessive rise use of technology. Companies are now getting accustomed to the digital reality and are using the same in their daily operations. When it comes to digital affinity, then different companies have a shown inclination towards particular types of technology. But, here we are focusing on the clothing industry. In the recent year, clothing industry has grown multiple folds. When it comes to technology, then one thing which has created a revolution is the Blokchcian technology. It has affected every business vertical and has proven to be useful in training the process and maintaining the transparency. Here I will be focusing on its application in the clothing industry or manufacturing industry.

Before heading further, let’s understand, what is blockchain and what makes it so useful for the clothing industry?

Blockchain quick view-

Blockchain was initially used with Bitcoin. However, specific features of this technology made it move out from the shell of transactions to various another field. It is a distributed ledger database which is visible to people in the network. Thus, any kind of change is visible to everyone in the system. This feature of Blockchain has made it applicable to various niches.

It maintains a constantly growing list of data records which is free from hacking and are entirely safe. The data are recorded in block structure where each block holds batches of individual transactions.

Another feature which makes Blockchain so accessible is its defining feature which cannot be modified and thus preventing data fudging, this data can be Bitcoin quantity, or it can be the origin of a piece of cloth.

Started off in 2008, Blockchain was initially used for the banking sector. However, its decentralized system, distributed ledger, and transparency have made this technology find application in the various field, and so is the clothing and fashion industry.

Blockchain use cases in Clothing industry-

Blockchain and fashion- Well, some might feel this as alien, the use of Blockchain in fashion is what we call, “Technology meets Creativity.”  Blockchain made its debut in the world of fashion in the Shanghai Fashion Week. Here Babyghost, a fashion label paired up with BitSE and VeChain. BitSE is a company that specializes in blockchain and VeChain is a cloud product management solution which is integrated with blockchain technology. Each clothing line was embedded with VeChain Chips having unique identity codes that were stored on Blockchain. This information is easily accessible by the customer on their smartphone, and thus, they can verify whether a product is genuine or not.

A similar approach can be used by the clothing companies and fashion houses to know whether a product is genuine or not. To sum it up, blockchain technology can be used to verify the clothing collection.

Knowing about the counterfeited clothing brands – This is the most significant concern in the market today. The big fashion houses and clothing brands spend a considerable sum of money to ensure that the counterfeited products get caught in the market, and it doesn’t affect their brand value. Despite this, there are cases of counterfeit which come across on the market. Apart from this, there is a need for a customer to know whether the product they are purchasing is original or not. With the help of microchips using blockchain, the customer can get to see where the particular clothing is genius or knockoff. Every piece of information is accessible via phone.

Transparency

Transpecrnacy is the key to establish successful customer relationships. With the help of blockchain technology, the customer can get to know the origin of the product, the conditions under which it was worked upon, etc. The more detailed information the customer has about the product, the more is the trust they have in the brand of clothing. With the help of blockchain, this can be achieved easily.

Conclusion

If the internet is the source of digital information, then blockchain is the digital medium of value. Although it is still at a starting stage, its application has garnered the eyes of many. The usefulness of blockchain technology in various fields cannot be ignored any further. As per estimates, by 2025, around 70 percent of the market will be dependent on blockchain directly or indirectly.