Topshop tapped The Crated, a Brooklyn, New York-based company focused on integrating circuits into textiles, as the winner of its first-ever wearable technology program, Top Pitch.
The Arcadia-owned fashion retailer partnered with early stage investor L Marks to launch the boot camp-type platform earlier this summer, challenging start-ups to present wearable tech that’s fashionable, functional and affordable.
At the end of the program, participants had the opportunity to pitch their product to Arcadia chairman Sir Philip Green—and The Crated came up trumps.
Founded in 2013 by Madison Maxey and based out of the Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator, The Crated works on making smart fabrics a reality by applying stretchable and flexible conductive materials to textiles. The company’s core innovation, called InteliTex, features washable, patent-pending technology that can create soft, flexible and comfortable heated blazers for cold winters.
“We’re excited that big, high-street retailers like Topshop are seeing wearables as something that’s more than a gimmick but as a true and useful consumer product sector,” Maxey told Wareable. “Being part of the Top Pitch program allowed us to understand how Topshop is viewing the smart clothing market and how start-ups like ourselves can create tools and technologies that feed into that view.”
Sheena Sauvaire, Topshop’s global marketing and communications director, noted, “The Crated achieved the balance between style and function; its focus on textiles to create next generation smart clothing using heat technology is simple, with a clear purpose for the consumer.”
Excited to announce that we are the winners of #Toppitch #wearabletech program for fashion. Thank you @Topshop ! https://t.co/HeChfrA8wK
— The Crated (@TheCrated) August 22, 2016