WORLD LEADERS IN WEARABLE TECH GET A JUMP ON $34-BILLION INDUSTRY
Like most farm kids, Shannon Hoover’s early learning was a hands-on affair.
“We would shear the sheep, we would carve the wool and then we’d spin it into yarn and make clothing with it,” he says with a proud smile. “I learned to use an old-timey spinning wheel when I was just 10 years old.”
The 43-year-old Calgarian’s life today, at least on the surface, couldn’t be further removed from his early one on a northern Alberta farm.
As one of the best known and most in-demand wearable tech innovators on the planet, Hoover spends much of his time on the road, speaking at events around the globe; in between, he’s staged runway shows in places like Shenzhen, New York and Rome, to the tune of more than 50 shows in the past few years.
Recently, Hoover and his team of design and tech specialists at MakeFashion (makefashion.ca) created what is called a “StitchKit,” which contains all the components needed to create fashions that meld electronics with clothing. The project was launched through a Kickstarter campaign, which reached 200 per cent of the sales goal long before its Jan. 26 deadline.
Such a high-tech focus seems like a world away from his very low-tech roots, but Hoover refers to chores like sheep shearing and fixing broken down farm equipment for good reason.
“The benefit of my background is that when there was a problem on the farm, you had to learn how to fix it,” he says. “You bring the same creative problem-solving skills to wearable tech.”
When he was in Hong Kong not long ago, Hoover saw someone using a spinning wheel, spinning conductive thread with other materials, to test how strong it could be. “They were using cutting-edge materials with ancient ones.”
Making his work understandable to this Luddite-like journalist doesn’t at all dissuade Hoover, who studied software engineering at the University of Alberta. He explains what he does with an almost child-like exuberance, his rapid-fire dialogue supplemented by videos on his computer that illustrate the dazzling works that come out of this marriage of fashion and technology.
In the Fuse33 Makerspace just off International Avenue in Calgary’s Forest Lawn neighbourhood — a maker space is a co-working one for craftspeople that usually offers shared access to such equipment as sewing machines, 3-D printers and laser cutters, for example — Hoover and his team spend their days creating and staying connected with an international community of wearable tech adherents.
If you’re still wondering what wearable tech is about, think everything from mother-daughter dresses that light up when they are near one another, to outfits that change their hues in response to environmental changes. They’re often one-of-akind artworks that incorporate into the fashion statement everything from EEG brain-sensing to projection mapping.
While Hoover’s team — which includes his designer wife Maria Elena Hoover and Teddy Seyed, who has a PhD in computer science from the University of Calgary — has created more than 60 of their own wearable tech garments since 2012, a big part of their business is introducing designers both at home and all over the world to such new technologies via designer-led workshops.
“We want to remove the artificial barriers between technology and design,” says Hoover, who with his team has gone into high schools and taught fashion students how to do things like 3-D model and laser cut. “Our goal was never to become a women and STEM project, but it has become that in a way because women are artificially kept away from technology.”
Along with such projects as the StitchKit, the Hoovers continue to put on events like Calgary’s annual Maker Faire, which in its first year in 2012 attracted more than 700 participants interested in everything from building robots to creating flashing costumes for cosplay events.
“Wearable tech is still in its infancy,” he says, noting that even the big corporate players like Google, its much-mocked Google Glass computer eyewear as Exhibit A, are still grappling with how to capitalize on what is expected to be a $34-billion industry by 2020.
“But I believe it will absolutely change the way we live our lives,” says a confident Hoover, who is positioning himself and his small Calgary company to be one of its pioneers. “It is nothing short of a step in the evolution of our species.”