There was a session at the recent GeekWire Summit on how the IoT explosion will impact retail stores where underpants were discussed. It’s humous but very illustrative of how every item in every store, electronic or not, will be tracked in order to provide personalized shopping experiences and to bring massive efficiencies to the supply chain.
Below is a conversation with Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura and Impinj CEO Chris Diorio on the importance of all items, even underpants, being eventually connected to the internet:
Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura – What is the Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things is just one part of the puzzle and many things need to come together to make this puzzle happen. For example, in the retail space, product is very important, price is very important, but experience is very important too, so IOT is just one part of that puzzle.
Impinj CEO Chris Diorio – Connect Every Item in the World
Impinj builds products around a certain type of RFID technology called Rain for radio identification. Our vision is to connect every item in your everyday world to the Internet, everything. Every apparel item, every food item, just literally have connectivity for every item in the world. Impinj has connected more than 25 billion items to date and more than seven billion last year alone.
We connect those items wirelessly and what we’re focused on delivering is for each item is its unique identity, its location, and its authenticity, and in so doing extending the reach of the Internet to everybody and to everyday items. For us, the Internet of Things truly means things, not just connectivity for powered electronic devices, but for everything, and in so doing bring benefits to industries and consumers.
Impinj CEO Chris Diorio – Connecting Underpants?
When you go into the store and you want to find the ones that you want to buy in the right size and the right type if you’re like me you know exactly what you want to buy and when you go in the store you want it to be there. If it’s not there because the supply chain inefficiencies you’re probably not going to buy anything.
Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura – IoT and Underpants
The importance of IoT to underpants is to measure results and what IoT delivers in terms of results. One thing which is important when you think about Underpants is sex. To me, sex is defined by two metrics which is quantity and quality. What I discovered personally is, for example, IoT lights, beautiful lights.
The experience is you come in and you’re tired and you don’t want to think about sex and suddenly the whole room turns to your mood in soft blue and it genuinely works. If you measure IoT devices and lights and its correlation with quantity and quality of sex in underpants there is a very strong correlation. That’s an example of the impact of IoT to your underpants.
Impinj CEO Chris Diorio – Even Your Underpants
There’s a retailer that we work within France that if you are a consumer and you walk into the store, there’s a kiosk you basically where you decide what you want and when you click the item within 90 seconds the item comes down in a little tube like they used to have in the banks. A little tube comes down with your little capsule with exactly what you want to buy. Just check it out right there just walk out of the store, even if it’s your underpants.