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The future of connecting to customers…
Matt Wellschlager (VP of Marketing of Ceros, a digital design platform for designers and marketers to create 
interactive digital experiences) sits with Pavan Bahl (OS Fashion), Rob Sanchez (Manufacture New York), and Marc Raco (Monkey Radio) during the FDMobile event March 24, 2015. Wellschlager touches on the importance of integrating the in store and online experiences and understanding holistically that the customer is one person who does many things. He discusses connecting vs. optimization and the group discusses that the fashion industry is a symbiosis of many components—is it just one big organism? And the movie “Minority Report” is referenced yet again.
Wellschlager reveals the carelessness of many brands online and their failure to create immersive brand experiences, and the importance of mimicking the brick and mortar brand experience online and creating connections with customers. A discussion about why creating experiences offers more impact and engagement, the dangers of technological boredom, why it matters to give customers what they want while avoiding online insignificance. Wellshclager shares the reality of the opportunity cost of time, how getting brands to wake up into the present is everything, and the importance of not being boring. Plus— Pavan’s “wearable technology” hair.
Next, Liza Kindred (Founder of Third Wave Fashion , Editor in Chief of Third Wave Magazine, and co-author of the upcoming The Third Wave of Commerce: How We Buy Now) steps up to the microphone to talk fashion expression and more. Kindred explores how the intersection of fashion and technology and wearable tech are the future, and how and “online” is merging with “offline”. Are physical stores changing but will never die? She discusses how the way technology shrinks the world and our need to make human connections both actually mean technology could make us more human, and that understanding sourcing and the effects on the people who made the goods can impact our sense of relationships with those people and with brands.
Kindred talks the fear that big brands can develop by simply not knowing their own supply chains, how wearable 
tech and connected devices may give us the ability to be better humans, what a heartbeat has to do with communicating who we are, and the inevitability of more function in designs as tech merges with fashion. And a fascinating discussion about the risks, new areas of liability and legal implications of untethering wearables—is the risk worth the payoff? Plus: problems with the black blazers, insufficient federated ontology, and the density of creativity on the coasts.
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