When It Comes to Wearables, Women Decide Which Brands Go Big or Bust

By Tracey Wallace

Wearables haven’t exactly had an easy road to adoption. The tech industry has an unfortunate gender bias, which happens to conflict significantly with gender studies which show women are the first to adopt new technology.

That’s right: women are the earliest adopters. In fact, in Western countries, women use the Internet 17 percent more every month than their male counterparts. Women are also more likely to use their smartphones for absolutely everything, and a study by The NPD Group found that women (58 percent) outnumber men among prospective buyers of wearable technology.

“Women are the fastest growing and largest users on Skype, and that's mostly younger women,” says Intel researcher Genevieve Bell. “Women are the fastest category and biggest users on every social networking site with the exception of LinkedIn. Women are the vast majority owners of all Internet enabled devices – readers, health-care devices, GPS – that whole bundle of technology is mostly owned by women.”

In 2014, perhaps the biggest complaint about wearables was their lack of aesthetic qualities. In other words, both men and women liked using them, but for consistent wearability, women wanted more options, particularly more stylish ones.

And while multiple designers -- including Tory Burch, Ralph Lauren, Opening Ceremony, and Rebecca Minkoff -- stepped up to the task in years past, 2015 is poised to be the year that technology companies themselves give equal attention to both the function and style of their wearable products. At CES, the gadget industry’s annual extravaganza held in Las Vegas, fashionable wearables held center stage with other innovative technologies, namely the Internet of Things (IoT).

The IoT is gaining popularity based on use alone. Between wearables, beacons, and Bluetooth low energy, to name only a few of the most recent digital innovations, data is being created and collected no matter you’re online availability. In other words, thanks to these technologies, the offline and online worlds are about to merge.

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Sell wearables, market to women, increase your bottom line

Better yet, actual data supports this trending theory. During 2014’s holiday season, 10 percent of shoppers planned to purchase fitness trackers as gifts, making wearable activity trackers among the hottest Christmas gifts for two years running, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Bigcommerce’s recent "Ecommerce Report" also highlights a similar trend. The "health and outdoor recreation" category, which encompasses fitness trackers, grew 18 percent year-over-year in Q4, with the "computer and electronics" category, encompassing the second largest amount of wearables for sale, growing 41 percent in the same period. This high growth put both categories in the top five of the healthiest and most profitable industries in which to sell online.

In addition, the "lifestyle and home" and the "automotive and industrial" categories saw high growth, particularly due to the IoT, with new technologies like smart homes and smart cars becoming more and more popular.

In all, 2014 was a hard year for wearables. Google Glass made few strides, and smartwatches, while interesting, didn’t turn too many heads. Wearable trackers put their tech company makers in a tough spot, shining light on the gender inequalities in their workforces that are then reflected in design choices, leading to potential adoption or non-adoption outcomes.

With CES kicking off in 2015, and at least one major technology company, Intel, sharpening its focus on the wants and needs of the tech industry’s most underserved yet most important adoption audience, this may just be the year wearables and the IoT truly take off. After all, the newest offering in the wearables market geared toward developers who want to build their own wearable technology is aptly named Curie – after the pioneering physicist and chemist Marie Curie, the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize.

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