At-home fitness is more important than ever, with most consumers working out from home and companies like Mirror, Peloton, Whoop, and more raising the volume on the tech-meets-athletics discussion. Founded in 2013, Wearable X was their first, introducing people to the idea that hardware can improve performance by directly interacting with their body as they work out. Haptic technology (sometimes called kinaesthetic communication), is any technology that can create an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. Wearable X makes athletic clothes with haptics built-in, to physically cue and guide the wearer through an optimal yoga flow. Think of it as an Iron Man suit for your sun salutation. And yes, they are machine washable!

We talked to founder and CEO Billie Whitehouse about how Wearable X sprung out of her work with a condom company of all things, and her vision for the brand after 7 years of growth.

“Touch is one of those extremely interesting senses that we have. It’s one of the fastest reaction times - we react faster to touch than we do sound,” Billie said.

Billie grew up in Australia, with parents who have backgrounds in the design and athletics industries. She characterized herself as a highly entrepreneurial child, facilitating raffles for small objects and drumming up money however she could. Her teenage years were filled with jobs coaching sports, everything from softball to hockey to cricket. Billie’s undergraduate studies in design and more in-depth graduate program in Italy set her up to enter the design world through her mother’s practice.

“I was working at my mother’s design business and got a strange message to my personal email saying ‘hey, we’re interested in speaking to you’,” Billie said. “Like with many agencies, you have your first call in October and they don’t reach back out until February and they’re saying ‘great we want to start tomorrow’!”

That agency was Havas Creative, who tapped Billie to concept and build Funderwear, an experimental line of haptic underwear in partnership with condom brand Durex. She worked directly with the agency and a team of designers, software engineers, and apparel manufacturers to build out the product line that lived under the Durex name. The Funderwear products allowed partners to communicate touch with each other via wearable tech connected to a mobile app. Fun indeed.

*Founder, Billie Whitehouse above. Original image credited to Refinery29.*

The Aha Moment

Off the back of the success of the Funderwear project, Billie set out to start Wearable X, which officially kicked off in 2013. The company was originally bootstrapped and has since brought on strategic investors. They began with in-depth research and development on their intended segment: yoga.

“We had a huge community of yoga instructors and participants come into the office and test the product. The reason I personally wanted this product to exist is because I wasn’t very good at yoga and I wanted that personal attention,” Billie said.

Currently, the Wearable X products offer what Billie describes as an at-home yoga experience, with leggings that provide posture monitoring and vibrational guidance. Legging pants are equipped with five different accelerometers that measure the body’s movement and positioning. Audio instructions from the Wearable X app and haptic sensations from the garment guide the wearer into a series of yoga poses.

“As you move through the different steps to get into a pose, you feel and hear sensations to guide you. At the end of each movement we use IMU data to understand if you actually made it into the pose. We let you know if you made it, or if you should go back and try again,” Billie said.

The course is less of a traditional vinyasa flow and more of a focused, instructional practice intended to ensure bodily alignment and true completion of each pose.

“There are 30 different poses that you work through, and it’s much a slower approach to work on poses diligently. It’s not about learning them; it’s about truly understanding the pose.”

“Our big vision is to always design products that help you connect to how you feel. I think that covers multiple layers of feeling. Whether you’re feeling and understanding your body, feeling or understanding your loved ones, or connecting with your environment, all three of those are the three pillars that are the most important to us.”

The Challenges

Wearable X was first to market in the wearable athletic tech category, especially thinking direct-to-consumer.

“There was a challenge there, being early in the market and the first people communicating with the customer,” Billie said. “There were technical challenges - washability was super hard to achieve. [We spent time on] the ergonomics of how and where you add these pieces of hardware.”

Marketing Highlights

Billie has an acute understanding of what Wearable X’s best sales channels are. The highest conversion rates come when Wearable X gets press in publications like Refinery 29 and Business Insider.

“Those are our highest converting audiences – it’s the at-home community, ages between 28-48,” Billie said. “Then we have a huge interest in our products which are also B2B. The Durex partnership, Fox Sports, Oakley.”

As for what’s on the horizon, Billie keeps her cards close to the haptically-enhanced vest. With the kind of tech Wearable X builds, it makes sense that projects need to stay in stealth mode for a while. We see huge potential for wearable tech in the realms of physical therapy, wellness, healthy work environments, and posture.

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“We have exciting partnerships [in the works], but they are products that won’t be out for another two years,” Billie said. “We want to build technology to help us feel more human.”

The Advice

Billie is a founder truly paving a new path in a new space. We got her advice on how to face your entrepreneurship fears:

You’re going to get a lot of nos - sometimes not everyone knows best and you have to push through and believe in your vision for a product.
You have to have a product in the market to know how your customer is going to use it. Hypothesizing can only take you so far.
Honor your mentors and the time that you have with them.
Don’t take sh*t from anybody!

Looking to improve your yoga skills and get the cutting edge of wearable tech? Check out Wearable X and their Nadi X leggings.

Photo courtesy of Wearable X.

Written by Kendall Embs.