Dave Monahan is not really a jewelry person. “I wear my wedding ring,” says the president and CEO of wellness technology firm FitLinxx. But, he explains, “I’m wearing four wearables right now.”
Wearables, buzzy products like the Fitbit and Apple Watch, are without a doubt on the rise. But consumers don’t have to settle for geek-tastic designs anymore, evidenced by jewelry-industry convention JCK’s World of Wearables, where companies displayed their blinged-out, tech-assisted jewelry of the future last week at Mandalay Bay.
At the annual trade show, Monahan presented his company’s AmpStrip, a piece of wearable technology that monitors heart rate, skin temperature and other wellness-focused stats. The product doesn’t exactly resemble the gems and jewels dazzling the JCK convention floor, but AmpStrip is just the tip of the wearable iceberg.
Just ask Sonny Vu of Misfit. “There’s an aisle called wearable technology at Best Buy … now we’re talking wearables at a jewelry show.” The CEO and founder of the wearable and smart-home product company says Misfit set out to design something “wearable first and engineered after” with its Shine line, a collection of stunning watches that monitor calories burned, hours slept and more. Misfit also recently partnered with Swarovski to design a crystal-encrusted collection of products, so keep an eye out at the gym—water bottles aren’t the only fitness-focused essentials with ice in them anymore.
