Hey, My Jacket Rocks!

Get ready. Soon it may be common for clothing to be wired for sound. Rather, it seems like this is something aimed for kids, so for those of you who are parents or grandparents, get ready to say: "Turn your hat off!" "Turn down that jacket!"

All joking aside, CNET reported today that Motorola (NYSE: MOT) plans to pump music into snowboarding gear (hats, coats, and such) with the help of apparel provider Burton. These "extreme" articles of clothing will use Bluetooth wireless technology in order to rig clothing with tunes -- they'll allow users to toggle between cell phones and music.

Meanwhile, Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick Gap (Nasdaq: GPS) has had the same bright idea, with its fleece jacket for kids that sports a radio feature. (Before Christmas, it retailed for $68, but it can now be had for $39.99.)

Hmm. For starters, it's hard to imagine that shoppers -- even kids -- would go nuts for a piece of wearable radio technology that, for most, is wearable for only a few months of the year. And it's not exactly feasible for pieces of apparel for other seasons, seeing how most of us are big fans of wearing clean clothes every day.     

The current mania over Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPod probably convinces some companies that any old music device aimed at youth (er, and the young at heart) should be a virtual guarantee of success. Oakley (NYSE: OO) recently released its Oakley Thump MP3-playing sunglasses (outlandishly expensive at $395 for the 128-MB version). I'm personally curious how successful that product turned out to be.

Regardless of the cool factor of a tuneful jacket, I'm not sure I'd consider this a Rule Breaking proposition. In the end, it's still just portable music, something that has been around for a good long time. After all, just think way back to when Sony (NYSE: SNE) introduced the Walkman, around about the time a young Duran Duran first began to cause screams, seizures, and scary hairstyles in schoolgirls everywhere.

Meanwhile, as far as portable music goes, the iPod is still officially a craze, and geez, it has its own clothes (or at the very least, accessories), for goodness' sake. And this article about Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) puts the idea of wearable technology more firmly into rule breaking territory, boldly going where no one has gone before (although, probably giving some people a case of the creeps).

As much as we are always looking for opportunities, MP3-rigged jackets and such sound to me more gimmicky than groundbreaking. While these developments are interesting, those who have invested in the companies launching these concepts will likely be able to shrug them off as last year's fashion, not next year's craze.  

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Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.