About SmartX

According to various studies the market for smart textiles and wearables is expected to enter an exponential growth phase with estimates ranging from an expected total world market of nearly 1.5 bn US$ by 2021) to almost 3 bn US$ for the European market alone in 2024. (see full article and sources in Resources).The majority of the applications are concentrated in 4 main fields: Protection & Defence, Sports & Fitness, Industrial and Technical Applications (transportation, architecture) and Medical & Healthcare. These markets show a particularly  great  potential  for SMEs to offer customised and niche market solutions with interesting cross-sectoral value chain impact  and transfer potential across a broader range of specific  applications,  providing  scale-up  opportunities. These new value chains represent a market opportunity of €5.5 billion in 2026. However, in order to realize its full potential for the industry one key issue to solve is to fill the industrial manufacturing capacity gap that exists to meet end market demand for smart textile-based solutions.

SmartX unites eight clusters two Research and Technology Organisations (for specific technological assistance) and three innovation support entities (for professional project initiation, implementation and follow-up): together they reach out to over 60,000 SMEs all over Europe to build a dedicated community around SmartX.
This extremely large action range helps SmartX boost smart textiles innovation and develop an end-to-end smart textiles manufacturing value chain in Europe, in order to drive promising prototypes faster to market.
Building a strong sustainable community is the underlying long-term objective of the Programme, to foster interaction and collaboration within the European smart textile industry. A series of focused workshops have taken place throughout the EU and allow professionals to gain and share advanced knowledge and state-of-the-art technological solutions.
During the 3-year programme, three calls for funding have been organised to help support up to 40 projects with a total budget of €2.4 million.

The SmartX partners believe in a rigorous selection of a limited number of high-potential innovation projects tackling well-identified bottlenecks in the emerging smart textiles value chain. The involved SMEs are provided with a clear value chain framework and a customised multidisciplinary coaching approach.

Beyond that, we believe that providing the SMEs with a meaningful direct lump-sum funding amount which can be spent as they need to, on their most critical innovation requirements, provided by whatever knowledge and service provider, gives sufficient motivation and flexibility to attract the most ambitious and quirky SMEs and start-ups in this fast evolving market.