Smartwear Maker OMSignal Raises $10 Million

July 04, 2014
Written By Wearables.com

OMSignal has raised $10 Million in a Series A investment by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), aiming to push the company and the ‘Smart Shirt’ towards mass consumption. The Montreal-based company produces both Lifestyle and Fitness Smart Shirts, which are composed of sensors that can help track stress levels, breathing rates, and not to mention exercise activity.

The shirts are activated with a clip-on rechargeable device that works by collecting the data from the sensors in the shirt, sending it to a cloud, and then syncing back to a mobile app. Within this app, depending on the shirt worn, the user can find out an assortment of data and analytics on their lifestyle and fitness habits with the results sent in a report.

OM Signal Fitness Shortsleeve smart shirt. Source: OM Signal.

The Fitness shirt hosts a multitude of functions, and aims to improve upon metrics being tracked compared to fitness wearables already in the market. The shirt will help function as a trainer, compiling breathing rates, effort exhausted, and more into analytical reports that helps the user see where and how they can improve to reach their goals.

OM Lifestyle sleeveless smart shirt. Source: OM Signal.

The Lifestyle shirt works slightly differently, aiming to improve everyday health through the monitoring of stress, improvement of posture, as well as the ability to keep track of daily activity in all forms.

CEO Stephane Marceau plans to use the recent investment towards developing partnerships with fitness and sportswear apparel companies, as well as research and development. The investment comes at a crucial time for the young start-up, with several other companies including Intel entering the market for smart clothing.

The shirts are currently available for pre-order, with short sleeve shirts ($109), sleeveless ($79), and starter kits ($199) which includes the clip-on device, offered through their website.