Seth Casden
Co-founder and CEO Hologenix LLC - CELLIANT
Revolutionising wellness with responsive textiles
Hologenix is a materials science company producing innovative responsive textile products that energise all aspects of life — home, work and play. CELLIANT—its flagship product—is a proprietary blend of naturally occurring minerals that capture and convert body heat into infrared energy. The infrared is reflected back into the body and is clinically proven to increase local circulation and cellular oxygenation which causes a number of benefits, including more energy, endurance, strength, stamina, comfort, quicker recovery, and better sleep. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Hologenix Co-founder and CEO Seth Casden explains the science behind CELLIANT and the company’s vision for the future.
What do you think will be the biggest challenges and opportunities for businesses in the next few years?
The textile industry is fully matured. That said, I think its biggest opportunity is also its biggest challenge. That being, how can brands differentiate themselves to capture both a larger market share and a higher price point? Given that this is an established and crowded industry that is creating products that are foundational to people’s lives, this is more difficult than it may seem. One major shift to achieve differentiation is for brands to infuse various kinds of technology into their textile products. These technologies provide added value to the end consumer by having a textile product that, due to virtue of the technology, does more than the basic function of the fabric.
In some ways, technological innovation in fabric has been around for a long time. Think of quick-drying fabric for athletic wear. At one time that was new and exciting but is now considered to be an expectation and foundational to the quality of athletic wear.
Now, we are seeing increasingly sophisticated technologies embedded into fabric. And, because of the research and development involved in creating truly innovative technology, we are seeing more and more ingredient brands partnering with textile brands to team up on this.
CELLIANT is a technology that works in this way. We partner with other brands to give their products a wellness aspect that is a completely new value-add for virtually any textile product. CELLIANT does it through our all-natural blend of minerals that brings infrared energy into people’s lives and spaces.
With the growing trend towards sustainability, how do you think companies can balance profitability with social and environmental responsibility?
Social responsibility is, or should be, core to every business. Sustainability is one of the most critical issues that the textile industry is facing. We are at a point in business where it is not about balancing profitably with these responsibilities, but, rather, these responsibilities are foundational to good business practices.
The key to all of this is transparency. Open, transparent supply chains gain the trust of consumers, and more and more consumers are making purchasing choices based on social, geopolitical, and environmental reasons. In fact, buying sustainable products at a higher price point is a worthwhile trade-off for approximately two-thirds of shoppers.
Transparency also shows a company’s ability to be flexible and agile as they adapt to outside regulations and mandates, which the best brands are imposing upon themselves. It serves as a guiding principle that opens the door to more partnerships with other like-minded brands as they seek out partners who match their philosophies and strategies.
How do you see the competitive landscape evolving in your industry, and what strategies do you think will be important to stay ahead of the curve?
We see more and more brands partnering with technology providers to incorporate additional features to drive innovation and create differentiation in the marketplace. In order for CELLIANT to stay ahead of the curve, we continue to invest in our research and science to attract the best brands.
With the increasing pace of technological innovation, how do you think companies can effectively integrate new technologies into their operations and stay competitive?
Technology has had a huge impact on operations in the past several years. Businesses must keep up to not only stay efficient but to also attract and retain talent. One big example that has been top of mind in the past few years is integrating technology that allows not just remote work, but a completely decentralised team. This gives your company the flexibility to truly hire the best available talent without geographical restriction. To stay competitive, companies will have to find those technologies that allow them to grow and improve efficiency.
What is the story behind Hologenix and how CELLIANT was developed?
Hologenix was the result of the founders coming together and looking for new ways to combine life science and material science. We were interested in how materials interact in nature and how those materials might affect human physiology. That’s when we discovered the potential to deliver the benefits of infrared, an existing modality, in an entirely new method that we call CELLIANT. This new method of applying infrared, because it is capable of being infused into textiles, has the potential to be nearly ubiquitous, bringing wellness to and improving the lives of so many people.
Can you explain the science behind how CELLIANT works to improve local circulation and cellular oxygenation?
CELLIANT is a proprietary blend of naturally occurring bioceramics that can be infused into a carrier fibre or yarn. The bioceramics are able to capture the body heat and convert it into full spectrum infrared energy. This infrared energy is reflected back into the body. The tissue and muscle then absorb the infrared, even through multiple layers of fabric, resulting in improved local circulation, making more tissue oxygen available to the cells — an average increase of 7 per cent, and up to 8.4 per cent in a clinical trial.* The increase in circulation and cellular oxygenation allows the body to be more efficient which causes many benefits, including:
Improved temperature regulation
Increased energy
Improved endurance
Improved stamina
Improved strength
Faster recovery
Better sleep
* Source: Single Center Prospective Comparative Study to Evaluate the Performance of an Upper Torso Garment, Dr. Ian Gordon, Long Beach VA Memorial Hospital, Journal of Textile Science and Engineering, 2014.
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
