Cooling Fan Jacket：How a Made-In-China invention became a hit in Japan for more than a decade

Cooling fan jacket, with cooling fans powered by batteries and cooling fan accessories, has become increasingly popular in Japan, with demand rising due to the annual heat wave and power shortages.

As a jacket or shirt, it may seem far from fashionable, but in recent years this 'Cooling Fan Jacket' has become very popular on the market and demand for it has soared.

It is that long known but relatively uncommon summer cooling 'miracle' - the Cooling Fan Jacket.

The introduction of Cooling Fan Jacket can be traced back to Japan in 2004.

An island nation, Japan's summers are hot and humid. The annual mid-summer heat wave always puts people working in Japanese factories and outdoors at risk of heatstroke and even life-threatening injuries.

As a result, an Cooling Fan Jacket called Kuchofuku was introduced to the Japanese market and quickly became popular in such workplaces.

Kuchofuku is technically a garment with a fan, as it has a pair of Cooling Fan Jacket battery-powered fans on the side that draw in air and evaporate sweat from the body surface by a constant breeze inside the Cooling Fan Jacket, thus releasing heat by evaporation and cooling the body.It includes a cooling fan jacket battery and other cooling fan jacket accessories. 

However, it was not until the world-shaking 3.11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 that these climate-controlled suits really took off in Japan.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Japan was plunged into a severe power shortage. As summer approached, the Japanese emergency services bought Kuchofuku's products in bulk to help people survive the summer heat, and sales increased tenfold.

In an interview, Hiroshi Ichigaya, the founder of 'air-conditioned clothing' and a former Sony engineer, said the phone in his office was ringing off the hook and he even received a call from the Japanese Prime Minister's office asking for 500,000 Cooling Fan Jackets. However, because the clothes were all made in China, it was impossible to source such a large quantity at short notice, as the warehouse would be emptied just to meet the market supply, and the order had to be postponed.

Since then, Cooling Fan Jacket has become more widely known and accepted by consumers, and has become a commercial product. 

In 2009, Sony developed a portable Cooling Fan Jacket called "Reon Pocket".

The Reon Pocket is a portable Cooling Fan controlled by a smartphone app. It fits into a pocket on the back of a tailored formal shirt, under the collar, and allows the wearer to control the temperature via the phone or let the device adjust the outside temperature itself.

That said, the Reon Pocket was actually born out of a crowdfunding campaign in July 2019, when Japanese netizens were so taken with the crowdfunded product that it reached its goal of 66 million yen in just one week.

After getting a taste of the product, Sony launched it the following year, selling nearly 10,000 units in two days. But so far Sony has kept a low profile with the product. Although there are plenty of videos of users trying out the Reon Pocket on YouTube, Sony has yet to produce an official promotional video for the Cooling Fan Jacket product.

To date, the Reon Pocket 3, which was launched earlier last year,was 50% more heat efficient than its predecessor.

Sony has also taken some tips from smartphone development and applied them to these devices.

The Reon Pocket 3 has a motion sensor that detects the wearer's movements and provides appropriate cooling. Those who want to control the cooling manually can do so via a dedicated smartphone app.

It also has a built-in Cooling Fan Jacket battery that can be fully charged in approximately 100 minutes via USB-C and lasts from 8 to 61 hours in cooling mode or 27 to 54 hours in heating mode, depending on intensity and Cooling Fan Jacket accessories.

For even more seamless cooling and heating, Sony has also partnered with several brands to produce a range of business shirts and golf shirts with built-in pockets for the Reon Pocket.

The product currently retails for around 14,850 yen in Japan, which is around $700+, and at these prices, in the midst of a potentially unprecedented heatwave in Japan, it's no wonder that the Sony representative said sales had "exceeded expectations".

In July last year, a blog post on the US news site Huffington Post suggested that Americans would do well to consider buying these Cooling Fan Jacket to survive the hottest American summers in years.

Although the current range of climate-controlled Cooling Fan Jackets on the market hardly matches the aesthetics of trendy fashion, as summer temperatures rise and new designs are developed, it may not be long before this type of climate-controlled garment becomes a must-have for summer wardrobes in the years to come.