I just had the pleasure to talk to Prof. Joseph Pine on the phone (more info about him below), a leading thinker in the mass customization space. I decided to share his nuggets with all of you. While I’ve written this in an “interview style”, I’m mostly rephrasing my quickly scribbled notes I took of his answers.
Carmen: What needs drive the recent adoption of customization in the US?
Prof. Pine: For one, the US is a very individualistic country. Young people are more and more used to “having it their own way” with technology. When they get a phone today, for example, they customize everything about it: from applications and playlists to ringtones. At the same time, companies have all this unused inventory - think of apparel companies with their “fire sales”. Much of customization that is offered out there right now is “cosmetic” customization (think personalization), and I think that that will shift more towards function (fit, taste etc) soon. As more and more companies offer mass customized goods, supply will create its own demand. I think that Mass Customization will become a big market over time.
Carmen: Why is it that we hear about so many big companies that fail at trying mass customization?
Prof. Pine: It’s really a mindset issue. Big corporations want to produce as much as possible, at a cost as low as possible. They often don’t believe that it will be as big of a market, even if they do it, it’s often just a sideline. There are positive examples as well of course, like Lenscrafters. Automobile companies in the US are also picking up on it. While they’ve offered the option to configure your car for a long time now, they also discouraged customers from using it. As BMW makes strides in that are, more car makers will need to follow suit.
Carmen: Which products would you think are missing in the customization space?
Prof. Pine: What really surprised me is that there aren’t more customized apparel companies. Every body is different. I would expect that at some point, the majority of apparel will be customized.
Carmen: How much do we customizers have to come down in price for this all to work and be true mass customization?
Prof. Pine: I think there can always be a premium, because there’s also more value in a made-to-order and customized product. Say 15-20% premium - of course it would be great if the costs are only 5% over those of a mass produced good.
Carmen: How about deliver times? Are they a barrier in your eyes to mass customization being all encompassing?
Prof. Pine: Delivery times are a barrier, but not a huge barrier. As a provider, you need to turn that time in to an experience, you need to leverage the anticipation. Look at Domino’s Pizza Tracker for an example.
Carmen: Any insights on customization in the B2B space?
Prof. Pine: Companies that source customized goods have a much easier time to assess (-> calculate) the value a customized good has to them, thus there’s much less of a mindset shift, and that translates to the producer of customized B2B products as well.
Carmen: Any other advice for mass customizers?
Prof. Pine: One thing that you should provide is a way for customers to be able to come back to you and to access their preferences (such as sizes, or toppings for chocolate bars) and previously ordered items. Even better if you can recommend them something they might like based on their previous purchases.
So here’s a recommendation based on you reading this: Follow Prof. Pine on Twitter. He’s the author Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition among a number of other books, countless papers, and he spoke at TED (and hopefully will again).
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