I just took a quick look at a new mass customization player, after @evolvex tweeted me about their offering. Evolvex’s website looks great - they have simple furniture, and you can customize openings, colors, legs and more. Prices seem pretty reasonable, cheaper than US based Inmod.
They asked for advice on Twitter. Check out their site and let them know. What advice would you give them?
I took this photo from an Automotive Shopping Behavior Study from Google. The graph compares what people usually do when they visit the website of an OEM (=original equipment manufacturer and in this case mostly the car company’s website).
It turns out that the most popular activity on those websites is to play with the configurator. In 2010, about 35% of all visitors to a car website ended up building their own car. That’s huge - especially since creating your own dream car seems to be even more popular than looking for offers!
However, keep in mind that this only supports the idea that “creating your own” is fun - something we know from The Customization 500 study. What is also interesting in this chart is that the popularity of “build your own” dropped dramatically - from nearly 45% to approximately 35%. At the same time “search inventory” is the only activity that is stable. Now, we don’t have the data to really understand why that is - it could be that the website visitors are more practical in 2010 compared to 2009 because they are more likely to afford cars now, or maybe there were so many deals that customers just wanted to take advantage of them quickly instead of waiting to receive their custom built car. It’s something to look out for though - how is the interest in design-your-own changing over time?
What do you think?
This is part of my series of blog posts where I define common terms that are related with mass customization. Also see the definitions for mass-customization, co-creation and design your own/ create your own.
Customization is probably the most general term of all of these. It means to adjust an item to comply with your individual specifications. Here are some ideas how that could happen:
The difference between mass customization and customization:
Dave Gardner actually wrote about this on the Fast Company blog as well, where he says that “Mass customization implies seamlessness from the standpoint of configuring, pricing and ordering all the way through the manufacturing process. ” whereas customizers “presently produce products using craft production techniques.” Dave Sloan from Treehouse Logic agreed and added “To deserve the ‘mass’ prefix in ‘mass customization,’ the customizer needs to be able to match the efficiency of mass producers in both customer acquisition and product delivery.”
Here’s a practical example: If you make a customized suit for $2000 per suit (of which you probably make 2-3 a week), your in the business of crafting. Also customization, but not mass. If you make hundreds of suits per month that are each $400 and therefore not far from what people are willing to spend on mass produced suits, you’re in the business of mass customization. Of course, there’s a gray zone, but in most cases, we can differentiate.
The difference between customization and personalization:
Customization is a general term that means you alter an item to your specifications. Personalization means you take something that works fine by itself, and you add elements to it that make it unique and relevant to you. As an example, take the chocolate bars from chocri: You can customize your own chocolate bar by choosing base chocolate and toppings, AND you can personalize the chocolate bar by giving it a name that is then printed on the packaging.
Personalization is often printed, embroidered, engraved, … It can exist without (additional) customization, but in essence, it’s just a form of customization. Or at least that’s how broadly I take the term customization. In that sense, allowing your consumer to engrave the back of your gadget like Apple does, makes you a player in the mass customization business.
I realize there’s been a lot of confusion about terms like “mass customization” vs. “co-creation”, “open innovation”, even “crowdsourcing”. Not only has there been some expansion of boundaries of these terms beyond what I would think is useful, but also are definitions subjective, and different people mean different things when they use these terms. I’ve decided to give you my definitions in a few upcoming blog posts, starting with Mass Customization.
Other definitions:
Closing for the holidays??? That makes no sense. I wonder what’s up at design your own @ Puma?
I recently read Prof. Shoshana Zuboff’s article “Creating value in the age of distributed capitalism” in the McKinsey quarterly, which is subtitled “As mass consumption gives way to the wants of individuals, a historic transition in capitalism is unfolding.” Honestly, a large part of the article is so abstract and academic that it doesn’t mean a whole lot to most practicians, but some of the points are great and I wanted to summarize them here, since what she’s talking about (without ever mentioning the words) is: Mass Customization!
The time is ripe for mass customization to be the next T Model
Prof. Zuboff essentially compares our situation in capitalism right now with the shift created by Henry Ford’s T-Model - a view with which I’d like to agree. I quote: “Sharp increases in higher education, standards of living, social complexity, and longevity over the past century gave rise to a new desire for individual self-determination […]”, and she argues that this creates demands that a new class of competitors will fill - “creating individualized ways to consume goods and services at radically reduced costs”, which I’d like to translate to “offer customized goods and services at prices similar to mass produced goods and services = mass customization”.
We might not realize yet how big this shift is, but there are signs
These “shifts” in capitalism are at first subtle, she says: “At first, the Model T was simply regarded as the affordable car that finally made Ford Motor Company profitable.” Yet it brought something that was previously only accessible to the elite - a car- to the masses. Now, she argues, we’re turning from mass to individual. Another shift she mentions is the Apple iPod, which dramatically changed how music distribution changed and music consumption became more personalized. I would have rather seen social media as an example - in my eyes a major change of how information is distributed and consumed in a personalized way, but the point is the same - we’re in the middle of a big change towards personalization and “individualization”. Although I made a conscious choice not to go work for McKinsey after Business School, it’s great to see them agree.
At the Smart Customization Seminar, I had proposed that some of the customization companies should team up to advertise on Facebook together to create some buzz for customization, personalization and design-your-own. And so we did!
On August 6, 24 companies put up ads on Facebook, together achieving more than 14 billion impressions for design your own as well as a few press mentions in the Entrepreneur Magazine blog and Huffington Post.
The campaign created some buzz with little money per company - each customizer spent between $50 and $100 on Facebook ads. While we didn’t convert a whole lot with the ads, we achieved a lot of impressions - hopefully starting a conversation, and then later many conversions.
One of the lessons learned was to pay per impression, not click, which seemed to make more use of the small budgets. Also, a landing page that was either a Facebook page, media (e.g. a video) or a signup for newsletters performed better than just a website.
It is very hard to measure what matters most though - the long term effects. Are people more aware of customization now? Arwa Jumkawala from Gemkitty nicely summarized it:
This experiment was innovative display of strength gained in numbers. It was really cool for us all to band together (and in some cases with businesses in the same product category) to get conversations going. If this experiment get a just a few people to pause the next time they’re Googling for x type of product to wonder if there is way to customize x, then I think we succeeded.
These are the mass customization companies that participated:
Blank Label - co-created dress shirts
chocri - customized chocolate bars
Spreadshirt - co-created t-shirts, sweaters and hoodies
LaudiVidni - customized handbags
Gemvara - customized jewelry
Shoes of Prey - customized women’s shoes
Wagner Skis - co-created skis and snowboards
Gemkitty - customized necklaces and earrings
Snaptotes - custom totes with your photo
Element Bars - customized nutrition bars
YouBars - customized protein bars, shakes, trail mix, cookies and cereal
Red Moon Pet Food - co-created pet food for dogs and cats
Rooms By You - custom home decor for babies, kids and teens
Lindgolf - personalized golf clubs and bags
Artaic - custom mosaics
Mel Boteri - customized handbags
IndiDenim - custom jeans for women and men
Kidlandia - custom puzzles and maps for kids
Maguba - customized clogs and women’s sandals
Personalwine - wines with your personalized labels
Proper Cloth - customized dress shirts
Design A Tea - custom tea blends
Selve - customized women’s shoes and boots
Open Runway - custom shoes (to be launched soon)
Note: I’m a writer for this magazine, so clearly I’m very biased: It’s awesome!
If you’re interested in customization, personalization and design-your-own products (and why would you be here if otherwise?) you should go and checkout egoo-journal.com.
The magazine has articles on the recent news in the mass customization world, as well as a very valuable shop directory, listening all the known design-your-own websites.
Subscribe so as not to miss any news in the customization world! You can also follow @egoo_us on twitter and find egoo on Facebook. See you!
Lately, three big companies have embraced mass customization in the same category: beverages. I find that a big coincidence and thought I’d portray them here:
The video says it all - you can create your own bottle design on the site. Only downside - you can’t actually order anything, it’s all virtual. It’s a campaign to market a new bottle of theirs that has a surface that you can draw on in real life. Still, really fun concept. (sorry about the formatting here, but “content trumps pretty”)
2) HEINEKEN IRELAND - Your Heineken
I made this bottle by choosing first a base design (color, style), and then I was able to personalize it with images and text (that’s my Dad - it’s Father’s Day after all). The cool thing here is that you can actually buy these bottles! Downside is - it’s only in Ireland. Which is surprising, since I’ve seen very little demand for customization and personalization come from the islands (GB and Ireland).
When you click on the link, make sure to find the Heineken Ireland site (a little hidden).
Very famous already, Starbucks lets you play on their website with a create-your-own Frappuccino tool. Like Heineken, you design your own Frappuccino online, and then go to the real world (read: Starbucks around the corner) to recreate what you “planned” online. I say - better than nothing, and they’ve done a great job at creating a fun interface and posting “create your own” all over it.
THE SO WHAT
Left to ask - where are these coming from? Why now, and why in the beverage industry? My two cents are that the beverage world essentially just learned from the food world, in-store customization and create-your-own is already very common in even a Burger King. I wouldn’t be surprised if Heineken was inspired by German startups like BeerStickr that allow you to personalize stickers for (generic) beer bottles. I believe that Starbucks just picked something they’ve always been doing - creating custom drinks right there and then - as something to talk about in a new marketing campaign.
What I really think all this means is that the trend mass customization is ringing in the ears of marketing executives at big, yet creative companies. Is it ringing in your ears yet?
Just noticed this advertisement on a blog. Customization is taking off!
Funny enough, after I just recently posted my article about why mass customization is so much bigger in Germany than in the US, a German online magazine went so far as to describe mass customization nearly normal in Germany today. Here a quick summary/ translation of the article:
The article begins by saying that in order to remain competitive, businesses have to make their customers’ dreams come true. While mass customization has been the exception in recent years, “it now seems to become fit for the masses”. “Personalized products have great potential, are becoming ever more popular with customers, and increasingly startups cover niches with it”
Examples: It then mentions Woonio (online configuration of furniture) as an example for an extraordinary application of mass customization, and states that mass customization in food seems to be really taking off (mentioning, not surprisingly, chocri, since we just tripled capacity with our recent move).
The article then quotes Prof. Piller (whose blog you should read too, by the way), who gives the example of Harry Potter as a very successful mass product, saying that there will always be successful mass products. Prof. Piller also mentions the complexity and costs in e.g. apparel and fashion companies that design clothing that they can not be sure that their consumers actually want them. Later in the article, Prof. Piller is quoted again, arguing that loyalty is increased when consumers design their own product online, due to higher switching costs once the perfect configuration is found.
In an outlook to the future, the author Susan Roenisch makes four major points:
1) 3D printing will become ever more powerful as it becomes cheaper
2) Mass Customization is Web 3.0 - instead of just interacting with customers, companies now integrate their customers into product development and production
3) Mass Customization is still a Long Tail matter - there will be room for mass as well as customized products
4) The limit of Mass Customization is to a large degree production scalability , which is caused by the fact that mostly small companies are successful in the space, but also enabled by the fact that small companies have more flexibility in their production
Wow, what a 2 intensive days! Lots learned, and great to meet all these people.
Here’s what I found most interesting:
1) Prof. Piller and Fabrizio Salvador commented from an academic perspective on the three capabilities mass customizers must get right eventually: Robust Process Design, Choice Navigation and Solution Space Definition
2) The Customization 500 study benchmarking by Prof. Walcher. Chris Cameron from the blog Read Write Web wrote a very nice article on it, check it out.
3) Germany vs. the US and their stage in the Mass Customization trend
4) Going offline with customization
5) Production was a big topic: How to set it up, whether to outsource or not, how to automate it, how to scale it.
6) Extending the mass customization idea - quirky (co-creation), Pandora (personalization) etc
7) Small companies vs big companies and how their reasons for and challenges with customization differ
8) Other Emerging Themes at the Conference: Technology Platforms, fluffy “added value” vs. functionality, kids and mass customization, experience vs product, scaling it up and others. I hope to blog about these later
9) (Plug) The need for collaboration of Mass Customizers. Become a member of the LinkedIn Group, check out the Facebook “Design-Your-Own” Page, Milk or Sugar’s C for Custom Social Network and be in touch (email me at carmen at chocri.com) if you want to participate in the Facebook Advertising on June 4.
So awesome!
So very awesome. 7 great examples of design-your-own products
What could be simpler than a white tank and jeans, this outfit is perfect.
Now I just have to find an excuse for the rest of the year.
Merci Κοnstantina!
RT @ThirdEye3 Oh, yes! via @helena_chari ...
h/t @andrewburnett
large custom laptop messenger bag
vinyl shine bright blue / white / bright blue
created by TB2 in Singapore, Singapore
customize this bag
This is how you look polished in jeans! We love this look.
Quirky, founded by Ben Kauffman in 2008, is one of my favorite examples of mass customization and user-generated...
Birthday mini-cupcakes! From Baked by Melissa in SoHo. (Taken with instagram)
I just made and named (I love that you can) several chocolate bars on Chocri, which is an amazing custom chocolate bar company, but I just wish...
