From cookie-cutter style to contemporary customization

Crafting tailor-made digital shopping journeys and products: the different approaches and why fashion brands need to get on board.

Customization is having a moment. What used to be a trend-forecasting buzzword, a marketing ploy, and a pop-up gimmick has evolved into a full-fledged retail solution. Moving on from a peace sign patch on your denim jacket and initials on your cashmere scarf to shaping the future of clothing production. It may seem contradictory, but made-to-measure can be for the masses. The latest technology, such as 3D printing, eliminates the ancient barriers of cost and time associated with customization. Brands are finding unique ways to create personalized goods and customer journeys, from style checks to game-changing websites to in-store digital interfaces. Made-to-measure turnarounds are speeding up, as proven by big names such as Amazon, which recently received a patent for a new on-demand apparel manufacturing system. As customisation is becoming the norm, we look at the unique visions of different brands and why it is becoming more a necessity than a trend.

From tradition to technology

Although it is now tied up to the latest technologies, customisation is actually an age-old testament to luxury fashion. Getting your clothing tailor-made to your taste signifies quality and class, an exclusive symbol of status. As 5 euro t-shirts and fast fashion chains became the norm, the fashion industry moved on to mass production. However, we discovered that when we all wear that same 5-euro t-shirt, we all pretty much start looking the same. In a world where your personal brand is more than just your business card, consumers need their clothing to reflect their unique individuality and like almost anything else, they require most of the decisions to be in their own hands. However, getting a skirt cut by a tailor around the block simply won’t cut it anymore. Consumers have gotten used to the digital ease and efficiency, expecting nothing less from their one-of-a-kind goods.

Customization as a business is a no-brainer

Accommodating these new consumer needs for personalized goods is not only a way to stand out from the crowd but may soon become necessary for a fashion brand’s success. Consumers want to do more than consume; they want to create. Allowing customers to do that in a smoothed-out process and environment could seriously help boost sales. Even though you might be losing economies of scale, a study by Deloitte stated that 1 in 5 consumers who expressed an interest in personalized products or services are willing to pay a 20% premium. While 48% said they were ready to wait longer for a customized product or service.

However, it’s not only about the benefits of the customer; it beats the inefficiencies of mass production. Brands almost blindly produce every piece in each collection in a range of sizes at least twice a year. They need to know long before products hit the shelves whether or not the product will sell, an impossible mission in an impulse-driven industry, constantly in motion with fluctuating demand. So instead of creating an excess in inventory, of which a considerable percentage will end up on the sale racks, you will only produce exactly what the customer asked for.

Regarding e-commerce, you’ve got the added benefit of driving customer loyalty due to a prolonged interaction. As the customer is clicking away at different colors and different collars, they’re in contact with your brand even before they decide they want to buy something. If they have decided to purchase a made-to-measure jacket, it will have been made exactly to what they set their heart to.

What they’ve got in store for us

Customization in fashion mainly launched itself through branded pop-up stores or presentation formats, often with less grace than gimmicks. But now it’s integrating into stores as part of the shopping process, incorporating a digital interface into physical spaces. Ministry of Supply is a recent example of how this can be done well. Enhancing office attire with engineering skills, the fashion brand adds comfort using advanced technology. In their flagship store in Boston, they took this one step further and debuted a 3D robotic knitting machine in March, allowing customers to design and create their blazers on demand. This hyper-local production leaves almost zero waste behind instead of the usual 35% by printing a single piece. It makes use of an interactive display in-store that allows customers to choose their preferred colors and trimming details. They integrate the physical space by having fabric swatches and sample garments on hand, something that online stores struggle to make digital.

Acing Artificial Intelligence

Luisa Via Roma is one of the most dominating online retailers in the luxury market, with over 5 million monthly customers. Founded in Italy 87 years ago, they have adapted to the digital demands since their online launch in 1999. Their challenge remains: selling more than 600 brands in 8 languages for more than 150 countries. And doing so with a personalized touch. Last year in November, they hired Dynamic Yield, a customer engagement platform that drives revenue and engagement by crafting customized customer journeys. They launched a few features on the website with great success. For example, the revenue per user was boosted by 15 percent due to the product recommendations in an “add to cart” pop-up window. The website also warns when a product is almost out of stock or how many people have purchased it that day.

The customer journey is personalized at five stages: The promotional banner, the overall page layout, the featured product recommendations, and the call to action. Each stage is influenced by the customer’s cookies and local storage, which can indicate whether or not they are price-driven or an affluent customer looking for quality & trend. For the price-sensitive customer, the homepage banner will mention a current sale, the catalog page will be sorted from low to high price, and the product page will say how many items are left in stock. This path will be different for the high-spenders; their homepage will revolve around a fresh batch of products they have not seen yet, the newest items will sort catalog pages, and product pages will touch upon their need for credibility by showing how popular it is amongst premium customers.

Dynamic Yield has a holistic approach to personalization, aiming to tune every detail instead of focusing on just one significant feature. They even take it beyond the website. Once a customer has visited the website, Dynamic Yield will use the person’s profile to personalize everything from the emails they receive to the ads they see on other affiliate websites.

A virtual atelier experience

Apart from the sneaker brands that set customization in motion, the millennial fashion crowd has long been unconvinced. Brands are struggling to keep up with contemporary aesthetics. Frilly has mastered the style part and topped it off with digital ease: the millennial holy grail. What makes them stand out is A 3D rendering software that has been developed in-house, allowing customers to see customizations added to styles in real-time. It goes far beyond just changing a button or fabric, with just a few clicks you can change a prairie dress into a summer crop top, really bringing forth their motto ‘the design belongs to you’. Their made-to-order fashion platform took three years to develop, which you can see back into its seriously seamless virtual atelier experience and easy-to-use interface. They work with different collections, each signifying its own style and experienced designers making sure each choice the customer makes will also look good. It elevates that luxury bespoke feeling in a way that is approachable, stylish and just heaps of fun.

Becoming elegant in efficiency

One of the main benefits of customization is the ease of having less inventory; Noosa’s online shop takes this one step further. Noosa allows customers to personalize two bag models, one smaller and one smaller. You can make the bag almost unique, from the strap to the color to the pouch inside the bag. The website is also noteworthy in how it separates front and back-end, which means the configurator for customizing products stands independently from the regular online shop. The retailer does not need to keep the bags and products that belong to it in stock to sell them through a point-of-sale module. This month, they will broaden the scope of products with bracelets and earrings.

Its official, the days of bumping into a colleague wearing the same shirt is over. Consumer power in fashion has become far more nuanced than ever before. Brands are breaking down the barriers to customization, boasting their own unique strategies and creative attitude towards technology. Proving that one-of-kind products can be integrated in your brand identity, rather than just what makes you stand out. Who knows, in ten years we may just be printing our own sweater at home, just because it got a little colder.