Mass market and grocery retailers have long sold “Private Label” or “Store Brand” products e.g. CVS brand Aspirin. In most of these stores you can find a private label in almost every product category. However, the practice hasn’t become as wide spread in other kinds of stores. For instance, there is no Toys R Us brand action figure.

However, while browsing at Barnes & Noble I saw this display of their collector edition books. The books were intended to look like they had come from a mahogany paneled library – they have foil stamped hard covers, gilt edges, “classic” designs and other trappings of high society libraries.

The titles were mostly in the public demain, but there were also contemporary editions by authors like Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams. They were priced at $20 which is below the cost of new hardcovers, but represents a serious price increase over the free ebook editions that are available.

The books are interesting for two reasons. First, it shows that retailers of widely available products like books are moving up the value chain to produce their own products and thinking about their retail positions differently. Second, it is a view into the future of what the book might become once Kindle swallows most of the market.

I love the idea, but I’m still hoping that Paul Graham or one of his disciples will actually start a company that makes truly spectacular editions of great works.

I’m in Germany for a business trip and I was walking around the central square when I saw an outpost of New England institution Dunkin Donuts. The fonts and colors were all the same and it was heartening to see the bulbous font even if the words it spelled out were foreign to me.

The most fun part of the trip was the selection of donuts on hand. There were some classics like the chocolate sprinkle, some obvious local favorites like the Bavarian Creme, but some that seemed entirely bizarre e.g. Pflaumenmus Donut. The name sounds like a particularly nasty chest infection, but the purple icing is something I’ve never seen in the US. Nor the alcohol infused Kirsch-Banae with a smiley face piped on top. All these flavors and colors seemed bizarre to me, but obviously please the local market’s taste and traditions.

This confectionary interlude got me thinking about personal fabrication. All these sweets are variations on a simple theme, but reflect the stories of chefs over hundreds or thousands of years. Currently, we are segregated by geography, but with a new generation of fabrication tools and ways to share, these “Stories” will become ever easier to share, remix, and advance. A baker in Boston could see a post like this, look up a “heidlebeere” recipe, have it translated automagically by Google translate, bake it up, and sell it from their bakery in a couple days. It is a small example, but I look forward to the cultural exchange and innovation which will surely spring from it.

One of the most fascinating things to see in the world of personal fabrication is the speed at which memes can circulate and how creative endeavors build off one another.

For instance an artist name PanzerVargas sculpted “Realistic” versions of the Toy Story Protagonists Buzz Lightyear and Woody:

Which were inspired by an illustration on DeviantArt:

As well as a pre-existing action figure line. Notice that the legs of this “Manga Spawn” and “IRL Buzz” are almost identical:

Ultimately, both the great drawing and action figure were preceded by this rendering of Buzz Lightyear “In Real Life”.

When you consider that the Spawn toy is a mashup itself these works of art touch combine 4 “universes” and a meme that has persisted for a couple years. A while ago I wrote a post talking about how mass customization services needed “Cover Songs”  and used a bunch of artists riffs on Wall-E’s character design as an example. Between cookies stuffed in other cookies and people “Plussing” Pixar art you can get a sense for how products and ideas will morph in the future, now the test will be to see how all this works when you fold in complex copyright issues.

This work of art is no mere “Balloon Animal”, but rather the most fearsome creature ever made out of distended latex and clown breath.

If you like this pic, you should check out the comments on the associated Reddit page, the comments are hilarious and informative. One of the comments pointed out that there is now a cable TV show on TLC called “The Unpoppables” that chronicles the rise of “New Balloon Art” and its practitioners.

It is interesting to see how these kinds of shows have evolved from series that focused on fairly capital intensive projects like motorcycle customization to the more accessible cake decorating and balloon animals we see today.

I wonder if all this increased video content/inspiration has caused people to pick up and practice these handicrafts or if it merely serves as a vicarious thrill?

Thanks to @Kn0thing for the link!

Cafepress, one of the earliest and largest mass customization companies, filed the documentation required prior to an IPO. It is a great moment for people interested in customized products, but also proof of how brutal markets can be for companies that trade in physical goods. In 2010 the company recorded $128MM in revenue and just under $3MM in profit. Nine figures of revenue and 2% profit margins are brutal, especially for a 12 year old company. They clearly have mass, but little fuel for growth, outside an IPO. Their breakdown of the markets they operate in is interesting:

Online tools, e-commerce and digital production technologies are disrupting the existing fragmented, offline product print and customization markets. Our services address multiple large adjacent markets which include, but are not limited to:

• Screen printing and garment printing. According to Freedonia, the U.S. screen printing and garment printing market is expected to grow from $7.2 billion in 2009 to $8.1 billion in 2014.

• Creative photo merchandise. IDC estimates that the market for creative photo merchandise will grow from $2.8 billion in 2010 to $6.6 billion in 2014. Creative photo merchandise encompasses all products that are customized with photos including, but not limited to, cards, calendars, posters, photobooks and scrapbook pages, wall art and home décor.

• Promotional products. According to Promotional Products Association International, the promotional products industry grew 5.9% to $16.6 billion in 2010, up from $15.6 billion in 2009. This includes $2.7 billion in online sales of promotional products in 2010, up 11.1% from $2.4 billion in 2009.

• Customization services for product manufacturers. Providing mass-customization services for retailers and product manufacturers is an emerging opportunity. From tablet cases to water bottles and beyond, our product diversity suggests a large opportunity encompassing ever-expanding retail merchandise categories. Based on 2009 U.S. Census Bureau data, we estimate the U.S. market for customizable retail goods is approximately $1.0 trillion.

Though, I’d love to know the rationale behind the $1T estimation.

Who Cafepress sees as competition:

online providers of unique goods such as Etsy, as well as various other private companies offering customized products such as CustomInk, Spreadshirt, Threadless or Zazzle; and online providers allowing users to customize goods in specific vertical markets, such as VistaPrint for small businesses and Shutterfly for photographic products.

Calling Etsy & Threadless competitors is kind of strange. Cafepress has taken the place of print/embroidering shops. Threadless is very much a brand with a distinct aesthetic and relatively narrow customer base. Etsy is a market place for artisans. The rest are front ends for variable data printing machines. This could just be positioning for analysts who want to place Cafepress in the context of the broader Maker movement, but could also be a signal of where they want to go post IPO.

Of course it could also be that the IPO is just a way for insiders to cash out of long held positions in a company living with razor thing margins 12 years into its existence. In any case it is great to see the founder of the company holding onto nearly 20% of the company. He has built something impressive technically and socially, if not yet financially.

I’ve written about “Boring” mass customization in the context of dental and orthopedic applications, the use of impressive tools to personalize junk mail, and now I add Impact Books in the same category. Impact Books has built a business by customizing the covers and intro pages of best selling books with corporate logos, messages, and other marketing communications. These books are used as gifts at sales meetings or when recruiting on campus.

While it is a fairly minimal customization it is interesting both from a business point of view (I’m certain IB generates more revenue than all the custom shirt and chocolate bar companies combined) and a conceptual one.

Companies can now identify themselves and rally their troops behind an idea by ensconcing it in physical form. It doesn’t matter at all the Sprint had nothing to do with “Made to Stick“, but they can claim partial ownership of it through this program. Most customization companies let you choose the color of your product or maybe add you name to it, but Impact Books allows you to glom on to a world view.

It might not be flashy, but it is a real business built on customization so congrats to the team at Impact Books.

Hold onto your monocle because the world of high brow society will never be the same. Bud Light, the brand that once brought us Spuds McKenzie, has come up with an even classier, more innovative marketing campaign. The new “Etch-It” bottle brings together the fun of losing money with liver damage in a novel, customizable way.

The technology is actually pretty neat, a thin layer of metallic material is deposited on the bottle which can be scratched off with a coin or key. Practically, you could mark your beer to prevent confusion (and cold sores) at a party. Conceptually, you could pull a cool move, scratch your number into a bottle and slide it down the bar to make an intro, but personally I’m most excited to see what uses inebriated Phi Lambda Picasos find with this new canvas.

From a customization point of view it is a cool project. The TV commercials pitch this as the “Next Wave in Social Networking” and it is an interesting way to promote real world communication. I love to see any customizable products that get away from online configurators and this is a fun way to get people creating.

“Mass Customization” has been talked about for the last 25+ years. The promise is that we will one day be able to purchase products that are perfectly tailored to our tastes and requirements, but have to pay no more than we currently do for mass produced goods. The theory is that advances in CAD and flexible manufacturing technology e.g. 3D printers will enable this kind of cost effective production.

However, 20 years in we have seen very few successful companies employ this strategy. Dell computer had some success with it in the early 90′s, Nike has a fun shoe customization strategy, and there are a plethora of start ups attacking this market, but we still live in a largely mass produced world. I’ve previously written about why 3D printers are not going to be the magic technology that enables this vision and Joris Peels has articulated the deeper psychological issues at play.

While we haven’t seen a breakout hit in the world of mass customization it isn’t because people don’t have an intrinsic desire to customize their world. I recently moved to New Hampshire and it is striking how many personalized “vanity” license plates you will see relative to a neighboring state like Massachusetts, in fact NH has the second highest penetration of vanity plates at 14%.

It is also interesting to see the things people choose to express, like this fan of Lord Vader:

Or the perfect combination of “Luv 2 Bake” on a minivan:

The reason for this high presence of vanity plates is a “Design” choice. The Department of Motor Vehicles in NH doesn’t refer to them as “Vanity Plates” but rather as “Initial Plates” so when you buy a new car or just get your license you’ll join that line assuming it means “First” not “Custom”.

People will pay extra for customization assuming you make it easy, or even default, and include it as part of an offering they are forced to buy. This should be helpful for all aspiring customizers though. Part of the battle is designing a configurable product and developing a configurator, but another big part of the process is the language that you use and the presumptions that you make for your customers.

Related articles

• Mass Customization, Theme Park Rides, and Low Barriers to Entry (replicatorinc.com)
• 22 Vanity License Plates That Scream “Pull Me Over!” [PHOTOS] (coedmagazine.com)
• Vanity plate auction puts dent in Texas deficit (autoblog.com)

Lego is an amazing company. They have been around for decades, are universally loved by parents and children, and have experimented successfully in a number of interesting areas like robotics.

That said, they should fire all their designers.

Or at least create an API and find a way to get the designs made by their alpha fans to their broader user base. Their fan base is rabid and create as many SKU’s as the staff in Billund Denmark with no expectations of compensation.

A sports fan is petitioning Lego to release Legofied versions of all the Major League Baseball stadiums and the idea has received the endorsements of eminent figures like ESPN’s Bill Simmons.

Some create cute mini-versions of pop culture icons and kick off a new visual style for the product simultaneously.

Or popular video game characters

Others recreate complex mechanical structures like v8 engines.

Or created amazing architectural designs with no precedent in reality. Click through to read the “Director’s Commentary” on the details in the design. It is really an amazing reuse of parts in ways that were never intended.

Or fully functional firearms

Artists have made careers using the plastic bricks as a sculpting medium

Or as an artistic printing press

Of course Lego’s designers do an amazing job with their original creations and Star Wars/Harry Potter licenses, but the creativity of their fans is a force to be harnassed. Of course there are a lot of barriers. For instance, many of the most popular fan designs are feature proprietary IP which would make them difficult to resell, but if I were Lego (Or their competitor MegaBlocks) I’d find a way to productize that creativity.

Cooking and eating are two of the most common activities where people customize their experience, be it with preparation or seasoning. I’ve seen a few cool stories over the last week or two that illustrate this potential nicely.

3D Printed Pasta

A modified 3D printer can extrude noodle material into custom shapes. It is a cool proof of concept, but you can imagine how this could potentially be a common place item in arty kitchens. 3D Printers can become quite cheap if you don’t care too much about resolution. Some enterprising chef just needs to think of a few cool dishes to show it off.

Easy Bake Oven Refills

The Easy-Bake oven is a weird product in that it has an ongoing trail of “Consumables” in the form of these refill kits, but are sold at toy stores, not supermarkets. I think a lot of people underestimate the difficulties of making customization work at retail.

Augmented Reality Lollipops

Students at a Japanese university have developed a cool accessory for lollipops that use vibration and bone conduction to help provide different sensations to customers. Based on the tilt of a sensor your get the sensation of fireworks or an “airplane” (I have no idea what that means). It may seem like a silly idea, but a Cleveland design firm created a $450MM business by turning a lollipop accessory into a super-duper toothbrush so this line of research has a lucrative pedigree.

via Alyssa

Related articles

• The scientific quest to print food (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
• Food Customization – High Tech and Low Brow (replicatorinc.com)
• A little bit of culture & a large trunk of food – Taichung, Taiwan (travelpod.com)