The Customization Revolution

At MyCustomizer, we empower brands to offer outstanding customization experiences with a powerful Software as a Service platform.

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Better, bigger data, streamlined digital interfaces and on-demand manufacturing mean that bespoke customization is the new retail frontier.

Harley Finkelstein, 5 Trends That Will Change The Way Your Customers Shop In 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/harleyfinkelstein/2018/01/10/5-trends-that-will-change-the-way-your-customers-shop-in-2018/#790601524d62

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Digital nomad in Europe (part 1 - Paris)

Working abroad is something I’ve always wanted to do. Lucky for me, at MyCustomizer, we’re already set up for remote work, so when I needed to meet with a client in Lisbon, I took this opportunity to experience the digital nomad lifestyle. 50 days, 9 cities and 46 instagram posts later, here’s what I learned:

Keep it simple

I think the most important lesson I learned is to keep things as simple as possible. I’ve travelled a lot before, but this is different. You’ve got your job to think about, but also everything else that comes with travelling: How do I get to my airbnb? Where do I buy public transport tickets? Where is my co-working tomorrow? How will I get there? Where will I eat? Prepare to be tired! Your brain is always “on” since you’re completely out of your regular routines and habits.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it! The trick is to get organized. I travelled with 2 bags: 1 backpack for my clothes and 1 bag for my laptop and everything else I wanted to carry around during the day. I got this really cool travel safe bag with all sorts of anti-theft features. When I was working in a cafe and could secure my bag around the table, it was one less thing to worry about. Having only 2 bags makes it easier to manage when travelling between cities. You want to be able to take the subway to the airport without having to lug around more than 2 items. Plus, a backpack comes in pretty useful in the Paris metro, where there are virtually no escalators. 

When choosing an AirBnb, I would filter using “Laptop friendly workspace”, so I would have a desk to work in case I didn’t find a café or coworking. Once I was settled in, I would plan a few days in advance and choose co-working spaces in neighbourhoods I wanted to visit or close to attractions I wanted to see. Sometimes I would do 2 different co-working places or cafés during the day, so I could move around and get to see more of the city.

Workfrom was my favorite tool to find places to work. What I liked about the website (and app) is that it lists a lot of places to work that are not officially co-working spaces, but are work friendly. This is how I ended up spending a day at “La gaîté lyrique” a mix of cultural space, library, museum and coffee shop in Paris:

Overall, Paris is a great place to be a digital nomad. It’s easy to get around, there are tons of places to work and the food is great! It’s a bit expensive but there are plenty of budget-friendly places, plus wine is really cheap ;) Here are a few of my favorite places to work in Paris:

Coworkshop

Cozy Corner

Nuage Café

And the stunning WeWork Paris:

Next up - I head to Portugal, where things are not as organized as Paris... stay tuned for Part 2

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Factory work is being transformed as the manufacturing industry enters a new era of flexible and customized “smart” production. Once dominated by routine and repetition, the factory floor is becoming a more complex, fluid and interesting place.

http://now.northropgrumman.com/manufacturing-industry-golden-age-skilled-work/

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Find Hidden Revenue Sources That Are Anything But Average

Consider the following:

You are starting a new business.  You have a fantastic prototype you know will turn the luxury interiors industry upside down. You negotiated an incredible manufacturing deal, NDA’s are signed, and your business is gaining momentum. The only thing you have to do now is find the perfect customer.

If you plan to use the standard manufacturing model, your options are limited to an imaginary shopper who conforms to an average set of needs.

Stop for a minute and think about what average means.  An average is found by adding all the numbers in a set together, and dividing that sum by how many numbers there are.  The average tells you the middle of a set, excluding data on either end of the spectrum. It is a fixed point, not a range or a group.

By definition, if you are aiming for the average, you miss all the outliers who have even the smallest difference in need. If you are developing a new product, wouldn’t you want to reach as many new customers as possible?

There is an even more exciting thought - what if you could get customers you don’t even know exist to do the creative work of designing your product for you?

According to research done by Martin Schreier at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, these invisible outliers are what make up the largest part of your target market.

In the one-size-fits-all manufacturing model a target group must be relatively homogenous.  Customers are defined by a specific need, rather than a set of shared values or interests.  Good customer fit for a product means there is a strong match between an individual’s needs and a product’s characteristics. Many new companies fail because they haven’t done enough market research and testing, and have poor customer fit for their product.

A classic example from the marketing world: Betty Crocker could not sell their cake mix.  They thought they had solved a massive problem for their customers - to make a cake all one had to do was mix a pre-made powder and some water together.

The company could not figure out why their target audience, homemakers, wouldn’t want as few steps as possible. What they discovered in a focus group was that homemakers wanted to make less effort, but they still wanted to make some effort.  

Betty Crocker figured out that if they added a step to the process - adding an egg - the person baking the cake felt like they had participated and felt a sense of ownership over the result.  It was counter-intuitive, but this small change made their sales go through the roof.

The thing is, thanks to the Internet and mass-customization, there is no need to go to the trouble and expense of creating a focus group. 

Customers want to tell you what they need and are doing so all the time.  They feel pride when they can participate in the product creation process, and feel rewarded when they hold the result in their hands.

With mass-customization, you can give a tool to your customer that enables them to convert their ideas, preferences and tastes into products.  It puts the control of the design back into the hands of the customer, and let’s them share their excitement about being an integral part of a self-rewarding process.

For this approach to maximize success, there has to be a well developed interface that provides dependable and efficient manufacturer-customer interaction.  This is where MyCustomizer comes in.  Talk to us today about our tool-kit and how we can connect you to the customers that want to tailor your product to meet their need.

In our next post we will look at how much choice is too much, and just how much more are customers willing to pay when given the right amount of control?

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Getting Ready for 2017

The new year is just around the corner.  This means it is time to look back on what we’ve accomplished and to plan what’s coming next.

2016 has been a record year for MyCustomizer. Just this quarter we smashed our current production record out of the park, building configurators for over 200 products.

We are ramping up our engines for 2017 and want to blast that number even higher, while maintaining our commitment to excellence and customer care.  Reports are being published about the future of manufacturing that project exciting developments for the role of customization.  According to www.business-standard.com, today 33% of manufacturing firms employ advanced digital technologies and by 2020 the number of firms with this capability will rise to 72%.

The report surveyed 2100 industrial companies in 26 countries including more than 50 big companies in India from sectors including Automotive, Heavy Engineering, Chemicals, Metals, Paper & Pulp and Transport & Logistics.

Data analytics will be assuming a larger role in decision making processes, with more than 90% of the companies using it to drive business decisions as compared to 53% at present. This will include predictive analytics as well which is increasingly becoming an important aspect of the entire decision making process.

As we’ve discussed on our blog before, there is no better way to generate data than to get your customers to give you their data and feel rewarded for doing so.  Customization is a tool that maximises what is called the ‘pride-of-authorship-effect’, which can influence a customer to pay up to 50% more for the a product they already know, want and love, and might even already own.  It also encourages them to share their excitement with their friends, which results in higher online engagement, which results in more accurate data.

There is a reason Nike and Adidas are investing millions per year in customization.  Once a company is able to harness digital technologies to offer a customization experience to their customers, they don’t go back.  

MyCustomizer offers you low-barrier and low-risk access to the same services.  In 2017 plan to be the company that leads the next wave of e-commerce.

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Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black

Henry Ford

Crest of the Wave: Riding the Mass Customization Trend

Those days are long gone.

Companies now are figuring out how to maximise profit by reducing inventory, ending the cycle of making trend predictions and tying up capital in stock. There is increasing consumer pressure to create a production schedule that can respond to their demands and unique requests. Impatience with delivery time is increasingly a driving factor when making a purchasing decision. These points show the importance of not only having access to agile manufacturing, but also the need to be equipped with software that can help you generate and make sense of the data your users provide.

If accurate forecasts allow for leaner inventory, why not get your customers to tell you exactly what they want? The added bonus according to Sara Gifford, chief solutions officer at Quintiq, a leading provider of supply chain planning and optimisation software, is that you can turn the tables and influence what customers are choosing to buy and how much they’re willing to pay. The airline industry paved the way for this with their pricing models that scale according to demand.  

Gifford says, “Customers feel that they have personalisation during [this] process, but subconsciously they’re choosing something because they can get it faster and perhaps cheaper. For instance, I might only really want the silver version of an iPad if I can get it in a few days. If it’ll take three weeks, then I’ll be happy with another colour instead…

Companies that are able to predict quickly and accurately where the market is going can react equally quickly and accurately to make changes to their supply chain. And that will determine the real winners in this exciting, but challenging, new world of mass customisation married with leaner inventories.”

MyCustomizer software allows companies to take advantage of this ability to influence while maximizing their production and delivery time. Companies can reduce overhead and stock limits by ‘nudging’ their customers to make specific choices through pricing structure and availability, while the customers experience maximum satisfaction and a sense of brand ownership. Outsourcing software development to a service provider who already has the infrastructure built saves additional time and ultimately, cost, allowing you to focus on what matters most, the customer. Everyone wins.

For for further reading, click here to see this topic discussed at Raconteur

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20% increase in growth thanks to customization and digital manufacturing

Olivier Scalabre leads BCG Ops Centers, a group of 100 experts dedicated to manufacturing, supply chain, procurement and services operations across industries. He knows a thing or two about how manufacturing can create growth.  

Below you will find his TED Talk where he talks about how a correlation between innovation and internet driven tech has laid the foundation for a manufacturing revolution that will help economies produce more and be growth leaders.

Tools that we use right now, like advanced manufacturing robots and 3D printing, help manufacturers produce with 8% automation. In 10 years it will have increased to 25%. This change means companies can start producing smarter products according the exact specifications for individual requests, in the same amount of lead time it takes to make hundreds of the same product.

Another important point Scalabre raises is the rising cost of off-shore production. It now costs the same amount of money to hire labour in Brazil as it does in France. By 2018, that’s in 2 years, manufacturing in China will cost the same as it does in the US.

He says Domestic consumption will be driving growth - in  5 years the next billion consumers in China will create more growth than the top 5 european markets combined. To take advantage of this opportunity, learn how the fourth industrial revolution can make your company more productive, more flexible, and affordable in your own country.

Watch the TEDTalk by clicking here

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Montreal Startup Open House

We'd love to have you over!

September 22nd, 2016 @ 3:00 pm - 8:00 pm

MyCustomizer will be participating in the WeWork chapter of Montreal Startup Open House.  On September 22nd, 2016 startups open their doors and welcome top talent, passionate investors and curious neighbours into our office.  Come visit us and all the other innovative startups and top entrepreneurs right where the magic happens.

Find out more information about the day and how to get tickets here.

WeWork is located on the 4th floor at Place Ville Marie. 2/3 Place Ville Marie Montreal, QC H3B 2E3

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Quantity & Quality thanks to the Digital Supply Chain

“Digital technologies, especially the Internet, have made personalization and customization available to a wide range of consumers, making it more cost-effective to satisfy demand.”

A successful business is always searching for new ways to increase the number of clients they serve while delivering the best possible customer service and reducing supply chain costs.

Imagine being able to focus on making just the right amount of product instead of being tied to inventory cycles.  Imagine letting your customers purchase exactly what they want from your company, rather than convincing them to choose something from a limited set of options you prepared using data from the previous year.

This kind of production is possible through lean manufacturing, where logistics and supply chains are managed digitally to make customization a choice that is both easy and good for the growth of your business.

Eric Green identifies how lean manufacturers are laying the foundation for mass customization by learning to track and synchronize supply chains and manufacturing operations with great agility.  He believes customization will quickly become the standard in manufacturing, not the exception, and that even complex industries are moving this direction.

Adopting a digital solution may seem risky to a business because the owner is not confidant it will integrate with their existing market strategies. Standardization across platforms has improved exponentially since the beginnings of the Internet, and if your business serves a niche market, digital manufacturing and marketing solutions are becoming increasingly available to help you easily reduce finished-goods inventory, improve order fill rates, and prevent opportunity loss.

Soon customization will be the norm!  Be an early adopter and let technology take the guesswork out of your supply chain strategy.

Think your product could be a candidate for customization? Contact us today to find out.

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Marketing your customizer with influencers

Mass customization is defined by Investopedia as “a marketing and manufacturing technique that combines the flexibility and personalization of "custom-made" with the low unit costs associated with mass production.”

You have the manufacturing part figured out, but what about the marketing? An online customizer is an awesome tool for your customers to engage with your brand but you also need to market it and get people to use it. While there are many techniques to do this, today I want to look at using influencers to reach more potential customers. 

According to research from Nielsen, consumers trust recommendations from other people above all other forms of advertising. 

Since people are most likely to buy something that was recommended to them by a friend, influencers should be viewed as that “friend” that will recommend your products to your customers.

“ Three factors form the foundation of a successful ad campaign: Reach, resonance and reaction. Reach the right audience, and ensure your advertising resonates positively so you can generate the desired reaction.”  -Nielsen, Global Trust in Advertising Report

Who should you choose (and how to find them)

Influencers should not be hard to find. The key to success is to identify bloggers who share the same aesthetic as your brand. By searching with social media hashtags, you should easily identify potential candidates.

You don’t need a large budget to implement these tactics. There are influencers for everyone, as long as you have a product they want to try. Contact them, see what they have to offer and negotiate a form of compensation that works for both parties.

The results

Undandy Shoes has been working with influencers on instagram, with great results. Let’s look at a few examples:

A nice picture showing the influencer using the customizer to create their perfect shoes. 113 likes on the Undandy account, 2 686 likes on the influencer account! 

Since customizing a product is an experience, you can easily split the campaign into 3 or 4 interesting posts: 1 image showing the customization in the making, another with the finished custom product, and then more posts with the influencer wearing / using their custom product:

With just these 3 posts, Undandy was able to get 6 860 likes, on top of the 516 they got from their own instagram account. This also generated a lot of engagement from the users, where people are tagging other friends, asking where they can buy them, etc.

Customizers and influencers work really well together because it’s not just another “promoted” product. The influencer shares an experience, and designs a product that fits their own style.

Have you ever worked with influencers before? We would love to hear about your experience!

Further reading

There are a ton of ressources out there to help you plan your influencer campaigns. Here are a few that explain the process very well:

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/guide-to-influencer-targeting/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylewong/2014/09/10/the-explosive-growth-of-influencer-marketing-and-what-it-means-for-you/#5dab230d595f

http://www.sixpushmedia.com/influencers-promote-brand

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MyCustomizer launches customization experiences with NEW BALANCE and SUUNTO

Montreal, May 31, 2016 - MyCustomizer is proud to announce the launch of customization experiences for two world renowned brands: New Balance and Suunto, the Finish adventure watch maker which is part of the Amer Sports group. New Balance uses MyCustomizer to sell customizable soccer uniforms through authorized retailers while Suunto chose the software as a service to create a customization solution for the Ambit3 product family on suunto.com.

“With these two important achievements, our team just crossed an important milestone. Our scalable platform and robust processes allowed us to deliver both of these huge projects in just a few months. These successes are demonstrating that the future is bright for MyCustomizer”, said co-founder and CEO of the company, Renaud Teasdale.

Let’s note that the Montreal startup is growing rapidly and now empowers more than 20 companies from all over the world, from SMEs to major brands.

“Today's consumers are looking for unique and personalized experiences. Several brands from different verticals understand this trend and are now turning to mass customization as a differentiation strategy. This is where MyCustomizer comes in. Our team is able to help them engage their customers through meaningful experiences, whether they sell shoes, sunglasses or even furniture”, concluded Renaud Teasdale.

About MyCustomizer

Founded by Simon Vallières, Thierry Proulx and Renaud Teasdale, MyCustomizer graduated from the FounderFuel startup accelerator in 2012. MyCustomizer empowers brands to engage their customers in outstanding design-your-own experiences. Whether they sell shoes, chocolate, or even cars, this online platform allows them to create a customizer very quickly and to completely modify the look and feel to match their brand image.

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The SWITCH™ stool from Pekota Design

Pekota is releasing an innovative mass customizable way of buying furniture. We are proud to announce the SWITCH™ Stool, the first in the SWITCH™ Style line of mass customizable furniture. Available through an enhanced online interface, SWITCH™ Style allows customers to choose the colors, styles of components, and sizes according to their needs. Affordable, stylish, and made in Canada; the SWITCH™ Stool can be personalized and ships within one week with free shipping for Canada and US.

The stool is designed by Marco Pecota and features 3 styles of seats and legs, 8 colors, and both counter and bar heights. In all, this allows for over 1000 unique combinations. “We are very excited to release this new and innovative way of buying furniture online” says CEO and Creative Director

Priced between $149 and $199 with shipping, the stool is an easy and affordable way to create a special piece just for you. The number of unique combinations will continue to grow with the introduction of seat backs, more colors, tables, desks, and much more. In addition to the product itself, Pekota will strive to create a community for owners to show off their combinations, trade or sell limited edition components, and provide feedback on what they would like to see next.

The interface has been developed by My Customizer, and is already in use worldwide. Mass customization has been hailed by The Economist, Harvard Business Review and many other publications as an essential and inevitable future of retail goods. Pioneered by juggernaut manufacturers Nike, BMW, Motorola, and Levi Strauss, mass customization allows the consumer to customize their products quickly and easily. As Pekota takes a bold step forward, it will be one of the first in the furniture industry to offer the features and benefits of mass customization.

Customize your SWITCH™ Stool

Visit Pekota’s online shop

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Canada’s e-commerce ecosystem is booming...

and so is MyCustomizer!

Canadian Business included MyCustomizer in its Map of Canadian Companies Innovating in Digital Commerce:

Click here for the full size image

Read the article: 

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/canada-ecommerce-innovators/

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4 reasons why you shouldn’t develop your customizer in-house

The cost of SaaS can seem steep, and a lot of people don’t like the idea of paying a monthly fee. While it may seem like a better alternative to use your existing resources, or even hire someone to build your software, there are hidden costs that you need to consider before making that decision.

1. Time

Time is money! Building a customizer project from scratch can take anywhere from 8-12 months, and that’s just to get a functional product. You still need to think about interface design and proper user experience, which brings us to the next point.

2. Interface design, proper testing and user experience

Programming is one thing, designing the user interface and user experience is a whole other skill set. You need a designer. Engineers are not designers.

3.  Indirect / opportunity costs

Every hour your team spends on another activity besides your core business costs money. These costs need to be considered when you’re making the decision to focus your team members on a big development project. Can you afford to have part of your engineers building a configurator for the next 8-12 months? Can you afford to hire new team members? 

4. Maintenance, updates and support

Technology is always evolving and online applications require constant maintenance, especially in the world of e-commerce. You will need to allocate resources to make sure your customizer is always up and running smoothly. 

By choosing software as a service, you get a solution that’s already built, designed and tested for optimal user experience, that will require minimal efforts from your team, and that will be updated and maintained automatically. No extra hiring on your part, your team can focus their efforts on your core business, you can start selling custom products online in less than a month and there are no upfront fees. Doesn’t that make the monthly fee a little less scary?

Get in touch! We would love to discuss your custom project!

[mycustomizer]

Lessons In Mass Customization: Less Is More

We’re starting a new series of articles called “Lessons in Mass Customization” where we'll share some insights on mass customization.

For the first one in the series I thought I would talk about choice offering in customizers. Many people come to us with big ideas; they want to do custom shirts and offer 200 different fabrics and 100 button colors. We always advise against offering that many choices, and we often get the same reactions:

- But I have the possibility! Why not offer everything? Isn’t the whole point of mass customization to offer people the opportunity to design exactly what they want? 

Yes. But no. Having the possibility to offer 200 different fabrics doesn’t mean you should do it. And yes, mass customization is all about giving people exactly what they want, but the truth is, people don’t know what they want. They need to be guided through the design experience, and they need to pick from a pre-defined set of options.

We make hundreds of decisions everyday and customizing a product might quickly go from a pleasant experience to an overwhelming one if there are too many choices to make. Sheena Iyengar is a Professor at the Columbia Business School and author of The Art of Choosing. She brilliantly explains how to help consumers make choices using four basic strategies :

1. Cut – Less is more Only offer the most important options. We always tell our clients to resist the temptation of offering too many options. 

2. Concretize – Make it vivid A great product visualization is crucial. The more realistic the product is, the easier it is for the customer to make a decision. 

3. Categorize – More categories, fewer choices Customers can handle more choices if they are grouped into meaningful categories. It’s important to guide them within a directed user experience flow.

4. Condition – Learning how to choose  Move from easy choices to more complex ones. For example, choosing a shoe size is much easier than choosing colors. Once the customer has made 2 or 3 simple choices, he’s more willing to make a difficult one.

Another strategy that works very well is to offer many design starting points. This way, the customer can start from a predefined design or color scheme he likes, tweak 2 or 3 things and buy the product. This is much easier than starting from a blank product.

-But if I offer fewer choices, won’t the designs all look the same?

No. Let’s do some simple math to calculate how many different possibilities you could get out of a custom product using live examples.  

Take Luna sandals. They’re offering custom colors on their adventure sandals: 2 customizable zones, and 9 color options for each zone. There are 81 different combinations possible. Let’s say next season they decide to add 3 new colors to their offering for a total of 12. There are now 144 possibilities, and if they decide to add a 3rd customizable zone, like different 3 different soles, they would now have 432 different combinations possible!

Let’s look at more complex one. This sneaker from Undandy has 11 different customizable zones. For the 7 zones on the shoes you have 54 different leather choices, and then you can choose between 15 colors for your lace rings, laces and stitching. And then you can choose between 2 colors for the sole. How many possible combinations are there? 9 quadrillion. Yep, that’s 9 million billion. Does your brain hurt? Mine does.

So what’s the right amount of choices to offer? It will be different for everyone. We usually recommend to start with 10-15 choices, and see how people are using your configurator until you find your sweet spot. You can always change your colors or patterns every season or offer “limited time only” options. Listen to your customers and let them show you exactly what they want, that’s the whole point of mass customization!

Want to get our lessons in mass customization directly in your inbox? Subscribe here. (We promise to send you only the good stuff, and we’ll never share your details.)

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20 years ago, on the web

Steve jobs was always a visionary, and 20 years ago he gave an interview to Wired Magazine where he shared some thoughts on the future of the web and mass customization:

“ The heart of the Web, will be commerce, and the heart of commerce will be corporate America serving custom products to individual consumers.” - Steve Jobs, Wired Magazine, 1996

It’s quite impressive to see how accurate he was about e-commerce. Keep in mind that in 1996, the internet was just starting to enter households, and people were using AOL and Netscape to connect to it. (Business Insider has a great article on the web in 1995 for those nostalgic or curious)

We’ve come a long way since then but it’s mind blowing to see how relevant his words still are today. Here are a few quotes from the article: “ The Web is an incredible democratizer. A small company can look as large as a big company and be as accessible as a big company on the Web. Big companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars building their distribution channels. And the Web is going to completely neutralize that advantage.”

“ The best way to think of the Web is as a direct-to-customer distribution channel, whether it's for information or commerce. It bypasses all middlemen. And, it turns out, there are a lot of middlepersons in this society. And they generally tend to slow things down, muck things up, and make things more expensive. The elimination of them is going to be profound.”

It’s a great read to start the new year. What do you think Steve Jobs would say about the future of the web today?

http://www.wired.com/1996/02/jobs-2/