It can seem like the human-scale web is a retro concept. However, I find it foundational to where I believe the Internet could be heading. So I'll be throwing in a few classics from time to time here.
This one is an oldie from Hugh MacLeod, the indie cartoonist at GapingVoid.com. I recall Hugh calling me up from England beforehand to chat about what I thought of the idea. Living in Silicon Valley at the time, I was conditioned to think in terms of mass momentum, hockey-stick growth and scale, I told him flatly that one man making bespoke suits wouldn't scale. True enough, yet is mass production and economy of scale really truly the point of life? Since then, I've come around to appreciate and prefer small batches, the care and devotion of the handcrafted, and the handiwork of the indie artisan and culture-maker.
Below's Hugh's January 2005 post where he introduces his friend Thomas and his suit-making prowess:
"English Cut", the blog of my pal, Savile Row Tailor Thomas Mahon only went live a day or two ago and already it's being talked about. Nice to see.
Just saw Tom Peters blogged it. Cool!
Yeah, I turned Thomas onto blogging and helped him set up the website. This is what I said in Tom Peters comment section:
Thomas' business is interesting to me. It's very "niche", certainly, but the demand for bespoke English suits is fairly steady, but the supply of young tailors willing to endure a 7-year apprenticeship has been drying up over the last 50 years. Now the average age for a good English tailor (at Thomas' level) is around 60.
So even if the market for bespoke is tiny, there's only about 20 people IN THE WORLD who can cut an English suit at Thomas's level. And a good portion of Thomas' direct competition have never even sent an e-mail before, let alone started blogging. So once Thomas saw the possibilites of blogging, he jumped right at it.
Right now I have no financial involvement in Thomas' blog or tailoring business.
Still, the idea of a "Wired" Savile Row tailor is such a no-brainer... it was just one of those things that came together over beers one evening.
[UPDATE:] The definition/explanation of the word "bespoke" is here.