The Amazing Power Of Product Personalization
One year ago when I stepped off aplane in Vietnam I never imagined that I would become obsessed with product personalization. Upon arrival, I didn’t know a soul, and was keen to start a new project. I had recently sold my primary business, was well rested, and open to new opportunities in this red hot economy.
Nice to meet you 👋
After a few weeks I randomly met Ricky, an American with Vietnamese ancestry who was (and is) doing very well selling personalized products on Amazon. He told me that his friend Tony and him were building a personalized travel accessories brand and asked if I wanted to join.
I really like e-commerce, and being invited to join Ricky and Tony on their quest to build a personalized travel accessories brand was beyond exciting!
I’ve been selling graphic tees online for a few years, and have been successful at building several large social media accounts. Based on this experience I intuitively knew that offering personalization on anything was a winning idea.
I said yes immediately.
That’s weird 😱
Since my first fateful encounter with Ricky I’ve done a ton of research on companies that offer personalized products. I find it weird that it’s 2018 and so many companies are still operating like its 1930. Standardized offerings that allow for mass production is still the norm.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that just in time production is allowing brands to unleash their creativity on a wide range of products. Something that’s much harder when you need to hold large amounts of physical inventory.
I know intimately how important just in time production is. Without it I wouldn’t be able to sell shirts from Bali, or Denmark, or Vietnam, or wherever I happen to be. This production capability plus the ability to sell in niches not addressed by physical storefronts has allowed for so many new businesses to flourish in the past 5 years.
Even still, I feel like so many companies could be doing so much more to differentiate themselves. Selling interesting products to micro-niches is no longer enough. There is hardly a niche that hasn’t been addressed by very clever marketers.
However, brands that offer personalization are often able to revitalize stale niches and reap the rewards for themselves.
Importantly, offering personalization enables customers to express their individuality, and elevates them from being solely a consumer to a co-creator.
A web of personalization 👯
The funny thing is that the personalization of online experiences is ubiquitous. It’s a core part of what makes the internet so incredible.
When you go to Facebook the content on your newsfeed is tailored just for you. Even if you had an identical twin and you both went on Facebook at the same time, your newsfeeds wouldn’t be the same. Facebook’s ability to consistently deliver content that you as an individual enjoy engaging with is why they are the third most popular website in the world.
In fact, all the most popular websites personalize the user experience to some degree.
For their part, online marketers are able to accurately target people with ads, and send out personalized emails to people on their list. This personalization of the online experience is so common place that it’s easy to take it for granted.
Which is why it’s strange that personalization in other arenas, especially physical goods, is so rare. Access to high quality manufacturing at competitive pricing is likely a significant reason. However this is changing rapidly.
Case studies please? 👩💻
That’s why my two business partners and I are building The Wander Lab. Being in Vietnam gives us access to the high quality just in time manufacturing at an affordable price. This combined with fast courier shipping will allow us to get our personalized products into the hands of customers in as little as one work week after they click buy.
But as we haven’t launched yet, there’s not much to share about our journey... However, there are a handful of companies which offer personalization that have managed to gain significant market share in a short amount of time.
Here are three examples of companies operating in completely different niches that are winning the personalization game 🎉
Care/Of
Care/Of is proof that personalization can be utilized in almost any industry. They give their customers the ability to “build a personalized daily vitamin pack with honest guidance and better ingredients.”
This company addresses what was a HUGE hole in the market. Like many people, I place very high value on my health. I do Yoga everyday and try to eat healthy. I know I should probably take supplements, but put me in a health food store and I feel completely lost. I also don’t want a one size fits all approach to my health.
There’s probably millions of people like me, and up until now there was no way to order a personalized pack of vitamins while sitting at home in your underwear.
This focus on personalization has paid off big time for Care/Of, all while traditional supplement retailers are seeing declining sales. Here’s what a 2017 article in Business Wire had to say:
Care/of is one of the fastest-growing companies in the direct-to-consumer health and wellness space. Revenues for the business have doubled every two months since launch — much of the growth driven by the immense organic interest from consumer health journalists, experts, and influencers. Care/of’s latest round of financing comes at a time when sales continue to plummet for traditional brick and mortar retailers in the supplement space, and the business is well positioned to shake up the $39 billion vitamin industry.
Clearly, personalization is a core pillar of Care/Of’s success.
Shoes Of Prey
Shoes of Prey are also using personalization to disrupt what has traditionally been a mass market industry. Don’t get me wrong, I know from the women in my life that there are some super innovative shoe brands out there that cater to a wide array of personal styles. Fluevog Shoes from my native Vancouver, Canada immediately comes to mind.
But Shoes of Prey is the first example I’ve seen of a company that allows you to personalize every part of the shoe. From the style of the heel, to the strap, to the toe, to the heel height, to the material used, and soooo much more! It’s unbelievable, and with so many variations their customers likely end up purchasing a one of a kind pair. No risk of going to a party where two other people are wearing the same shoes as you.
And how are they doing? Apparently quite well. Business News Australia reported that:
Jodie Fox [Shoes of Prey founder] is now based in Los Angeles and Shoes of Prey is something of a juggernaut in the Australian retailing landscape. In total the company has raised around $35 million, which has been mostly out of the US and Shoes of Prey raised US$15 million more recently…
Just like Care/Of, the core of Shoes Of Prey’s success comes from personalization. In that same Business News Australia article, founder Jodie Fox reflected that:
I’d like to think we’re doing something that hasn’t been done before and we’re also solving a problem for women out there to be able to buy the shoes exactly as they want them… We’re catering to what we call the “Cinderella” customer. Cinderella gets the style she wants and the size she wants, which can be from size two to 15, we can do width adjustments and they are hand finished one at a time with a two week delivery.
In my view, more brands ought to treat their customers like Cinderella. Doing so creates a market differentiation unlike almost any other offering.
Casetify
There aren’t many products more ubiquitous than the humble cell phone case. They are offered by so many retailers, and the types of cases along with the designs you can get are nearly limitless. But yet again, the ability to personalize makes Casetify stand out among their peers.
I’ve had a ton of phone cases, and they’ve all been pretty generic. But after visiting Casetify’s site I feel super compelled to create a pink glitter case with the name “Carlos” on it for my 14 year old cousin (his parents refer to him as Adam, but I’ve been calling him Carlos since 2013 😁). This is just not possible with other retailers.
South China Morning Post reports that:
Casetify has taken Hong Kong and the world by storm since its establishment in 2011. The company has grown into one of the three biggest tech accessory brands in the world in that time, taking CEO and co-founder Wesley Ng and many others by surprise with the rapid rate at which this feat was achieved.
In that same article, Ng astutely notes:
“As we grow the company, we have seen [that] users don’t just want a customised phone case. They want something [that] represents them; to be able to express themselves.”
Ng is right. Customization isn’t enough on its own, but it’s the ingredient which allows customers to express themselves. Its another example of treating customers like Cinderella.
Personalization For The Win 🤑
The amazing thing is that none of these companies are more than a decade old! Care/Of was founded at the end of 2016, Shoes Of Prey in 2008, and Casetify in 2011.
There is clearly tremendous opportunity out there for new and existing companies alike to offer personalization. The excellent news is that high quality, on-demand manufacturing is making this possible for more and more companies.
Ultimately, the “Prince Charming” companies which lovingly treat their customers like individuals stand to disrupt entire industries and reap tremendous rewards.
Over to you! 😻
We’d love to hear your thoughts on personalized products! Any insights, questions, or taqueria recommendations are greatly appreciated 😜
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