“Stop wearing another man’s clothing.”

That’s the tagline for MTailor, a San Francisco-based venture-backed startup that offers custom dress shirts, suits, jeans, chinos and T-shirts for men, as well as women’s jeans. Customers using the MTailor app take a video of themselves slow-turning; MTailor uses the video file and proprietary sizing technology to create custom-sized garments. In two weeks, the apparel arrives at the customer’s door. MTailor claims its technology is 20% more accurate than getting measurements done in person by a professional tailor.

Podcast

Aaron Montgomery, co-host of the 2 Regular Guys podcast, discusses the current demand for personalization and customization at retail and how the promo industry is following suit. Listen to the podcast and read more from Aaron and other industry experts in the Advantages September 2018 cover story.

Taraynn Lloyd, vice president of marketing at Edwards Garment Co. (asi/51752), recently tested out the MTailor app to see what it was all about. “I was fascinated with how quickly they could provide a custom shirt with just a few measurements,” she says. She noted how the service limited the fabrics and design elements, such as offering a 100% cotton woven shirt with herringbone weave and then having the customer select collar and cuff style. Still, she says. “I thought it was fantastic.”

It’s easy to look at services like MTailor and imagine a near-future where end-users buy their logoed corporate dress shirts with a fully-custom digital fitting process.

That day hasn’t arrived yet, but something bigger is already here: a growing demand for customized, personalized and individualized products. “Empowered by social networks and their digital devices, consumers are increasingly dictating what they want, when and where they want it,” summarized Deloitte in its 2015 report “Made to order: The rise of mass personalization.”

The internet and e-commerce has delivered on the first promise in this golden age of consumerism: the ability to purchase any item you choose from the global marketplace and have it shipped to your door.

Now, the next step is occurring: evolving manufacturing technology and digital communication that allows buyers to shape the very products they seek to buy. These include pre-existing products with personalized aspects, such as those available at PersonalizationMall.com and Amazon Custom, all the way up to fully custom items, such as dresses from eShakti or shoes built from the ground up from Nike and Adidas.

In the promotional products realm, the mechanisms for high-volume, individualized custom products are few and far between, but suppliers and distributors are beginning to make significant strides. They are leveraging imprinting technology to offer everything from personalized items with individual recipients’ names to full product lines made unique with a company’s logo. Furthermore, brands and agencies are teaming up with industry companies to host create-your-own products at live events. The process results in unique items that give the recipient a memorable brand experience and increase the probability that a person will keep the item for the long-term.

“People are willing to pay more for something they created.”Aaron Montgomery, 2 Regular Guys

“Consumers expect brands to cater to them,” says Michelle Cardin, marketing director at Shawmut Communications Group (asi/324678) in Danvers, MA. “They want everything to be in line with their own preferences. Promotional products have to stay relevant in the long run, so companies that get on board will rise to the top.”

The desire for personalized products is arguably part of a larger phenomenon of a move toward minimalism. After the consumption eras of the 1980s and 1990s, people now tend to forgo accumulation of possessions for experiences and more special items – especially if they have been personalized or customized.

“We have an overabundance of stuff, so now there’s been a backlash to that,” says John Ruhlin, founder of The Ruhlin Group, a strategic gifting consultancy. “Do we really need more things? Now, people want one really nice thing versus lots of things that don’t mean much. We at The Ruhlin Group argue for fewer touches in favor of more meaningful ones that really represent the value of the relationship in quality, personalization and taste. It’s less about a bunch of logoed items that someone will keep for 10 minutes and more about one really nice thing they’ll keep for 10 years.”

It’s also rooted in the extensive exchange of data that can then be used to customize a product. Nearly one in four consumers – millennials and Generation Z in particular – don’t mind giving personal information (such as body measurements) as long as it’s used to benefit them, such as creating an individualized product. “Younger generations are looking at the personal information Facebook has on them, for example, and they’re asking, ‘What do I get out of this?’” says Aaron Montgomery, co-host of the 2 Regular Guys podcast and a veteran of the decorated apparel industry. “And now they’re not the only generation demanding this.”

There’s a definite payoff to selling customers on personalized products. According to Deloitte, half of consumers are willing to wait longer for a personalized product, while a full quarter said they’re willing to pay more. It shifts the conversation away from price toward optimal long-term brand impact. “It’s less of a price game because you’re most likely looking at premium items at this point,” says Montgomery. “And people hold onto personalized pieces longer. Instead of cranking out stuff that people will throw away, let’s make personalized items they won’t toss.”

 o meet the current demand for personalized items, promotional companies are working to offer more options for each client while emphasizing the value of items with a personalized touch. Cardin says customers use Shawmut’s web portal solution to choose a variety of appropriate gifts for the target recipients. Instead of all recipients receiving the same gift, companies can offer several items to choose from, each of which might be closer in line with individual preferences.

“The client might create four or five personas and then pick gifts that fit each one,” she says. “They get a good selection together and let the end-user choose their gift with personalization available. But it’s still based on educated guesses about what would fit best.”

The cost factor of personalization has been helped along in recent years by developments in imprinting technology, particularly manipulation of variable data and inkjet printing, says Jay Busselle, director of sales & marketing for Printa Systems. “Dye-sublimation transfers and direct-to-substrate inkjet printing aren’t new,” he adds, “but the printers have become smaller, less expensive and more purpose-built in the last few years.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if we started seeing fully customized wearables in the industry.”Kevin Johnstone, FPS Apparel

With technology advancing at a healthy pace, the next step is to acquire the necessary information to create personalized items. Ruhlin says they’ll actually do some stealth research on the target recipients (with the client’s permission, of course) so they can create truly personalized items. “We prefer to surprise them rather than have them pick out their own gift,” he says. “We can get information on people through social media, through people close to them. We’ll order custom mugs at like $600 a piece that come with a video of the artist making them. You can put together a personalized piece and not have talked to the recipient once, but it takes homework, energy, effort and some professional stalking.”

On the apparel side, e-commerce sites such as Custom Ink and Spreadshirt have flourished by letting customers choose their own unique attributes, such as designs and colors, to pre-existing apparel and accessory styles.

In addition, industry companies are offering design customization and the ability to create an entire garment line centered on a brand’s logo.

“We’re always customizing more and more,” says Kevin Johnstone, sales & marketing manager at FPS Apparel (asi/53475). The supplier offers apparel with customizable aspects, such as hood linings. “It’s not that we’re customizing for specific individuals, but people are always looking for new and creative ways to brand a product, and we’re trying to push the limit on that.”

FPS Apparel offers custom-designed garments at low minimums in a matter of weeks. “Using the client’s art, we do custom hood linings in sweatshirts, custom pockets on tees, custom waistbands on leggings/yoga wear and more, which creates really outside-the-box and uniquely branded items,” Johnstone says. “All of the custom areas are full-color with no limit to the design.”

And what about fully customized apparel, which is gaining traction in the wider marketplace? The promotional industry is traditionally driven by large quantities and low-cost items, and it would require advanced technology, large-scale logistical changes at companies and adequate demand to make it worth offering.

Cardin says it may be some time before the promo industry makes it a reality. “It would be nice to have and I think people would react well to it,” she says. “You could create something totally unique to you. But how does a company hit an economy of scale with one product at a time? It requires logistics to make it all work. And if you’re looking to personalize each product, how do you do that with an affordable unit cost?”

While demand for custom intensifies as the technology – both sizing and e-commerce – improves, it will take the promo industry time to get to that point, but it’s not impossible. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we started seeing fully customized wearables in the industry,” Johnstone says. “The reason we offer our line of custom products with a minimum of just 24 is because people want more and more custom with less of a minimum commitment. We could eventually get to the point that individual products will be customized with no minimum.”

FPS Apparel (asi/53475) can take a company’s logo and create branded apparel pieces by customizing hood linings, pockets, waistbands and even entire garments like jackets and leggings.

For companies looking to move closer to fully custom products for their clients with current technology, it’s still a challenge to offer large quantities. The Ruhlin Group instead helps design individualized items for clients that feature aspects unique to them. And Ruhlin talks smaller orders, not those in the thousands. “I’d say if you’re a financial advisor and you want to do something for your top 25, maybe top 50 or 100 clients, you can do it,” says Ruhlin. “But not 10,000 pieces. I’d say the sweet spot is an order of dozens. It’s important to focus on the top 1% or 5% of relationships because that’s where 80% of your results come from.”

 hile there’s delight when a customized product is surprisingly presented to the end-user, consumers today want an active say in what their products look like and how they’re made. Enter live brand experiences, where recipients choose, watch and even participate in the making of promotional products on-site. By taking customization live, brands create a tactile experience that energizes the live event and trade show scene.

Ralph Lauren recently parked a vintage double-decker customization bus at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London; inside, fans picked one of six designs, the polo color, and the last name and number to have heat-pressed on the back. “They were printed and pressed on location, and delivered back to the buyer in minutes,” says Busselle. “Live customization creates an engaging, interactive and immersive brand experience, because attendees become co-builders and creators.”

Montgomery recalls a recent film promotion that gave attendees the opportunity to design and purchase their own beach towels. Using an app, participants created their designs and a week later had a personalized, sublimated towel shipped to them that commemorated their time at the event.

Because of the custom nature of the towels, the company could ask participants to pay a premium for their creation. “People are willing to pay more for something they created,” Montgomery says. “It shifts the conversation away from cost per piece.”

Live events are exciting, Montgomery adds, because in a largely digital world, people crave the tangible and tactile, which accounts for the popularity of individualized promo products tied into a brand experience. “There’s so much noise that something else has to set a brand apart,” he says. “A brand experience ends, but you still have the item you created.”

For Generation Z especially, which has grown up in an almost completely digital society, live events with engagement aspects are popular. “They’re hotter than ever – people want real, they’re craving it,” says Ruhlin. “Tangible triggers still have a role to play. They’re more thoughtful and personal, and they’re tied to a real experience.”

Live customization automatically increases the value of the item created, says Tim Williams, CEO of YR Live, a U.K.-based live customization agency. “Allowing guests to customize the design before it’s printed live in front of them changes the value of the item,” he says. “A T-shirt that someone has helped design is now a true one-of-a-kind and much more valuable than grabbing a pre-printed T-shirt from a stack at a show, for example. The whole experience is key to engaging customers in a brand and building loyalty.”

In fact, Williams is optimistic that custom apparel sizing could become part of live customization, particularly when it comes to capabilities in 3-D printing. “We’re just waiting for the printers to get quicker,” he says. “I think body scanning with a smartphone and then connecting that data to production machines might well be possible in the near future.”

Sara Lavenduski is the senior editor for Advantages. Tweet: @SaraLav_ASI. Contact: slavenduski@asicentral.com

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