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Tuesday, August 10, 2010
 
As much as we’re obsessed with everything denim, indi is all about customization. Consumers today expect increasingly more personalized products, customized to their style preferences and, when it comes to apparel, their bodies. In the world of customization there are two major camps: custom-made (i.e. a traditional custom tailor) and mass customization, which enables consumers to design their own individual products that are then manufactured on an efficient, massive scale, keeping prices competitive with non-custom products.
indi was recently approached by Custommade.com, a website dedicated to everything custom and specializing in artisan custom-made furniture and woodwork. In the spirit of custom, we did an interview with Custom Made to share two perspectives of customization with you, showing the ins and outs of custom from different approaches yet with a fundamentally similar end goal: matching consumers with products that reflect who they are. We hope this interview will give you insight into indi, how this trend is evolving and where customization is headed in the future. Enjoy!
Question 1: What is your company all about?
indiDenim: indi is about changing the way apparel is sold. Traditionally, consumers have been expected to buy clothes that were made for the masses, not a unique garment specifically made to fit their bodies and style aesthetic. At indi, we believe in giving every consumer the power to design their own apparel and customize it to fit their unique bodies. We are also about making shopping a technologically-enhanced, seamless process. From the online visualization of our custom products to our completely automated systems for pattern generation and order processing, indi is technologically advanced throughout the consumer experience and behind the scenes.
CustomMade: President Mike Salguero’s words say it best! “In my travels I have come across some incredibly talented custom woodworkers, craftspeople and artisans who are unable to focus on their craft because they are running a business. Their dedication to their art is compromised by their need to divert attention to the marketing, advertising and sales of their creations. I wanted to assist these people and created CustomMade.com to help.” We also believe that there are a ton of consumers out there interested in buying Custom, but they don’t know where to start…our site will help both makers and consumers to bridge the frictions that exist in this marketplace and will help them to get in touch with each other.
Question 2: How did you get your start?
indiDenim: Our “About Us” section of our site really says it best: “In our eyes, the way clothing is sold is an anachronism. The current system of mass produced, standard sized clothing is convenient for the companies selling the apparel, but doesn’t work all that well for a lot of consumers. We founded indi to change all that - rather than individual consumers of all shapes and sizes trying to fit into standard sized clothing, we think consumers ought to be able to get exactly what they want in a size that fits them.”
Read more here
CustomMade: Custom Made started with one artisan working out of his home fourteen years ago as an online community for woodworkers to come together and post their custom creations online. In 2009, co-founders Mike Salguero and Seth Rosen saw the potential such an organization had and purchased the company, gave it a new look and feel, and started to change the way custom was looked at by artisans and consumers alike. Within a year, a community of 350 woodworkers has grown to over 1,000 of the highest caliber woodworkers,metal workers, and glass workers in the world.
Question 3: What are some of the challenges you face as a custom company?
indiDenim: Fit is very personal, and understanding the perfect fit for our customers is definitely a challenge. Because we’re custom we set the bar pretty high in terms of fit, just like our consumers. In fact, we guarantee that if for any reason our customers aren’t 100% satisfied, we’ll remake their garment at no charge or give them a full refund. Although this can be challenging, we absorb these costs willingly, knowing that we instill confidence in our customers that the end result will be a perfect-fitting garment that they can always re-order, time and time again.
CustomMade: Our biggest issues right now are related to getting the right people involved with our company.. We currently have 25 people working full-time on this idea, but we need more. We are always looking for marketing, web-design and development, and salespeople. In addition, we have a challenge of convincing consumers to buy custom.. You would think it is a no-brainer, since they can get something locally made, handcrafted, with 5x the quality for a similar price, but the big-box retailers dominate the advertising out there, so it is hard for the little guy to compete.
Question 4: What are your focuses/strong points at the present?
indiDenim: indi provides an ideal shopping experience for the tech-savvy consumer. Our Jean Builder lets consumers see a real-time visualization of their jean change as they pick every style feature of their jean. Consumers can also save their designs in our community vault, where consumers can share designs via social media networks and/or choose any jean from the vault, customize it to fit them, and buy it. We also save our customers’ patterns forever, allowing them to re-order the same pattern with or without adjustments and get a perfect fit, every time. In short, indi provides the most personalized, technologically-advanced experience available, making mass customization fun and easy.
CustomMade: We have a group of the best artisans in the country in the fields of woodworking, glass working and metalworking. These guys and gals are being serviced by our website. We also bring in about 1 Million visitors a year and expose them to the idea of purchasing custom, which is fun and a challenge, but we feel that we do it well!
Question 5: What is your vision for the future of the company?
indiDenim: We intend to get to know our consumers more and more, developing more style content on our site that would interest our audience. We recently launched new style pages and a DenimWiki, packed with useful information on denim history, mass customization, a glossary of denim terminology, and more. We will continue to understand our consumers’ needs from a user experience standpoint, but also a product standpoint, always striving to ensure our patterns fit every consumer perfectly.
CustomMade: We want to be the internet’s one stop shop for anything custom. We are not interested in the manufacturing, rather we want to get you the consumer in front of the right provider of custom services.
Thank you to Custommade.com for participating in this interview! Let us know your feedback and feel free to share your comments!
posted by: evan on August 10, 2010 at 12:26 pm
filed under: Misc Musings | Add a comment
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