It is increasingly clear that the appetite for personalization is a world-wide phenomenon, and not something that is just confined to Western countries. The practice of allowing customers to place their own photographs on a credit card has recently spread to the Sultanate of Oman, where BankMuscat has launched its ‘Picture Card’ version of the [...]

The Finnish Institute of Mass Customization and Personalization will hold their bi-annual forum on mass customization and personalization, MCPF 2006, in Tampere University on 28 November. MCPF 2006 is organized as a side event of ICEB + eBRF, a joint conference on Emergent Business Phenomena in the Digital Economy. MCPF 2006 is organized as a [...]

After much recent media comment suggesting that Dell’s build-to-order strategy no longer provides an advantage in the marketplace, the company has responded through its Direct2Dell blog. Mike Gray, who is described as a ‘Supply Chain Evangelist’ says that: “it may depend on what part of the supply chain you are looking at … on the [...]

Regular readers of this site will know that it is based in Ireland.  It is not very often that I have the opportunity to write about mass customization or personalization activities or articles that originate in this country.  However, I’ve found an interesting article in Marketing Magazine, where Johnathan Davis looks at how shoe companies [...]

An article in United Press International looks at recent developments in the area of genome mapping.  The article looks at the issue from both the business aspect (the high cost makes producing a person’s full genome map impractical), and also the legal and social implications of genome mapping. Legislative developments in the U.S. are aimed [...]

Further to the recent post on this site about WeeWorld, I see that the company has now struck a deal with Microsoft which means that WeeMee’s will be available to U.S. users of the Windows Live Messenger IM platform. Windows Live Messenger users in the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Australia [...]

Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. a retailer of customized stuffed animals, has announced an agreement with Choose Germany A/S as a new international franchisee.  Choose Germany A/S is a subsidiary of Choose Holding A/S a Denmark company which also holds the franchise rights to Build-A-Bear Workshop in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The franchise group is led by [...]

3D design software specialist Geomagic has won a 2006 Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Technology Council.  Named for Roland Tibbetts, acknowledged as the father of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, the prestigious Tibbetts Awards are given annually to those companies, projects, organizations and individuals judged to exemplify the very best in [...]

Image personalization software supplier DirectSmile, has launched its new DirectSmile Designer layout software. DirectSmile have taken the decision to make the non-commercial version of the product available free of charge. All users can now download the non-commercial licence offering full design functionality from www.directsmile.de/designer. Users can create images, and fonts and generate complete image personalization [...]