A recent study in the United States suggests that the phenomenon described as ‘The Daily Me‘ can also apply to groups of people who hold a particular point of view.
‘The Daily Me’ is a term used to describe the risks attached to personalized news services.  In everyday terms, a newspaper or online news aggregator tailored […]

I would very much have liked to attend the MCPC (Mass Customization and Personalization Conference) 2007 , which was held recently in MIT, Boston and HEC Montreal, however I was unable to do so due to other commitments.
Therefore, I’m making a small contribution to the MCPC 2007 by gathering the thoughts of some of those […]

CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, has recently announced a new online Books on Demand service.
CreateSpace was originally founded as CustomFlix Labs, Inc. in 2002 and acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 2005. Prior to launching the Books on Demand service, CreateSpace was already providing inventory-free, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs on Demand, and video […]

An interesting idea recently covered by Springwise is custom blended teas. Blends For Friends is a British company that sells custom-blended teas, mainly ordered as gifts. The buyer is asked to provide some information about the chosen recipient, although only some basic details are obligatory. However, there are many more optional pieces of information […]

Zazzle, the online marketplace for personalized products, may be close to securing funding of $30M from a hedge fund investor. This was reported on Friday last on Techcrunch.
No official statement has, as yet, been issued by Zazzle regarding any investment.  If true, it would continue a remarkable run of success for Zazzle in attracting […]

Frank Piller has posted an announcement regarding the 2007 World Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization.
Keynote speakers include B. Joseph Pine (who wrote the book ‘Mass Customization - The New Frontier in Business Competition’ in 1993, which can be said to have kick started the whole area of mass customization), Eric Von Hippel of the […]

Internet custom products marketplace company Zazzle recently announced that it had acquired Confego, a San Francisco Bay Area company that provides software that enables brands to offer fully customized apparel, bags and footwear designed from the ground up. Confego co-founders Brennan Mulligan and David Gross have joined Zazzle effective immediately.

Confego manages order fulfillment and […]

Slacker, Inc. has recently announced the creation of “Personal Radio,” which enables U.S. consumers to customize their own radio stations and listen to them wherever they happen to be. The Slacker Personal Radio is available in beta for PC streaming at www.slacker.com and later this year on Slacker Portable Radio Players via Wi-Fi and […]

In July, 2001 Gale International negotiated a joint venture agreement with POSCO E&C (Korea’s largest engineering and construction company) and the City of Incheon, South Korea, for the planned development of a completely new city, called Songdo City. Located at the site of General MacArthur’s 1950 landing, Songdo will be the first “new” city […]

Just how big is the market for photo personalized goods?  A few years ago, it was very unusual to see products that had been personalized with photographs.  Now, it is commonplace with a large selection of online suppliers and also offline stores in shopping districts having the equipment to put photo images on a variety […]

Two articles have recently been published that provide an interesting comparison between current car manufacturer’s approach to personalization, and the prsonalization ideas put forward by up-and-coming auto design students.
In the manufacturer’s corner is Skoda (part of the Volkswagen Group), which was reported in UK magazine Auto Express as planning to offer a service to add […]

Auto Express, a British car magazine, reports in a short news item that BMW are:
“…working on a design for a super-efficient factory that can make bespoke cars in five days, instead of the current wait of up to six weeks. But there’s one hitch - it could be eight years before the “fully flexible” production […]

Recently I wrote about the difficulties that the U.S. auto industry finds itself in, due to its over-reliance on the build for inventory business model, as well as dependency on SUV sales for profitability.
At the end of that posting, I asked the question as to what might happen if there was a disruptive change to […]

There have been a few recent articles from various sources regarding the U.S. auto industry, which provide an interesting basis for a discussion about the role of mass customization in the future of the automotive sector.
In Industry Week, a recent feature by Yorgos Papatheodorou and Michelle Harris, which primarily dealt with the geographical spread of […]

The Idaho Statesman carries an article about Tom Falash, who opened a wine store in Boise, Idaho, USA. This is not a regular wine store. It lets customers make their own wine for less than US$10 per bottle.
The process works as follows:

Customers can taste wines before choosing which one to make. Falash takes […]