PERSONALIZATION BROUGHT TO LIFE - IMD

PERSONALIZATION BROUGHT TO LIFE I is your organization ready to bond with consumers?
Bonding with consumers in concrete terms is the Holy Grail for most consumer brands. But
operating in today’s world, technology has drastically impacted both the number of messages a
consumer receives and how well communications are digested. Companies looking to develop new
bonds through differentiation, advertising and event marketing must play in a highly competitive
market. But there are still unique ways to reach out to consumers, namely through customization.
Adidas group, the Herzogenaurach-based German sportswear maker, provides a noteworthy
example of customization in action. The company recently launched its new mi team initiative and
will now rollout a full remake of their mi adidas product customization experience. The new
miteam.com site has been exclusively conceived to offer customized sportswear products –
including shoes, clothing and accessories – to schools, universities, leagues and teams who want to
create a team-customized adidas sports kit. Similarly, the miadidas.com site engages consumers
with personalized design and a unique purchasing experience and is expanding on shoe offerings,
while introducing customizable graphic tees starting in October 2012.
Adidas builds on its prior experience in mass customization – a concept which gained traction
during the emergence of the internet economy when early entrants were convinced that the internet
would revolutionize the customization industry by connecting individual customer information with a
computerized global supply chain. Trek Bicycle, a major bicycle manufacture in the US, introduced
its Project One initiative in 2001, which gave consumers the opportunity to customize their Trek bike
online by selecting the bike’s color and components. Grundfos, the world’s largest pump
manufacture from Denmark, also demonstrated how mass customization could work in B2B
markets 1 . Facing the competition from emerging countries, Grundfos customized its product offering
into four categories. The customization strategy improved Grundfos’ inventory turnover and allowed
the company to outperform its initial ROI target.
But offering flexible individual customization to consumers on a volume scale and at a low price is
not an easy task. The mass customization market seemed promising, yet took most market players
much longer than expected to make it work. Some companies even withdrew from the market. Levi
Strauss closed its “Original Spin” operations producing customized jeans in 2004. In the same year,
Customatix.com, offering made-to-order shoes, went off-line after only four years in business. And
after nearly six years of investment, in 2005, Procter & Gamble shut down Reflect.com – a website
selling personalized health and beauty products. Even Dell, the iconic mass customization brand
which used to dominate the US computer market, was hit hard by the emergence of strong players
such as Apple, HP and Lenovo. Today, Dell’s customization options are rather limited.
Even for adidas, enabling mass customization constituted an endeavour not without its difficulties.
At IMD we have been following its evolution over the past ten years. Our award-winning case study,
The “mi adidas” Mass Customization Initiative 2 , showcasing adidas' original "mi adidas" initiative
1 Grundfos, Winter Nie and Thomas E. Vollmann, IMD-6-0312.
2 “The “mi adidas” Mass Customization Initiative, by Ralf Seifert, IMD-6-0249.
IMD – www.imd.org Page 2/5