Mass Customization in Footwear Industry

Mass Customization

Mass customization is the concept of combining elements of mass production with the flexibility and specificity of personalized orders. The previously tested markets have shown a great potential of mass customization in terms of success. Many industries such as electronics and apparel are slowly exploiting this concept. In footwear industry, shoes customization has targeted top athletes for a while. The beneficial aspects of mass customization are to provide consumers with an opportunity to create unique athletic footwear with personal specifications. Allowing customers to alter, create, and customize a product that best match one’s wants and desires, it adds intrinsic value to the product. This generates a great deal of positive customer interest in mass customization and thus tremendous amount of potential sales. The production of mass customization is not based on production plan but demand; as a result delivery is completely outsourced from factory to retailers. This leads to a shorter lead time in production, but at the same time, costs would be significantly higher compared to normal mass production of products.

Mass Customization in Footwear Industry

When achieving mass customization in footwear industry, focusing on customized fit or customized design are the two ways for companies to compete against each other. Companies with more technological capabilities aim at improving customers’ console. Adidas, Reebok International, New Balance Athletic Shoe and Custom Foot Corp. are examples which focus on comfort level of shoes. Adidas uses the 3-D foot scanner and matching matrix software to support scanning and fitting. There is also a selection of samples available to customers for testing fit preference. In order to provide a professional image to the public, each design terminal is assisted by Adidas experts who can give suggestions to consumers. Reebok International, Ltd has marketed a foot cushion for the top range running shoe. The cushion is utilizing DMX technology and 3-D ultralite sole material so as to maximize the degree of comfort of shoes. New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. has promoted “width center concept unit” to improve shoe fit. It offers three to five different width sizes for its products to optimize shoe fit.

Some companies focus more on the customized design of shoes including Nike Inc., Creo Interactive GmbH and Customatix.com of Solemates, Inc. Nike has developed an online program which enables consumers to choose color and add characters on the shoes. Creo Interactive offered pure design customization in terms of colors and patterns while Customatix.com allowed customers to choose from colors, materials, graphics and logos. Companies can determine which aspects they would like to focus on when doing mass customization. If they would like to promote customized fit, they can use simpler foot scanner and software instead of the 3-D foot scanner. This can reduce working steps and shorten lead time. If companies focus on customized design, they can launch an online program for customers.

Evaluation of mi adidas Pilot

The pilot was designed to evaluate the feasibility and prospects of mass customization of athletic shoes. Their objectives were to offer customized products, test consumer demand, and fulfill their expectation as far as possible. Based on the aforementioned pilot objectives, the pilot was an overall success. However, mi adidas pilot itself was poorly designed due to the following three reasons.

1. It is not necessary to design and implement a pilot in multiple cities to find out that people demand uniquely customized products. If the pilot was designed to spread awareness that Adidas is moving towards a mass customization business strategy, it was successful on a superficial level. However, it is redundant to have such pilot to determine if mass customization is a consumer desire.

1. The structure of the pilot was too synthetic to properly determine if it is feasible for Adidas to move towards a mass customization model. If mass customization is going to be a realistic route for Adidas, it is doubtful that the technologically sophisticated 3-D scanners will be a financially viable option for every retail store.

1. Having the products given away for free during the pilot was a huge driver for consumer demand. Being a pilot event, certain giveaways are expected, but it would have been beneficial to properly evaluate a customer’s demand for a product when margins are increased to cover customization costs. Giveaways certainly inflated the consumers’ demand for customized products while not assessing the true willingness to pay when realistic prices are not mentioned.

Mi adidas pilot would be more successful in projecting the feasibility of mass customized athletic shoes had it articulated pricing, demonstrated the functionality of the retail ordering system, and established the most user-friendly means of creating and ordering the individualized footwear.

Challenges of Mass Customization

During the pilot project, the current supply chain of Adidas has shown its capability of fulfilling limited demand of customized shoes. The attempt gained strong positive customer responses which gave Adidas incentives to offer mi adidas at a larger scale via the retail channel. However, Adidas would face many challenges in different parts of supply chain in further phases.

Retailers

Retailer selection is critical for the success of mi adidas since retailers are the vital part of large-scaled mass customization. The project team has to make a trade-off between maximizing marketing effect by small athletics specialty shops due to a greater retailer commitment and boosting up sales by large-scaled retailers through their relationship management. Moreover, retailers in different countries may have different perceptions regarding fees of promotions. If mi adidas does not deal with the issue carefully, it may result in withdrawal of retailers which affect Adidas’ image and sales.

Customization Process

Since technical problems caused delays in previous phase, it is necessary to increase stability and efficiency of customization process with the increasing demand. New machines and software are required to simplify and stabilize the process, and reduce processing time. Also, the customization focus needs to be further modified based on consumers’ preferences. The team has to conduct research to decide between fit and design customization in different markets.

Information Management